FWIW, where possible, I advise having both a TransferWise account and a Revolut or Interactive Brokers account.
TransferWise is fantastic for receiving money. They have local bank accounts in USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, NZD and PLN. However for sending money and converting money, their fees can really suck: for $10k USD -> EUR (EURUSD is one of the most liquid forex pairs), they charge 81 USD in fees, or %0.8. Even for local transfers (which should be free) they charge ~1 USD.
Revolut is kinda crap for receiving money (the only local accounts are EUR and GBP, the rest are GB IBANs) but sending and conversion are both free (conversion as long as the amount is <$6k/month). If you use it a lot, they have a ~$100/yr plan that gives you unlimited on both.
Interactive Brokers is literally useless for sending and receiving money (they only accept transactions to/from your own accounts) but they're fantastic for conversion. They process your orders directly against the forex market and charge ~1USD per trade for the kinds of trades we're talking about. The downside is that their minimum account balance is pretty high (~$6k IIRC) and they have a $10/month "inactivity" fee if your balance is below $100k and you generate <$10/month in commissions. That said, if you need a brokerage account anyway, their currency conversion is a great bonus.
And finally, Charles Schwab is great in the US. They charge minimal markup on deposits and withdrawals in foreign currencies (~0.5-1% depending on amount) and they have a debit visa card with no international transaction fees and Visa's exchange rate (~0.3% spread). They're not the best around but they're really great if you don't want to put your money in the hands of a less-regulated FinTech company that has minimal deposit guarantees.
Great post Jurn, thanks for participating in the effort against hidden exchange rate markups.
If you want to check for yourself how much you could save with TransferWise (or one of their competitors) vs banks or PayPal, we've built a comparison site for international money transfer: www.monito.com which compares live exchange rates and fees for any amount you'd like to transfer between two countries/currencies (e.g. US-Euro https://www.monito.com/send-money/united-states/netherlands/...)
Our initial goal was to help migrants save money when they support family back home, but the tool can be used by businesses/freelancers/travellers as well.
Let me know if I can be of any help in the comments, we've become payment geeks over the years!
I wanted to provide you feedback as well as alert others reading these comments. Your site doesn’t list anything other than Transferwise for transfers from India to USA, even though options like InstaRem and others exist. Based on this, I’m not sure how comprehensive your service is to compare providers for cross border transfers. I see you have InstaRem and others for some other currency combinations (including the inverse, sending money from USA to India).
For CAD-USD exchanges, Norbert's gambit is a popular procedure:
> Here’s how you can use this ETF to exchange $10,000 Canadian:
> 1. Get a quote for DLR and calculate how many shares you can buy for $10,000 Canadian.
> 2. Place an order for that number of shares. The trade will settle in Canadian dollars.
> 3. Call your discount brokerage’s customer service desk and ask them to take your DLR shares and “journal them over” to the U.S. dollar side of your account, where they should show up as DLR.U.
> 4. Place an order to sell all of your DLR.U shares. The trade will settle in U.S. dollars.
Technically this would work with any interlisted stock, though the DLR ETF is very popular for this because of its liquidity. One could probably find stocks for GBP and EUR as well:
Depending on where you live this could make your tax declaration more complicated, which could require the services of a tax consultant if you don't know how to do it yourself... Just something to keep in mind if you want to save money.
I’m a former TransferWise employee and I cannot speak more highly of them. Yes, they aim to make money like every business, but I’ve never seen a company so focused on transparency to customers. The CEO intensely interrogates roadmaps from the customer perspective, and fairness to customers is non-negotiable.
Their economy of scale enables them to offer increasingly lower fees, but I can speak first hand to the pain felt by everyone at the company when costs have to increase.
Anyway, I trust them far more than any bank and cannot recommend them more highly both as a customer and workplace.
Can confirm. I need to send payments from the US to ~30 international contractors per quarter. I generate a spreadsheet of their names and payment amounts. I click on their name in TransferWise's "saved recipients" page. I copy/paste the amount from the spreadsheet into the USD box, submit the payment, and then copy/paste the payment summary page into an email to the contractor verifying that I paid them. Couldn't be simpler than that.
All of my contractors have previously agreed to pay all fees associated with their payment, so I always type into the USD box. TransferWise withdraws exactly that amount from my bank and in 2-3 seconds tells me the amount that will be deposited into their account.
If hypothetically a new contractor wanted 1M RUB up-front, meaning that I would be responsible for payment fees, I'd simply paste 1000000 into the RUB box, and the recipient will get that exact amount, while TransferWise will calculate and tell me the USD amount to be deducted in my bank. Also couldn't be simpler.
PayPal makes this a nightmare. In order to make a payment such that exactly $1000 USD is withdrawn from my bank, I have to basically apply Newton's algorithm (or successive guessing) to the Send Money page (with each load time being ~30 seconds), because the number you enter is post-fees but pre-exchange. They couldn't have chosen a more useless variable for me to input, since I'd only either want to enter an amount pre-everything in USD or post-everything in RUB. I don't want to enter some weird intermediate amount.
"fairness to customers is non-negotiable" .... yeah, unless you run a VoIP company. In which case you get told VoIP is against TransferWise AUP and you get told your business account is suspended permanently. And yes, we are talking about a reputable long-established VoIP company here, not some fly-by-night spam operation.
Similarly, the TransferWise business account is a bit of a joke. Features that should have been there on day one were not there, and are still not there. Things like multiple signatories, the sort of thing you take for granted at a real bank.
Additionally "Borderless" is marketing hype. You can only actually deposit in a small number of the available currencies. You're better off with a real bank.
Or the half-hearted implementation of M-PESA. Using Transferwise you can only pay private individuals on M-PESA. Paying businesses on M-PESA is impossible because TransferWise are not correctly integrated.
Need I go on ?
Not saying avoid TransferWise. I'm just saying caveat emptor, look beyond the marketing hype.
This is probably the best advertisement I have read. It's spot on about my concerns, heartfelt, empathetic and sincere. I really hope that PR firms don't pick this up. Would hate to seriously ponder if it's genuine or not. Oh damn, I'm already doing it. There's something to be said about cynicism and sincerity in today's world.
I interviewed with them about two years ago right now and while I didn't accept their offer, I came away with nothing but the highest level of respect for them, their work, and their culture. Even in the interviews / offer stage, they made sure that I knew that everyone's primary priority would be the customer and building a great product. The concept of "building metrics to support your ideas" is a bit of a daunting one if you have to do it for every project, but it showed a level of respect for the user and transparency that I appreciated.
In addition, their interview included a debugging / code refactoring segment which felt more "real" than most other interviews that I've done, and hopefully provided a better signal to them.
I’ve been working remotely between NZ and the UK for the last 7 years. I was dealing with HSBC and then Barclays Wealth in the UK but recently started using the TransferWise Borderless account after Barclays wanted £40 a month account fees...
They make everything so painlessly easy. It could take a couple of days to get cash from the UK to NZ where it can be under an hour with TransferWise. I can’t sing their praises loud enough, especially after having the deal with UK banks
I am using TransferWise since a year now to support my digital nomad business. Couldn’t be happier — The app is beautiful, it always worked, transfers are quick, and it is even cheap. Support is great too.
Can’t thanks them enough for their business: traveling with my primitive European bank was a nightmare.
Are you able to offer any insight (top level, non-confidential, obvs) into how TransferWise works, behind-the-scenes?
i.e. how do they actually enact the exchange of the funds? Do they have a contract with one of the big investment banks? Do they work directly via Forex markets? Can they leverage their scale now to minimise actual exchange costs – for example internally matching up (say) a one customer transferring USD to EUR, and another transferring EUR to USD, so that TW’s costs are minimised?
Congrats to you - I love them. There's not too many companies that I feel so happy doing business with, serving such an obvious and vital need, and doing such a fine job of it. It's just a great product, really well done.
I don't know... the only time I tried to use Transferwise was to make a transfer to Haiti. Their website claims they support it, they allowed for the transfer to be initiated - but in the end it failed for some unknown opaque reason.
I'm sure it works for most large countries, but the reality is that they sell the idea that they can transfer anywhere, list almost every country to give the illusion of ubiquity, but haven't actually tested transfers to all those countries.
I haven't seen many companies do what they do! They lower their fees without the customer asking! Most customers will not go comparing them to others, yet, when they can they reduce the fees and tell you how much more you are saving!
Can confirm that Transferwise is the best option out there for cross border commerce. Also stay away from Payoneer if you can. They eat 1-3% of the gross money transferred as commission, depending on the target currency. Also Payoneer's exchange rates aren't the best in the market. This is ridiculous when compared to TW.
I know someone who had their money frozen because they made the mistake of mentioning that the money being sent was for kava. You simply can't trust TransferWise to put their customers first.
I am surprised that there is no mention of Bitcoin. My current project is also in another country (US) and I live in Europe. I am getting paid in BTC, and I pay even less then via Transferwise.
It is cheaper because the company already owns Bitcoin, so it doesn't need to buy them. What I do is:
- Getting BTC transferred to a wallet at an exchange I trust
- Sell the BTC ones I receive them and put the money on my bank account
I switch between using Transferwise and BTC. The downsides are obviously that the price can fluctuate quite heavily. But my experience is that I saved a few hundred Euros each year (around 450 Euros) from using BTC instead of Transferwise.
That's not a lot in the grand scheme of things. What I like about a BTC transaction is that I can monitor it, it is even more transparent then Transferwise and I truly "own" the BTC ones sent.
It is a bit sad that I can't use it as much as I would like so I sell around 90% immediately to pay rent, buy stocks etc, and 10% stay there for future gains.
This has always been more of the dream of BTC than the reality. Transferring BTC around can cost 0.1 - 0.4% which becomes quite expensive. The cost of a wire transfer from Canada to the various countries I make them is a flat $36 - though receiving fees can be as high as $15 (CAD). That means that BTC only makes sense if you're transferring less than $5100.
But moreover, BTC back to fiat is significantly more expensive than "expensive" currency exchange with usually levels as high as 3%
Personally I use Bitcoin to transfer money to my home country monthly. It's not much, around 1000-1500 euro (hopefully for just one more month), and it's to pay my credit card debt back home. It's very convenient, fast, and I get the best market price for my euros. Using Transferwise is out of the question since my homeland uses an artificial price for the dollar, and thus if I were to use them I'd lose on about 25% of my country's currency.
The cool thing to me about Bitcoin is the setup for someone new who is unbanked is really quick. You can have someone in Zimbabwe with nothing but a cellphone download an open source Bitcoin wallet and send them money in 10 minutes. They can take this and withdraw cash from and ATM or use Bitcoin and you don't have to go through all the friction of international payments and banking.
Since it works with pub/priv key cryptography its a push model and so you can securely send money to anyone, anywhere, anytime. No bank needed.
If you immediately sell 90% of it you may be better off getting USDC (or Euro equivalent) and buying bitcoin with the 10% so you dont have to sell such a large amount since fees in crypto are usually percentage based.
Sorry, i am unconviced. Could you show the numbers including all costs and exposure times to fx risks from your client's BTC account to your landlords bank account and compare those to using e.g. Transferwise?
I was looking into this when I started freelancing on UpWork. I found that the best option for me was to have an US ACH account through TransferWise, otherwise I was looking at either high transfer fees, currency conversion fees or all of the above + a rate that is far off from the market rate.
With the current setup the only cost I have are the TransferWise fees for USD to EUR conversion when I send the money to my local bank.
You "lose" thousands of dollars per year on Upwork no matter what you do. But this is a non-issue in the end, am I right? That's why I used quotation, because I prefer having this loss on a high volume of work rather than work for pennies in my country and saving transaction fees.
In the end I don't care about these fees, it's the world we're living in and I prefer to have fun with my projects instead.
> Most of them are not classified as banks and run without banking licenses and governmental oversight. They are more convenient and cheaper but definitely a little riskier as well.
This is really misleading. (Disclosure: I work for a remittance provider.)
It's true that non-bank money service businesses do not operate as banks, but it's totally false that they "run without... governmental oversight" or are "a little riskier."
The level of government oversight of non-bank MSB's is extreme by the standards of anything but banking. For example in the US, you have to apply to each state government individually for a license to send transfers from that state. It takes years and is extremely onerous. Many of our applications ran into the hundreds of pages of paperwork and were followed by weeks of on-site examinations plus an intensity of financial auditing usually reserved for companies nearing IPO.
(In Europe the situation is better because MSB regulation happens at the EU level. This regulatory difference is a big part of why Europe has a much larger share of great fintech startups compared to other sectors.)
On risk, most regulators require money transmitters to insure their liabilities to customers so that, if they ever collapse, the insurer will be able to make their customers whole. In our case, we never have liabilities to customers (because we pay out instantly) but we still have to buy this insurance... kind of a belt-and-suspenders approach.
I used to trade FX in my hedge fund, where of course we got interbank rates. The spread would have 5 decimal places for something like EURUSD, so 1.12345 bid, 1.12346 offered, based on mixed prices from different brokers.
I was astonished when I tried to change some money in the retail market and instead of the 5th decimal digit being different, it would be the 2nd.
Luckily these days there's several services that will give you something near the same spread, close enough to not care to search for improvements. Revolut does something like that, as does TW. I'm sure some of the other challenger banks are doing this as well.
Another big bonus is they don't force you to change your money. This is a big deal if you have an old bank like Barclays that will see your incoming USD and change it to GBP, losing you several percent in the process. If you have Revolut or TW you can actually just keep your USD, chances are there's something you pay for in dollars.
I see lots of praise for TransferWise here and I regret not trying them out earlier.
For what it's worth, I can add my two cents regarding PayPal. From a customer experience perspective, PayPal is pretty great - the UI is smooth and I like being able to pay with my PayPal balance online.
Having said that, their fees are nothing short of exorbitant - for international transfers, if I'm not mistaken, the fee is 4.4% + a fixed price per transaction + 2.5% on top of that if you also want to exchange currencies. A $1,000 bill paid to my PayPal account by a U.S.-based client can easily become $930 or even less by the time it reaches my bank account. I've stopped accepting payments via PayPal for that reason.
Furthermore - this isn't personal experience, just word on the street - I hear PayPal Customer Service can be pretty atrocious to merchants, which is another thing I'm not too happy about when it comes to their service.
Over the last year or so it seems like TransferWise has rapidly come onto the scene & taken over much of the landscape for our international contractor payments. The fees tend to be much lower than existing alternatives; importantly, the administrative friction is incredibly low, too. We're able to handle international payments essentially the exact same way we do with most other vendor & contractor payments, via ACH transfers.
It's saved us a ton of time/hassle, even ignoring the fee savings (which have been somewhat substantial for most countries & currencies).
If anyone is interested, CurrencyFair are another excellent way to save money on international payments. Similar to Transferwise, you can send money fast from one currency to another at the current exchange rate with far less fees than a bank.
They also have a peer-to-peer element, where you can choose your own exchange rate and wait for another customer (sending money in the opposite direction) to accept that rate. If you are willing to wait a little longer to send your money, you can get excellent value using this feature.
I've been using TransferWise since it started. It's just the best. Cheapest fee by far, excellent support. No affiliation here: I'm just a happy customer.
I just used TransferWise for the first time last night. I was legitimately impressed with their well-designed UI/UX.
My bank doesn't even have an online interface for international wire transfers, plus, their UI looks like something developed in coldfusion by an ex-myspace engineer.
Based on my own experience doing international transfer over many years, the article is pretty accurate. However there is another option, but it does have more risk. Bitcoin. I'm not much of a fan of cryptocurrency in the first place. But international money transfers with low fees is the first real use that actually justifies Bitcoin for me. My credit union charges $20 for a wire transfer. And the transaction fees of my Bitcoin exchange in my target country are low. The risk is the one to two hour window that it takes to transfer the Bitcoin. If prices suddenly drop in that time, I could be in trouble.
Just to add a dissenting voice to the conversation, I recently attempted to transfer some money with transferwise and they refused just after I had uploaded all of my ID etc. In the end I went with worldremit and they were much easier to deal with. Slightly more expensive but I'd choose that over the hassle of tw.
We at Toptal initially created TopTracker payments (we don't monetize on this product at all) to be the lowest form of payments for freelancers globally by partnering with Payoneer. Essentially, it's a fixed 2% transfer cost including FX, however TransferWise is often able to beat that.
We, and I'm sure other companies, would love to partner with TransferWise, however they've yet to create API's that allows for a product to work with their system effectively. Once they do so, this will be a game changer for doing payroll globally.
Transferwise is cheap but Revolut is free. I pay the mid-market rate and no markup unless I want to convert currency on weekends. There is a 6000€ conversion limit that can be lifted for 8€/month.
I am the CEO of Routefusion (routefusion.co). While we don't handle individual international freelancer payments, we have the most comprehensive API for companies to send cross-border/international payments to contractors, or SMBs, etc. Based on my experience, here are some recommendations for whom I would use in no particular order.
Deel (letsdeel.com): They are an amazing option for paying and hiring freelancers/remote employees. They have a great feature where you can sign up as an individual contractor. They shine on their simplicity of onboarding and scheduling. They also offer a free consultation if you have tax questions etc.
Transferwise: They are great. If you are making individual payments you cannot go wrong. I wouldn't want to operate my payroll off of them, but they are great for one-off payments. (I used them to send payments to Italy for my wedding)
Pilot (pilot.co): Pilot makes it ridiculously easy to pay your international team members. They handle payroll, benefits, and compliance for international employees and contractors. They have some great tech behind their products, utilizing integrations like Plaid to get you up and running fast, they also beat TW in currency pricing all day.
Rippling (rippling.com) They have a great HR product and domestic payroll solution. They have recently launched an international payroll solution and it is just a great as their domestic.
Payoneer: Payoneer has been the industry standard for quite some time. I think the only downside is they are expensive (exchange rates are not competitive). Still would be a great option, but would not be my first option.
If you have any questions about moving money internationally, I would love to chat with you and answer them. Whether is helps Routefusion or not, more than happy to spread knowledge! :)
I think you are missing the main point why so many prefer Payoneer. It's not about the fees, it's about having a card in a different country that your fiscal residency country.
I had a horrible experience with TransferWise. They silently canceled my account for suspected fraud after I'd sent my first transfer. No call, no emails, no questions. I didn't find out until days later when I went to check why my money hasn't been received yet - I was unable to login.
[+] [-] Youden|5 years ago|reply
TransferWise is fantastic for receiving money. They have local bank accounts in USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, NZD and PLN. However for sending money and converting money, their fees can really suck: for $10k USD -> EUR (EURUSD is one of the most liquid forex pairs), they charge 81 USD in fees, or %0.8. Even for local transfers (which should be free) they charge ~1 USD.
Revolut is kinda crap for receiving money (the only local accounts are EUR and GBP, the rest are GB IBANs) but sending and conversion are both free (conversion as long as the amount is <$6k/month). If you use it a lot, they have a ~$100/yr plan that gives you unlimited on both.
Interactive Brokers is literally useless for sending and receiving money (they only accept transactions to/from your own accounts) but they're fantastic for conversion. They process your orders directly against the forex market and charge ~1USD per trade for the kinds of trades we're talking about. The downside is that their minimum account balance is pretty high (~$6k IIRC) and they have a $10/month "inactivity" fee if your balance is below $100k and you generate <$10/month in commissions. That said, if you need a brokerage account anyway, their currency conversion is a great bonus.
And finally, Charles Schwab is great in the US. They charge minimal markup on deposits and withdrawals in foreign currencies (~0.5-1% depending on amount) and they have a debit visa card with no international transaction fees and Visa's exchange rate (~0.3% spread). They're not the best around but they're really great if you don't want to put your money in the hands of a less-regulated FinTech company that has minimal deposit guarantees.
[+] [-] briodf|5 years ago|reply
If you want to check for yourself how much you could save with TransferWise (or one of their competitors) vs banks or PayPal, we've built a comparison site for international money transfer: www.monito.com which compares live exchange rates and fees for any amount you'd like to transfer between two countries/currencies (e.g. US-Euro https://www.monito.com/send-money/united-states/netherlands/...)
Our initial goal was to help migrants save money when they support family back home, but the tool can be used by businesses/freelancers/travellers as well.
Let me know if I can be of any help in the comments, we've become payment geeks over the years!
[+] [-] wtmt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw0101a|5 years ago|reply
> Here’s how you can use this ETF to exchange $10,000 Canadian:
> 1. Get a quote for DLR and calculate how many shares you can buy for $10,000 Canadian.
> 2. Place an order for that number of shares. The trade will settle in Canadian dollars.
> 3. Call your discount brokerage’s customer service desk and ask them to take your DLR shares and “journal them over” to the U.S. dollar side of your account, where they should show up as DLR.U.
> 4. Place an order to sell all of your DLR.U shares. The trade will settle in U.S. dollars.
* https://www.moneysense.ca/magazine-archive/norberts-gambit-a...
* https://www.finiki.org/wiki/Norbert%27s_gambit
* https://canadiancouchpotato.com/2013/12/03/norberts-gambit-t...
Technically this would work with any interlisted stock, though the DLR ETF is very popular for this because of its liquidity. One could probably find stocks for GBP and EUR as well:
* https://www.tmxmoney.com/en/research/interlisted.html
The overhead of the exchange is the cost of buying/selling the stock, which is fixed price, so it it's not like a percentage cut.
[+] [-] jannes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emdowling|5 years ago|reply
Their economy of scale enables them to offer increasingly lower fees, but I can speak first hand to the pain felt by everyone at the company when costs have to increase.
Anyway, I trust them far more than any bank and cannot recommend them more highly both as a customer and workplace.
[+] [-] vortico|5 years ago|reply
All of my contractors have previously agreed to pay all fees associated with their payment, so I always type into the USD box. TransferWise withdraws exactly that amount from my bank and in 2-3 seconds tells me the amount that will be deposited into their account.
If hypothetically a new contractor wanted 1M RUB up-front, meaning that I would be responsible for payment fees, I'd simply paste 1000000 into the RUB box, and the recipient will get that exact amount, while TransferWise will calculate and tell me the USD amount to be deducted in my bank. Also couldn't be simpler.
PayPal makes this a nightmare. In order to make a payment such that exactly $1000 USD is withdrawn from my bank, I have to basically apply Newton's algorithm (or successive guessing) to the Send Money page (with each load time being ~30 seconds), because the number you enter is post-fees but pre-exchange. They couldn't have chosen a more useless variable for me to input, since I'd only either want to enter an amount pre-everything in USD or post-everything in RUB. I don't want to enter some weird intermediate amount.
[+] [-] traceroute66|5 years ago|reply
Similarly, the TransferWise business account is a bit of a joke. Features that should have been there on day one were not there, and are still not there. Things like multiple signatories, the sort of thing you take for granted at a real bank.
Additionally "Borderless" is marketing hype. You can only actually deposit in a small number of the available currencies. You're better off with a real bank.
Or the half-hearted implementation of M-PESA. Using Transferwise you can only pay private individuals on M-PESA. Paying businesses on M-PESA is impossible because TransferWise are not correctly integrated.
Need I go on ?
Not saying avoid TransferWise. I'm just saying caveat emptor, look beyond the marketing hype.
[+] [-] dmos62|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gbrodman|5 years ago|reply
In addition, their interview included a debugging / code refactoring segment which felt more "real" than most other interviews that I've done, and hopefully provided a better signal to them.
[+] [-] ElCapitanMarkla|5 years ago|reply
They make everything so painlessly easy. It could take a couple of days to get cash from the UK to NZ where it can be under an hour with TransferWise. I can’t sing their praises loud enough, especially after having the deal with UK banks
[+] [-] bromuro|5 years ago|reply
Can’t thanks them enough for their business: traveling with my primitive European bank was a nightmare.
[+] [-] mft_|5 years ago|reply
i.e. how do they actually enact the exchange of the funds? Do they have a contract with one of the big investment banks? Do they work directly via Forex markets? Can they leverage their scale now to minimise actual exchange costs – for example internally matching up (say) a one customer transferring USD to EUR, and another transferring EUR to USD, so that TW’s costs are minimised?
[+] [-] sho|5 years ago|reply
I just hope they don't get bought out :(
[+] [-] koheripbal|5 years ago|reply
I'm sure it works for most large countries, but the reality is that they sell the idea that they can transfer anywhere, list almost every country to give the illusion of ubiquity, but haven't actually tested transfers to all those countries.
[+] [-] coder1001|5 years ago|reply
Wonderful ethics!
[+] [-] deepGem|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goatherders|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewnicolalde|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilrwbwrkhv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markdown|5 years ago|reply
Nice try, TransferWise CEO.
I know someone who had their money frozen because they made the mistake of mentioning that the money being sent was for kava. You simply can't trust TransferWise to put their customers first.
[+] [-] sambarina|5 years ago|reply
It is cheaper because the company already owns Bitcoin, so it doesn't need to buy them. What I do is:
- Getting BTC transferred to a wallet at an exchange I trust - Sell the BTC ones I receive them and put the money on my bank account
I switch between using Transferwise and BTC. The downsides are obviously that the price can fluctuate quite heavily. But my experience is that I saved a few hundred Euros each year (around 450 Euros) from using BTC instead of Transferwise.
That's not a lot in the grand scheme of things. What I like about a BTC transaction is that I can monitor it, it is even more transparent then Transferwise and I truly "own" the BTC ones sent.
It is a bit sad that I can't use it as much as I would like so I sell around 90% immediately to pay rent, buy stocks etc, and 10% stay there for future gains.
[+] [-] cik|5 years ago|reply
But moreover, BTC back to fiat is significantly more expensive than "expensive" currency exchange with usually levels as high as 3%
[+] [-] xii22|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solotronics|5 years ago|reply
Since it works with pub/priv key cryptography its a push model and so you can securely send money to anyone, anywhere, anytime. No bank needed.
[+] [-] Ayesh|5 years ago|reply
Right now, you are probably losing more money that Ttansferwise because it costs a considerable amount of money to convert them to Fiat currency.
[+] [-] cdiddy2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pal_9000|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scoundreller|5 years ago|reply
This has never been a good idea, unless you’ve been immediately selling upon receipt.
[+] [-] beefield|5 years ago|reply
Sorry, i am unconviced. Could you show the numbers including all costs and exposure times to fx risks from your client's BTC account to your landlords bank account and compare those to using e.g. Transferwise?
[+] [-] msadowski|5 years ago|reply
With the current setup the only cost I have are the TransferWise fees for USD to EUR conversion when I send the money to my local bank.
[+] [-] unnouinceput|5 years ago|reply
In the end I don't care about these fees, it's the world we're living in and I prefer to have fun with my projects instead.
[+] [-] benkuhn|5 years ago|reply
This is really misleading. (Disclosure: I work for a remittance provider.)
It's true that non-bank money service businesses do not operate as banks, but it's totally false that they "run without... governmental oversight" or are "a little riskier."
The level of government oversight of non-bank MSB's is extreme by the standards of anything but banking. For example in the US, you have to apply to each state government individually for a license to send transfers from that state. It takes years and is extremely onerous. Many of our applications ran into the hundreds of pages of paperwork and were followed by weeks of on-site examinations plus an intensity of financial auditing usually reserved for companies nearing IPO.
(In Europe the situation is better because MSB regulation happens at the EU level. This regulatory difference is a big part of why Europe has a much larger share of great fintech startups compared to other sectors.)
On risk, most regulators require money transmitters to insure their liabilities to customers so that, if they ever collapse, the insurer will be able to make their customers whole. In our case, we never have liabilities to customers (because we pay out instantly) but we still have to buy this insurance... kind of a belt-and-suspenders approach.
[+] [-] lordnacho|5 years ago|reply
I was astonished when I tried to change some money in the retail market and instead of the 5th decimal digit being different, it would be the 2nd.
Luckily these days there's several services that will give you something near the same spread, close enough to not care to search for improvements. Revolut does something like that, as does TW. I'm sure some of the other challenger banks are doing this as well.
Another big bonus is they don't force you to change your money. This is a big deal if you have an old bank like Barclays that will see your incoming USD and change it to GBP, losing you several percent in the process. If you have Revolut or TW you can actually just keep your USD, chances are there's something you pay for in dollars.
[+] [-] hackathonguy|5 years ago|reply
For what it's worth, I can add my two cents regarding PayPal. From a customer experience perspective, PayPal is pretty great - the UI is smooth and I like being able to pay with my PayPal balance online.
Having said that, their fees are nothing short of exorbitant - for international transfers, if I'm not mistaken, the fee is 4.4% + a fixed price per transaction + 2.5% on top of that if you also want to exchange currencies. A $1,000 bill paid to my PayPal account by a U.S.-based client can easily become $930 or even less by the time it reaches my bank account. I've stopped accepting payments via PayPal for that reason.
Furthermore - this isn't personal experience, just word on the street - I hear PayPal Customer Service can be pretty atrocious to merchants, which is another thing I'm not too happy about when it comes to their service.
[+] [-] adanto6840|5 years ago|reply
It's saved us a ton of time/hassle, even ignoring the fee savings (which have been somewhat substantial for most countries & currencies).
[+] [-] mcsweena|5 years ago|reply
They also have a peer-to-peer element, where you can choose your own exchange rate and wait for another customer (sending money in the opposite direction) to accept that rate. If you are willing to wait a little longer to send your money, you can get excellent value using this feature.
They currently have an excellent sign up offer at the moment that you can access using my link: https://www.currencyfair.com/rafland/?channel=RMZIY1
(Disclaimer: I currently work there. I love the product and I know you will too:))
[+] [-] snappieT|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d--b|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkbkn|5 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, Paypal is a frauster and should be mass-boycotted. So do Upwork.
[+] [-] jaeming|5 years ago|reply
My bank doesn't even have an online interface for international wire transfers, plus, their UI looks like something developed in coldfusion by an ex-myspace engineer.
[+] [-] tchaffee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] needle0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashleysmithgpu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toptal|5 years ago|reply
We, and I'm sure other companies, would love to partner with TransferWise, however they've yet to create API's that allows for a product to work with their system effectively. Once they do so, this will be a game changer for doing payroll globally.
[+] [-] ucha|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sealthedeal|5 years ago|reply
Deel (letsdeel.com): They are an amazing option for paying and hiring freelancers/remote employees. They have a great feature where you can sign up as an individual contractor. They shine on their simplicity of onboarding and scheduling. They also offer a free consultation if you have tax questions etc.
Transferwise: They are great. If you are making individual payments you cannot go wrong. I wouldn't want to operate my payroll off of them, but they are great for one-off payments. (I used them to send payments to Italy for my wedding)
Pilot (pilot.co): Pilot makes it ridiculously easy to pay your international team members. They handle payroll, benefits, and compliance for international employees and contractors. They have some great tech behind their products, utilizing integrations like Plaid to get you up and running fast, they also beat TW in currency pricing all day.
Rippling (rippling.com) They have a great HR product and domestic payroll solution. They have recently launched an international payroll solution and it is just a great as their domestic.
Payoneer: Payoneer has been the industry standard for quite some time. I think the only downside is they are expensive (exchange rates are not competitive). Still would be a great option, but would not be my first option.
If you have any questions about moving money internationally, I would love to chat with you and answer them. Whether is helps Routefusion or not, more than happy to spread knowledge! :)
[email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/coltonseal/
[+] [-] notdang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nilanp|5 years ago|reply
Nilan
[+] [-] blago|5 years ago|reply