Which money transfer companies are dominating in AI responses?
We reviewed generative AI responses to questions about transferring money to see which money transfers companies are receiving the biggest boost from AI recommendations.
AI is becoming an increasingly crucial part of people’s everyday lives and while AI systems like ChatGPT are still arguably in their infancy, around 5% of all web traffic over the past year was the result of AI searches, according to Cloudflare Radar – and this proportion is thought to be growing.
At the same time, many companies have reported significant decreases in the number of website visitors they receive via traditional search engines.
Because generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI overviews directly give users the answers they are looking for without having to click through various websites, companies are quickly realising they may need to adapt their approach to appear more regularly in AI answers and recommendations.
The same is true for the cross-border payment industry. But which money transfer and remittance providers are currently leading the way when it comes to AI?
To understand which cross-border payment companies AI mentions or suggests in its responses the most, we input 40 different prompts a varying number of times through three major AI models: OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity’s Sonar Pro and Google’s AI overviews. Our prompts ranged from generic questions such as ‘How can I send money abroad?’ to more specific requests, including ‘What is the fastest way to send money to Mexico?’. We recorded the responses to find out which companies are currently receiving the most suggestions by conversational AI and summaries.
The top money transfer companies according to AI
Following a total of 258 prompts into the three AI models, one cross border payment company was named far more than any others – Wise. The money transfer giant was named in 241 responses, signifying inclusion in 93% of all responses generated. Wise also emerged as the company with the most mentions by each of the individual AI models – appearing in 92% of ChatGPT responses, 98% of Google Search AI summaries and 91% of Perplexity responses.
Western Union, Remitly, MoneyGram and Xoom rounded out the top five cross-border payment companies mentioned, appearing in 81%, 79%, 68% and 52% of AI responses respectively.
At the other end of the spectrum, of 152 banks, fintechs and financial institutions mentioned by the AI models, 90 were named in fewer than 1% of responses each (equating to mentions in two or less responses) – including sizeable cross-border companies such as Airwallex and Moneycorp.
How does the type of prompt impact AI responses?
To see what kind of impact the type of question had on AI responses, we split responses up into five categories based on the focus of each prompt:
- Best: Asking the best way to send money to a specific region; which are the best remittance providers or money transfer companies; or where to find the best money transfer deals.
- Cost: Asking the cheapest way to send money to a specific country; which money transfer and remittance companies are the cheapest; or which companies offer promotions on remittances.
- How: Querying how to send money abroad, home or to specific countries.
- Speed: Asking which money transfer companies are the fastest or what the fastest way is to send money to a specific country.
Trust: Queries focused on which money transfer providers are the most reliable, whether to send money to a specific corridor or overall.
Of prompts asking the AI models to find the ‘best’ way to send money to a certain region or the best company to facilitate money transfers, Wise topped the list for responses, featuring in 94% of all answers to these requests, narrowly beating Western Union (91%) and Remitly (87%).
Wise also took top spot for prompts in the ‘Cost’ category, mentioned in 95% of responses, while Remitly (76%) and Western Union (65%) stayed in the top three most mentions. These three companies also dominated the top three spots for mentions in the ‘Trust’ category, with Wise appearing in 96% of these responses, Remitly in 94% and Western Union in 86%.
For prompts related to asking the quickest way to send money, Wise beat out the competition once again, appearing in 93% of responses. MoneyGram emerged as the second-most referenced company in this category (74%), beating Western Union (70%).
The only prompt type that Wise did not receive the most mentions in was ones asking ‘How’ to send money somewhere; in this category, Wise received mentions in 88% of responses, behind Western Union with 94%. MoneyGram was the third most mentioned in this category, with 84%.
While Venmo only enables domestic money transfers within the US, the mobile payment company appeared in 29% of responses to more generic prompts including ‘How can I send money home?’, largely as a result of the AI models assuming that the user was based in the US.
Which companies led the way for each receiving country mentioned?
We also analysed how changing the receiving region would impact the types of companies that AI recommended. We included a number of prompts for various countries that receive high volumes of incoming payments: Nigeria, Mexico, the Philippines, France, India and the UAE. At no point was any information included in the prompts regarding the region or country that money was sent from.
The findings from this part of our analysis created slightly more varied results than when changing the type of question asked, although Wise, MoneyGram, Western Union and Remitly remained largely ever-present in the responses.
When asking how to send money to Nigeria, or the best, fastest or most reliable way to send money to the West African country, AI recommended using MoneyGram and Remitly the joint-most number of times, both seeing inclusion in 91% of all Nigeria-related answers.
Given Wise’s overall domination in the AI responses, the global money transfer company was unsurprisingly suggested the most following prompts about Mexico, France and the UAE, while it saw the joint-most responses for the Philippines and India alongside Remitly.
Lessons to learn from Wise
Leading in so many of the metrics and consistently appearing in the vast majority of AI generated responses, Wise appears well ahead of its competitors. But why is this the case?
Most of the AI responses from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI overviews cited sources for the information they found. These sources varied from Reddit posts with discussions related to the topic asked, to pages direct from the websites of some of the top ranking cross-border payment providers.
The three AI models regularly reference sites like NerdWallet, a personal finance comparison and information website, which contain a large number of informational pages including listing the ‘best’ ways to send money internationally or to specific countries. When looking into these pages, Wise often appears in these lists.
Wise has also created a vast amount of localised pages and guides for most currency corridors, helping it to rank highly in most searches related to international money movement. Wise’s approach to increasing its domain authority and improving its SEO tactics appears to translate well into ensuring it appears regularly in AI responses.
Through mentions in other high-ranking websites related to the space and by increasing the amount of informational content for specific country corridors or use cases, it appears possible to garner more recommendations from AI.
