How Lingble Used Wise Business to Help Global Brands Conquer E-commerce

For many global brands, expanding into international e-commerce can quickly become a messy business. There are a dozen platforms to manage, customer data is fragmented, and you need to grapple with pricing strategies across multiple markets.

The dream of global reach often turns into a logistical nightmare, leaving brands feeling overwhelmed and out of control.

In this case study, we’ll explore how Lingble started out as a denim retailer, and then grew into an international E-commerce partner providing end-to-end e-commerce services trusted by global brands.

We’ll also learn how they leveraged Wise Business to:

• Save 80% of their time traditionally spent on international transfers,
• Manage payroll for over 100 employees, and
• Handle customer refunds across 140+ countries

About Lingble

Mahoto Harada, CEO of Lingble, is intimately familiar with the many challenges of e-commerce, having dealt with them himself for over a decade.

He began his e-commerce journey in 2009 while living in the Netherlands. It all started when his German friend, a denim enthusiast, struggled to find authentic Japanese denim. This inspired Harada to start his own Japanese denim e-commerce business.

But when other brands at Paris Fashion Week started asking Harada how he was making significantly more revenue selling online out of Japan than companies spending millions on exhibitions, he saw an opportunity.

💡If he knew how to sell his own products online internationally, he could do the same for other brands trying to break into e-commerce. He saw a clear path to replicate his success for others, by helping them to build customisable online stores.

And so, the concept for Lingble was born.

Harada set to work and started securing clients such as Japan Blue Jeans, Duskin Co., and Brother International. Over the years, Lingble expanded beyond Japan and landed multinational brands including the likes of LG, and Gramicci.

Today, Lingble is headquartered in Singapore and provides a full suite of services for brands seeking to expand their global e-commerce strategy.

Their impressive operation now spans 34 countries, with services built on three distinct pillars:

1. Lingble Link - A unified control centre for brands managing global e-commerce operations. Rather than juggling separate systems, the platform connects everything from Amazon and Shopify to regional marketplaces like Lazada and Shopee in one place. Think of it as a “cockpit” where brands can see pricing across all channels, track who's selling what in which markets, and prevent distributors from competing against each other with conflicting pricing strategies.
2. Premium Marketing Services - Consulting and marketing agency services that help clients develop expansion roadmaps. This is perfect for companies that don’t yet have the traffic they need to start receiving orders, and often do not have their own marketing teams.
3. Peak Performance Services - Operational support for resource-constrained businesses (from small to enterprise size), handling everything from pricing optimisation to product delivery challenges. This means Lingble teams often become part of the client company itself, leading projects and connecting the right people across departments.

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High costs and complexity in global e-commerce financial operations

Growth always comes with its own costs as Harada soon realised. In serving its global clients, Lingble started to face a unique set of challenges including:

Uneconomical small-value transactions

They frequently processed customer refunds often under USD 100 to consumers in markets like Thailand. In addition, customers paid using local methods (ATM payments, convenience store transactions), and needed refunds in their local currency. With legacy business banking, this amounted to an approximate USD 40 transaction fee for a USD 100 refund, making it unsustainable for Lingble.

Complex multi-currency operations

Lingble processes transactions in 30+ currencies, including Euro, US Dollar, Indonesian Rupiah, Singapore Dollar, Thai Baht, and Malaysian Ringgit. However, their client contracts are denominated in major base currencies (typically USD or JPY). Furthermore, when they transfer revenue shares to their brand partners after deducting commissions, they need to convert to the partners' preferred currency - usually Euro, USD, and JPY.

Having so many different currencies at play incurs high foreign exchange costs, such as hidden exchange rate markups and conversion fees.

Costly employee payroll management

As Lingble manages over 100 employee payments monthly across 34 different countries, traditional wire transfers would cost USD 35-50 per transaction, making regular payroll prohibitively expensive. There's also the administrative burden to consider here. With over a hundred employee payments to process every month, this means hundreds of hours wasted on handling each international transfer individually.

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How Wise Business solves 3 challenges legacy corporate banks can't handle

Since 2014, Lingble has used Wise Business to address three critical operational requirements that traditional banking simply couldn't handle cost-effectively.

Let’s dive into the three key scenarios in their daily workflow:

1. Streamlined employee payroll across 34 countries

A constant challenge for Lingble was managing over 100 employee payments monthly across 34 different countries using traditional wire transfers. This was too expensive and heavy on the administrative side of things.

To solve this, Lingble used Wise Business' batch payments feature to process all employee payments through a streamlined CSV upload system. The accounts team can put together the CSV, which is then simply approved and uploaded to Wise.

🌟Impact: Lingble cut their time spent on international payroll transfers by 80%

As Harada notes,

“The batch payment method is something we cannot live without.”

2. Cost-effective customer refund processing

When their clients' customers request refunds for small amounts (often under USD 100), Lingble uses Wise Business to send funds directly back to consumers without incurring high traditional wire transfer fees.

Harada breaks down the costs for a typical refund:

“If the product is only USD 100, and if you have to refund USD 100, the international wire transfer will incur about USD 40 in terms of transfer costs. That's not doable. So we refund clients with Wise.”

Impact: 🌟Wise Business enables Lingble to in effect act as financial intermediary between e-commerce brands and global customers 🌟Lingble offers its clients a competitive market edge: the means to offer and process refunds that would otherwise be impossible

3. Efficient operational expense management

Managing various expenses and marketing payments to collaborators like influencers across different countries and currencies can often be a headache. Wise Business provides the infrastructure to handle diverse payment needs, from small contractor payments to larger operational expenses, all while maintaining detailed transaction records for accounting purposes.

Impact: 🌟Reduces the cost of international collaborations 🌟Simplifies record-keeping for accounting purposes across multiple entities

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Wise as the beating heart of Lingble’s financial operations

Behind the payroll, refund, and payment processing workflows we’ve explored, Wise Business has become the lynchpin of Lingble’s broader financial strategy.

They use Wise Business' advanced reporting capabilities to streamline accounting across multiple entities in Singapore and Japan. This makes accurate bookkeeping and regulatory compliance so much easier.

Harada continues:

“What I like about Wise is that you can just hit 'repeat' if it's a repeat transfer, put in a new value, and just click, click, and it's done. You don't need to go through all the hassle of traditional bank transfer approval processes.”

Wise has clearly made an impact on several parts of Lingble's business. Here’s a quick summary of how Wise Business compares with legacy corporate banking methods in terms of efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

*Transaction speed and cost claimed depends on individual circumstances and may not be available for all transactions.

	Traditional banking	Wise Business
Smaller transaction amounts	Approximately USD 40 fee for USD 100 transfer (40% of the cost)	Transparent low conversion fees (economically viable), no hidden exchange rate markups, always get the mid-market rate
Batch payments	Individual processing often required	CSV upload for up to 1000 payments, with 50% paid within an hour
Processing time	Multiple approval processes	Faster payment setup, with automation options and smarter approvals - equating to 80% time savings
Multi-currency	Complex, expensive conversions	Single platform, 40+ currencies, and low-fee foreign exchange conversions
Reporting	Limited, manual processes	Automated Excel exports with custom formatting

Tips for Singapore entrepreneurs: Lessons from 15 years of global operations

With 15 years of experience building international operations for e-commerce brands, Harada has some practical advice for Singapore-based entrepreneurs considering global expansion:

Start with remote talent acquisition

Global expansion means hiring talent outside your home market. Rather than setting up subsidiaries in every target market, Harada is a big fan of using special contractor arrangements, and complementing them with a reliable business account like Wise Business to support payments.

This lets you offer competitive packages while staying legal across different countries.

Platforms like Upwork provide access to global talent, but the real challenge is building long-term relationships. Combine flexible contracting with proper benefits coverage to create arrangements that work for everyone.

Build early competitive advantages

“Once you acquire the skill to manage remote, global, diverse teams, it's not something that other companies can do easily. So, in itself, it becomes a huge entry barrier and competitive advantage.”

The technology for managing distributed teams is already out there, but the management skills required for coordinating global, diverse teams are different from traditional local team management.

More importantly, Harada believes these skills take time to develop - hence the importance of starting early.

Starting early gives you the opportunity to build these capabilities while your operation is still manageable.

Most companies struggle with remote team management, so developing this expertise early creates barriers that are difficult for competitors to replicate quickly.

Consider cost vs. market size

When choosing your expansion markets, look beyond current size to future growth potential. Focus on markets with young populations and developing digital infrastructure rather than established but declining markets.

For Singapore specifically, while it offers excellent market access, high operational costs make it expensive for testing new concepts.

This is why businesses should always be looking at smart ways to lower their costs - especially costs that can be easily avoided like hidden exchange rate markups and exorbitant conversion fees.

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Power your global ambitions with Wise Business

Lingble's 10-year journey with Wise Business shows how the right business account provider can be a helpful partner that grows alongside your business ambitions. By solving fundamental payment challenges early, they've built competitive advantages that are difficult for rivals to replicate.

As Harada remarks,

“Wise is always trying to make things better.”

Today, while many e-commerce businesses struggle with the basics of sending, receiving, holding and converting money for international transactions, Lingble helps major brands overcome the very same e-commerce challenges because their payment infrastructure simply works. Wise Business has made Lingble significantly more efficient and flexible, which in turn, has helped them to realise their full potential in the global e-commerce landscape.

💡Need to pay or get paid in foreign currencies? Wise Business could be a better alternative business account as you can hold, send, receive and exchange 40+ currencies all in one place. You’ll always get the mid-market rate with low, transparent fees. Even better, you can connect Wise Business cards to your account to control team spending in real time and reduce admin.

• Hold and manage 40+ currencies for all your international transactions.
• Pay foreign currency bills and ad-hoc business travel expenses using the Wise Business card without hefty foreign transaction fees.
• Get your first Wise Business card for free when you open a Wise Business account.
• Always get the mid-market rate with transparent conversion fees starting from 0.26%.
• Seamless integrations with popular accounting software.

➡️Get started with Wise Business today