While some of it came from genuine technological limitations and some of it was purely strategic, banks spent decades building a business model around complexity. There were fees buried in fine print and exchange rates with undisclosed markups. Almost as a rule, charges appeared on statements without any clear explanation.
Businesses, on the other hand, tolerated this largely because the alternative – switching banks – came with extra operational costs and rarely changed much in practice. Fortunately, things have gotten better.
By positioning transparency not as a feature but as a baseline, fintechs and payment platforms have been resetting expectations. Modern companies expect nothing less than seeing costs upfront, understanding what they’re charged, and predicting what they will pay. Anything less simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
A recent Morning Consult surveyconducted for the Financial Technology Association captures this shift clearly. When evaluating fintech products, 68% of small businesses ranked one factor above all others: no hidden fees or charges. An easy-to-use interface and real-time transaction updates came in second and third, but the absence of surprise charges increasingly looks like a requirement rather than a preference.
Why Opacity Costs More Today
Obviously, the timing matters. Also, we’re not talking just about irritation here. The problem is that legacy banking was built for a slower world – and that world doesn’t exist anymore.
For example, distributed teams close books weekly instead of quarterly, while global payments happen constantly. So a FX markup or an unexplained charges can disrupt the cashflow and complicate forecasting.
It’s no surprise then that finance teams expect the clarity from payment infrastructure: transparent pricing, instant feedback, and no mystery charges. And when a provider can’t follow through on that, they leave.
Transparency as Infrastructure
Modern payment platforms didn’t invent transparency as much as they built it into the system. Real-time dashboards replace statements. FX costs appear before transactions and not after, while spend limits update on the go. Most importantly, subscription and plan fees are communicated straightforwardly. In short, everything is visible.
This does two things. It builds trust but it also improves operations, whether that’s catching fraud, controlling budget, or streamlining reconciliation.
Transparency, in other words, is not marketing but architecture, and systems that expose data also force providers to behave consistently.
The New Standard
The trust equation is now clear.
First, pricing must be predictable, meaning you know the cost before you subscribe and before you transact. Second, visibility must be immediate, so you can see what’s happening in real time. Finally, control must stay with you – you decide how money moves and not your provider.
Any provider that fails on one of these dimensions loses trust, and in a competitive market, that loss is usually permanent.
As fintechs grow and capture core payment flows, providers relying on opaque fee structures are already finding themselves on the wrong side of customer expectations.
How Wallester Business Approaches This
Wallester Business fits neatly into this trend of financial operations digitising and transparency becoming a technical necessity.
It was built around three principles:
- Pricing is transparent
There are no monthly account fees. You can open and use the account at zero cost. There are also no FX markups in 10 currencies when moving money between accounts. Essentially, what you see is what you pay – and you know the cost before you transact.
- Visibility is instant
You get 300 free virtual Visa cards instantly. The real-time dashboard shows every transaction, so there’s no waiting for statements and no reconciliation surprises.
- Control stays with you
You can issue a card for a team, a project, or a campaign in seconds. You can also set spending limits and sync transactions directly to your accounting software.
The onboarding process is typically completed within hours. You set up, verify, start issuing cards, and manage spend with no hidden costs or fees.
For finance teams used to navigating legacy banking systems, this feels like a different category entirely because they’re operating with clarity instead of managing around opacity. Budgets stay predictable, reconciliation becomes straightforward, and cashflow management becomes something they actually control.
