As I understand it, Wise is just a means of paying someone; like a debit card. It gives no guarantees or help to the buyer or seller if something goes wrong. It's basically the same as a direct bank transfer.  OK if you know and trust the person you are dealing with. But if you have any doubts, then no.   

Wire transfer.

Wise has a very good exchange rate from my experience, significantly better than PayPal so worth considering if you're purchasing using a different currency. It's also a lot faster than a standard bank transfer as they use an account local to the recipient to transfer from.
As you've said though, there is no buyers protection so due diligence still required. Get references, insure shipments.

Insurance costs money - so any form of "protection" will require a fee be paid by the seller, buyer, or both. That's eBay, Paypal, Venmo can do it (I think), etc.

The main issue is that the vast majority of the risk is borne by the buyer. They send off 100% of the payment (and thus hold 100% of the risk) in hope of getting the goods. This is how it has always been, so sellers are not really incentivized to change things. There was a thread on here a while back about folks trying to use some alternative arrangements, and I was actually a bit surprised at the outrage against the entire concept. It was mainly sellers complaining that anything less than full payment up front was sacrilege.

From a risk balancing perspective, assuming buyers and sellers are equally trustworthy human beings, the pareto optimal way to buy a non-divisible good worth $100 is as follows:
- Buyer sends seller $50. He is $50 at risk now, or 50% of transaction value.
- Seller sends buyer $100 non-divisible good. He is now $50 at risk. Technically it is not quite 50%, because he has sellers' details and knowledge that he can pay at least something. But whatever.
- Buyer send seller $50. All is square, no more risk.

In this example, the seller and the buyer had the same level of risk and trust requirement. But all of you are reading it and thinking "No freaking way am I sending something to someone who hasn't paid for it!" That's just human nature...

What if I said, "I'll buy that $100 bill off you for this piece of art"? Do I have to send you the art before you send me the $100 bill? What is the difference?

nex , i'm of the same sentiment wrt paypal - questionable ethics ... but what choice do you/we have.

wire ?

your bank should be able to offer something (for a cut , of course) then you have some kind of come back.
unless of course your bank ...is new ! (see below)

pp - no such luck

wise - well they're new - alas with new comes new vibes ala - no service to speak of and and t & cs which will be lengthy - to the extent that you'll be back to sq 1 in no time.

...wire.

..

That sounds like a terrible idea to me.  That would simply encourage unscrupulous people to rip you off.   

You sell something for 4K.  

You receive 2K.  

You send the item to the buyer.  

You don't hear from buyer again, despite you sending him reminders. 

Buyers gets a 4K artwork for 2K.  

Buyer repeats process over and over again. 

Except, if you use PayPal or similar, you the buyer, wouldn't lose any money at all.

In my example, the seller would lose 2K and the buyer would effectively be 2K better off - and PayPal would do nothing about it.   

 You’re still here !!!!

could you vouch for my trustworthy- ness?