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Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

atlantic.money

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Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#151

Post by Youden »

WinterMount223 wrote: post #131
Youden wrote: post #77

"We always convert your money at the live rate: the rate on Google." But this is a lie - I checked. At time of writing, you claim 100k GBP is equal to 131390 USD, while Google claims it's 131620 USD, a difference of nearly $300! Even saying "the live rate" is a lie. There is no one "live rate" (and therefore no "the" live rate). The price depends on your liquidity providers. IBKR shows "the live rate". Revolut shows…

It’s not a lie. It’s that it’s more complex than can be expressed in simple terms. Getting overly technical can be counterproductive.

Im assuming you're talking about "the live rate", since the Google claim is verified to be false.

I'd agree with you if it were unavoidable but I don't think that's the case here. There's no need to make a statement that there's a single rate.

For example: "we give you the best price we can find on the international market, without markup". It still states the goal without raising the falsehood of a single price.

Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#152

Post by tvaughan »

dgellow wrote: post #126

> We were stunned at the fees it was costing us to move money across borders with existing fintech solutions Isn’t TransferWise already pretty cheap?

Depends on currency. Wise takes ~3% to transfer USD/EUR to CLP (Pesos Chilenos)

Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#153

Post by throwthere »

I think this is fantastic! there’s a lot of pessimism here about people kind of assuming you’re taking it out of the spread. Sounds like that’s not happening, and for people who actually use these services they’re going to compare the end amount of final currency among services anyway— which you show front and center. So it almost doesn’t matter what people are saying here but I wonder if there’s a way you can be more transparent about the “live rate.”

Why are other services so expensive?

Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#154

Post by djohnston »

allisdust wrote: post #23
ilaksh wrote: post #19

Check out Algorand. Fee is 0.001 ALGO.

Crypto is not comparable to this at all. With crypto you lose twice (on and off ramps) during conversion to fiat. Not to mention trading fee etc.

There is no trading fee beyond on and off ramp, those are the trades. You can use local markets and convert in a private manner.

Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#155

Post by blunte »

londons_explore wrote: post #17
wdaareg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question! We hold rates for customers for up to an hour and customers can only hold one rate at a time, so the risk is minimal - but we do price that risk into our business model.

So I can shuffle $1M between £ and $, costing £6/hour, and earning guaranteed money whenever the rate moves by more than 0.00003 in a half hour period? Sounds open to abuse!

"Standard delivery takes just a few days. And we’ve got instant delivery when you need it."

So you will tie up your 1MM for a day or more to earn a small few pounds? Surely you can do better with some other investment scheme.

Also, chances are instant delivery costs (much) more than 3 pounds.

Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#156

Post by Youden »

pkavanagh wrote: post #88
Youden wrote: post #77

"We always convert your money at the live rate: the rate on Google." But this is a lie - I checked. At time of writing, you claim 100k GBP is equal to 131390 USD, while Google claims it's 131620 USD, a difference of nearly $300! Even saying "the live rate" is a lie. There is no one "live rate" (and therefore no "the" live rate). The price depends on your liquidity providers. IBKR shows "the live rate". Revolut shows…

Hi and thanks for your interest! We use the interbank rate from global exchanges. Both being from fintech, we are aware that it is easy to mislead (and to be misled) in money transfer and its a reason why we built this product in the first place. We have worked hard not to have any middle-men that mark up rates in our liquidity provision, and are quite certain that our rates are fair and extremely competitive. I do t…

Overall your product looks good but aside from a more detailed page, I really think the wording here needs to be changed.

It's verifiably false that you use the same rate shown on Google so you should remove that entirely. If I can't trust you to honestly describe your service, how can I trust you with large sums of money? I wouldn't be surprised if that caused you legal issues too.

As for "the live rate", I think it just needs to be reworded such that there's no mention of a single rate. Something like "we give you the same price the big banks use".

Overall I think your service looks good but based on how that section is worded right now, I'd actively discourage friends and family from using it, if asked. If you updated it to be more honest, I think you'd have a service I'm happy to recommend.

Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#157

Post by adhoc_slime »

hutzlibu wrote: post #139
pkavanagh wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi and thanks for your interest! We use the interbank rate from global exchanges. Both being from fintech, we are aware that it is easy to mislead (and to be misled) in money transfer and its a reason why we built this product in the first place. We have worked hard not to have any middle-men that mark up rates in our liquidity provision, and are quite certain that our rates are fair and extremely competitive. I do t…

"I do think that the takeaway from your comment is that we could build out a part of our page that allows a customer to dig deeper to validate this themselves." Or you could remove or change this statement, if it is indeed misleading. (But I have not checked this personally). "We always convert your money at the live rate: the rate on Google." Trust is important and the right wording does matter a lot. So if people r…

I absolutely agree with you, unless their whole strategy hinges on the fact their prices match google (which their prices literally don't), just change the damned copy on the site.

I think this is actually a good shakeup for Money Transfer, they don't even need to rely on putting Googles name in their marketing to sell the product as so many new startups seem to want to do as an appeal to authority or try to present more stability in their marketing.

Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#158

Post by Youden »

ttoinou wrote: post #115
Youden wrote: post #77

"We always convert your money at the live rate: the rate on Google." But this is a lie - I checked. At time of writing, you claim 100k GBP is equal to 131390 USD, while Google claims it's 131620 USD, a difference of nearly $300! Even saying "the live rate" is a lie. There is no one "live rate" (and therefore no "the" live rate). The price depends on your liquidity providers. IBKR shows "the live rate". Revolut shows…

That's because the law of one price is purely theoretical and never applies in real life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_one_price There is no such thing as a "live rate" or "market price"

I'm not talking about the law of one price here, just the fact that the global currency exchange trade is decentralised. There's no one exchange that aggregates everything and can give you a single authoritative price.

In other assets, like equities, there often is a single central exchange. If you want to buy CURI for example, it's only listed on NASDAQ, so the price on NASDAQ is The One True Price as far as a normal person is concerned.

There's no such central exchange for currencies.

Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#159

Post by amluto »

pkavanagh wrote: post #88
Youden wrote: post #77

"We always convert your money at the live rate: the rate on Google." But this is a lie - I checked. At time of writing, you claim 100k GBP is equal to 131390 USD, while Google claims it's 131620 USD, a difference of nearly $300! Even saying "the live rate" is a lie. There is no one "live rate" (and therefore no "the" live rate). The price depends on your liquidity providers. IBKR shows "the live rate". Revolut shows…

Hi and thanks for your interest! We use the interbank rate from global exchanges. Both being from fintech, we are aware that it is easy to mislead (and to be misled) in money transfer and its a reason why we built this product in the first place. We have worked hard not to have any middle-men that mark up rates in our liquidity provision, and are quite certain that our rates are fair and extremely competitive. I do t…

> We use the interbank rate from global exchanges.

What, exactly, is that?

Do you mean the rate your provider charges you for the transaction in question? (Do you do your internal FX transactions as one upstream transaction per client transaction or do you group them? That will affect the rate.).

Do your rates have a spread? (Your website makes it sound like you only convert one way, so it’s easy to pretend spreads don’t exist.)

Do you actually believe that the best pricing comes from an interbank rate on a global exchange? That’s an interesting theory.

For what it’s worth, for major currency transactions under normal circumstances, the actual market spreads are tiny and not worth worrying about. Certainly for any transaction of reasonable size for a service like this, they are likely to be in the noise. But FX is not free, and if you let people move $100k at a time, it matters.

Re: Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service

#160

Post by kasey_junk »

Youden wrote: post #158
ttoinou wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the law of one price is purely theoretical and never applies in real life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_one_price There is no such thing as a "live rate" or "market price"

I'm not talking about the law of one price here, just the fact that the global currency exchange trade is decentralised. There's no one exchange that aggregates everything and can give you a single authoritative price. In other assets, like equities, there often is a single central exchange. If you want to buy CURI for example, it's only listed on NASDAQ, so the price on NASDAQ is The One True Price as far as a norma…

It’s not even true (anymore) that CURI is only listed on NASDAQ. It’s traded at lots of venues but there is at least a benchmark bid/ask based on US securities law.

In fx it’s the law of whoever has the most information because there is no benchmark market at all. It’s why fx pricing is so hard to do right.

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