Research  /  Crypto AI Visibility Index  /  September 2026

What AI recommends instead

Ninety products named across 480 answers from four engines. The full ranking, and which product leads each of the ten money problems.

Wise is named in 246 of 480 responses

When Kunzum's Crypto AI Visibility Index put ten ordinary cross-border money problems to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews in September 2026, the engines named 90 distinct products across 480 responses. 53 of those products are traditional fintech or banking, 29 are crypto-native, and 8 are blockchains or assets rather than something a person can sign up for.

Wise leads at 246 responses, which is just over half of every answer given. The full ranking below is the complete list of the 30 most-named products, not a selection.

ProductResponses naming itType
Wise246traditional
PayPal156traditional
Payoneer139traditional
Stripe127traditional
Revolut78traditional
TransferWise47traditional
Remitly46traditional
Western Union43traditional
Deel40traditional
Airwallex35traditional
M-Pesa35traditional
Mercury35traditional
Square24traditional
MoneyGram24traditional
Solana21chain or asset
WorldRemit20traditional
GCash20traditional
Relay20traditional
OFX19traditional
Polygon19chain or asset
Flutterwave16traditional
bKash16traditional
Grey14traditional
Circle14crypto
Coinbase13crypto
BitPay13crypto
Xoom13traditional
Tipalti13traditional
KAST13crypto
Novo13traditional

Counted as responses that mention the product at least once, across all 480 responses and both stages. TransferWise is counted separately from Wise because the engines still use the old name, and the difference is itself a retrieval signal. Source: default_set.csv, 239 rows.

The default set changes with the problem

Wise topping the overall table hides how much the recommendation shifts by scenario. Across the ten scenarios in the index, four different products lead. This is the part a competitor analysis usually misses, because it looks at one query rather than ten.

ScenarioLeaderResponsesRunners-up
1. Freelancer paid from abroad, losing days and feesWise32Payoneer (31), PayPal (18)
2. Needs a US account and card without being AmericanWise35Payoneer (26), Revolut (19)
3. Savings eroding to local inflationWise7Revolut (6), Western Union (2)
4. Sending money home to familyWise34Remitly (30), Western Union (23)
5. Small business paying international contractorsWise35Deel (31), Payoneer (24)
6. Accepting payment from global customersWise25PayPal (24), Stripe (23)
7. PayPal or Stripe unavailable in their countryPayPal30Wise (30), Payoneer (28)
8. Bank account closed or de-riskedMercury17Novo (13), Stripe (12)
9. Paying for foreign software with a weak local cardPayPal23Wise (21), Revolut (13)
10. NGO disbursement into a hard-to-bank regionM-Pesa15Western Union (6), MoneyGram (4)

Stage-one responses only, meaning the reader described the problem without mentioning crypto. Nine responses per engine per scenario, 36 in total per scenario.

What that means if you are building in this category

Wise wins the general case and loses the specific ones. Mercury leads the de-banked business, M-Pesa leads NGO disbursement, PayPal leads when the problem is stated as accepting payment or a declined card. A product that wants to be named has a better chance competing for one scenario than for the category.

The scenario where crypto is most competitive on the merits, savings eroding to inflation, is also the one where the engines name the fewest traditional products. Wise appears in only 7 responses there. That is a thin field rather than a crowded one.

Crypto products barely appear in this table

The highest-placed crypto-native product in the Crypto AI Visibility Index is Circle at 14 responses, followed by Coinbase at 13 and BitPay at 13. Circle is an issuer rather than something a reader signs up for, which makes the first genuinely actionable crypto product lower still.

Almost all of those mentions come from stage two, where the question already contained the word crypto. Unprompted, across 360 responses, six named a crypto product at all. That gap is the subject of the main report.