The financial tech company Wise, formerly TransferWise, offers a cheap way to send money from the U.S. to over 70 countries. The exchange rates are some of the best you’ll find. You can fund a Wise money transfer in various ways, such as with a bank account or credit card, but recipients need to have a bank account.

I don’t really use their main feature that much but have found some other Wise services very useful. Here are my favorite things:

Debit Cards

This is only available in some countries. You can obtain a physical VISA card that will allow you to use your Wise balance in the real world without transfering money to your local bank account.

Virtual Cards and “Freezing”

You can generate virtual credit cards on the fly. This is very useful if you want to pay on websites that you don’t trust or when you don’t want the vendor to automatically withdraw monthly payments. Once again, you would use the funds in your Wise account. After submitting payment, you can then freeze that virtual card number until next time.

International Accounts

If, as a Canadian, you ever need a US-based account in order to receive US dollar payments, Wise gives you that, with routing number, branch address and all that. Same thing for receiving Euro bank transfers and other currencies.

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