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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

#171

Post by dotancohen »

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…

Hi pkavanagh. What countries do you support? I live in Israel, can I send and receive money from Europe? Turkey? The US?

I really don't want to sign up to the newsletter, this is basic information that in my opinion should be freely shared on the web site.

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

#172

Post by Gareth321 »

beefield wrote: post #107
wdaareg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We sure aren't! We're tired of seeing traditional players hiding fees in the rate - and we're not about it. Our rate is the interbank rate directly from the world's biggest exchanges. Customers really are paying just £3 to move any amount all the way up to £1 million.

My hat is off if you can pull it off, but I have to say it sounds economically dangerous. To you, that is. (And still, as long as you do not show your bid/ask, it looks like you are hiding something in your price.)

There isn't much systemic risk if they're locking in their conversion rates with providers at the time of customer transaction. The risk is in the fee structure: will they attract enough customers to actually keep the lights on with that fee? I certainly hope so, because this is so great if it ends up working as advertised.

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

#173

Post by wdaareg »

tecc501 wrote: post #165
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…

Hi Pkavanagh and thanks for replying to comments in this thread - 3 GDP fee on up to 1M transfer - are you able to disclose more of the business model here?

The business model is that our costs are fixed at much lower than 3GDP, and so we can offer that price profitably.

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

#174

Post by Gareth321 »

phphphphp wrote: post #128

A clever solution, nice work. That said, I'm very curious about your long term view on this model as a differentiator. My understanding is that Wise fees are essentially a pass through to customers, so your differentiator is that you've chosen "slow and cheap" over "fast but costly"... but if you validate that there's a market for "slow and cheap" alongside "fast but costly" won't Wise (and others) introduce the "slo…

If they force Wise to offer slow and cheap then we all win. I just checked the cost on a GBPUSD transfer, and it's 350 pounds + some kind of exchange rate cut. The difference between Wise and Atlantic is an entire ocean and I'm not convinced Wise will undermine their gravy train by trying to compete with a plucky upstart. Only if said plucky upstart becomes a billion dollar company; any by then they don't need to worry about being competed out of existence.

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

#175

Post by wdaareg »

dotancohen wrote: post #171
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…

Hi pkavanagh. What countries do you support? I live in Israel, can I send and receive money from Europe? Turkey? The US? I really don't want to sign up to the newsletter, this is basic information that in my opinion should be freely shared on the web site.

Hi dotancohen, we currently support sending GBP from the UK into the following currencies: EUR, USD, AUD, CAD, CZK, DKK, NOK, PLN, SEK. Looking forward to supporting EUR outbound in the near future, and then we'll go from there.

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

#176

Post by wdaareg »

kasey_junk wrote: post #142
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…

What global exchanges? FX is all OTC.

Check out CBOE FX (https://fx.cboe.com/) and EBS (https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/market-tech-and-data-servic...). Settlement and trading of FX may often be OTC, but that doesn't mean there aren't exchanges or aggregated marketplaces.

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

#177

Post by wdaareg »

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"

FX Prices effectively converge to a single price, because FX is an efficient market with little to no arbitrage that would be visible (thanks to the proprietary trading firms that specialize in it).

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

#178

Post by wdaareg »

throwthere wrote: post #153

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 mor…

Other services are expensive, because they try to serve everyone - they are basically cross subsidizing between their customers that make them all of their money (by moving larger amounts), who end up paying for their customers who move small amounts. On average, this doesn't seem like a big deal, but it ends up being expensive for the folks who move most of the money.

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

#179

Post by wdaareg »

adhoc_slime wrote: post #157
hutzlibu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

We appreciate the critical feedback - keep it coming. It's good to talk about these topics in the open. We'll be sure to work on this to make sure there is clarity around this part of our offering.

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

#180

Post by wdaareg »

Gareth321 wrote: post #174
phphphphp wrote: post #128

A clever solution, nice work. That said, I'm very curious about your long term view on this model as a differentiator. My understanding is that Wise fees are essentially a pass through to customers, so your differentiator is that you've chosen "slow and cheap" over "fast but costly"... but if you validate that there's a market for "slow and cheap" alongside "fast but costly" won't Wise (and others) introduce the "slo…

If they force Wise to offer slow and cheap then we all win. I just checked the cost on a GBPUSD transfer, and it's 350 pounds + some kind of exchange rate cut. The difference between Wise and Atlantic is an entire ocean and I'm not convinced Wise will undermine their gravy train by trying to compete with a plucky upstart. Only if said plucky upstart becomes a billion dollar company; any by then they don't need to wor…

We're trying to put that gravy back into your pocket! These are the exact problems that motivated us to build this product - because we ourselves were forced to pay these fees when we moved to the UK from the US.
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