Wise Business vs Trolley vs Interlinc (2026)

No monthly subscription. Pay only per transfer, at the mid-market exchange rate with zero markup. Best for teams paying under 50 contractors internationally.

Enterprise contractor payout platform. 210+ countries, 1099/W-8BEN automation, AML screening, batch API. Best for 50+ contractors where compliance automation pays for the subscription.

Contractor payment platform built around the relationship — retainers, milestone releases, instant payments, automated invoicing. Early-stage, pricing not yet public.

If you're the founder paying a handful of contractors abroad and every dollar of platform fee is a dollar you'd rather not spend — Wise Business is the default choice, and for good reason.

Wise Business (formerly TransferWise Business) uses the mid-market exchange rate — the same rate banks use when trading currencies with each other — and charges a transparent fee on top, from roughly 0.33% and up depending on the currency corridor. Banks typically add a 2–4% markup hidden inside the exchange rate rather than shown as a fee. On a $5,000 contractor payment, the difference between Wise and a bank wire is often meaningfully in your favor.

The multi-currency account ($31 one-time US setup) lets your business hold local account details in USD, GBP, EUR, and other major currencies. Xero and QuickBooks integrations make reconciliation straightforward, and fees automatically drop once you exceed $25,000 in monthly FX volume.

The critical limitation: Wise Business is a payment tool, not a contractor management platform. It doesn't collect W-9 or W-8BEN forms, validate TINs, generate 1099s, or run AML screening. US businesses paying contractors over $600/year are responsible for that compliance independently — manageable at low volumes, a real operational burden as contractor count grows.

If you're the finance lead drowning in W-9 collection spreadsheets for 60 contractors across 20 countries — Trolley's Tax module exists specifically to make that problem disappear.

Trolley (formerly Payment Rails) was built for paying large numbers of recipients across many countries with compliance handled automatically. Marketplaces, creator platforms, and gig-economy operators use it to pay contractors, affiliates, and suppliers across 210+ countries without manual compliance work.

Pricing is genuinely modular — you pick the modules you need. Pay ($2,399/year) is the baseline for sending payouts. Tax ($2,399/year for one jurisdiction — US or EU, not both) adds automated W-9/W-8BEN/1099 collection with TIN validation. Trust ($1,199/year) adds identity verification; Sync ($1,199/year) adds accounting/ERP integrations. Most contractor-payment buyers need Pay + Tax together — roughly $4,798/year, plus itemized per-payment fees ($10 for a wire with FX, a 2% FX margin on conversions).

The economics break down at low volumes. At 10 contractors/month, the Pay+Tax subscription alone works out to roughly $40/contractor before any transaction fees — Wise Business at the same volume would cost a few dollars per transfer with no base cost at all. The breakeven is roughly 50+ contractors/month, where the automation savings on W-9 collection, TIN validation, and 1099 filing exceed the fixed subscription cost. Bank-partner onboarding can also take several weeks, so build in lead time.

If you manage the same 15 contractors month after month on standing retainers — and you're tired of re-initiating the same transfer and chasing the same invoice every cycle — Interlinc's workflow-first design is worth a demo.

Interlinc approaches contractor payments from a different angle than Wise or Trolley. Where Wise optimizes for cheap international transfers and Trolley optimizes for high-volume payout infrastructure, Interlinc optimizes for the ongoing contractor relationship: rolling retainers, milestone-based releases, and instant payments, with automated invoice generation and compliance handling built in.

The practical difference: with Wise, you manually initiate each transfer and separately manage invoicing. With Trolley, you trigger batch API payments and the platform handles compliance. With Interlinc, you set up the relationship once — retainer amount, schedule, milestone conditions — and the platform handles payments, invoices, and compliance automatically from there. For companies with recurring monthly retainers rather than one-off project payments, this reduces admin closer to zero.

Interlinc remains early-stage as of mid-2026, with no public pricing and limited documentation on international coverage. The workflow design is genuinely differentiated — worth evaluating via demo for teams where relationship management overhead, not just payment cost, is the primary pain point. Do proper due diligence on reliability and support before migrating existing contractor payment flows to any early-stage platform.