How does this compare to xe.com, which I have used in the past? They're a canadian company, been doing this for a long time, low cost.
London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
141–150 of 192 posts
Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) I agree that a VP in a late stage interview should not be asking this of the candidate, but I will say that I recently had to hire a new team member, and FizzBuzz helped me to immediately weed out the candidates during the initial interview. I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me…
> I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me the code. I'm still trying to reconcile this with my own experience at work. I work for a university department, and hire student employees. Zero people have ever failed our fizzbuzz question on the interview, while it was on there. You would think that post graduation there would be a _lower_ number of degree holder…
Hmm I wonder only the better students apply for these kinds of job?
Or perhaps your university is just good? :)
Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
WorldFirst does. There are plenty of competitors in the space that do a great job at this.
Can you elaborate on the other competitors? Thanks
I have used UKForex a few times, and have been happy with the service. I've only used them for US UK transfers though.
Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justification for the existence of the new players. Yes exactly what I was thinking. But by that time Transferwise could be a reputable brand with lots of customers so they could pivot to offer other financial services.
And almost certainly better tech. You ever check out the OS your bank is running?
> You ever check out the OS your bank is running?
Does it matter? I don't care what Fidelity, Vanguard, etc run under the hood, I have no loyalty nor switching costs.
Vanguard's interface is garbage, plain and simple, but they have the lowest cost index funds; I'd use paper and pen to correspond with them if necessary. I moved from Betterment, who has a very delightful iOS app and web interface, because the fees were lower at Vanguard.
Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
#145I think https://www.instarem.com/ does something similar.
Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
#146Surprised to not see any mention here of legal and regulatory risk. One of the reasons moving money between countries is hard and expensive is that it is often done by people either trying to avoid tax liabilities, and/or by people involved in illegal activities and as a result governments are understandably keen to tie transfer agents up in rules regulations and liabilities. Ask HSBC...
Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
sometimes you say? it is always about execution being passionate about things that nobody wants, and disrupting things nobody cares about will get you nowhere. a low margin grocery store fulfills a need and thats why they are everywhere.
Ideas are utterly worthless. Execution is everything. I freely give every single idea (some actually valuable!) I've ever had away for free. Because I know if someone is better at implementing it than I am, they are the ones who provided the world value. Not me for dreaming it up and then doing nothing about it - there are millions of me's, and ideas without execution are not interesting.
Tell that to the Winklevoss twins
Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have a need to transfer large amounts of USD-to-CAD or vice versa, have a look into Norbert's Gambit. It'll effectively let you perform the transfer for 0.2%. Probably not worthwhile for small amounts, but if you're converting ~$10k, might be worth the effort. This site seems to break it down: https://norbertsgambit.com/
That's all kinds of sketchy, least of all because of the taxes, but also because you're playings games with public stock that they or anyone else could manipulate. I've used TransferWise for over $8K and think the service is fantastic. I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole and my git is screaming "scam!"
Paying transferwise ~$100 to move some bits around like you did is what's scammy, not Norbert's gambit.
Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
#149While I haven't used TranferWise yet, I think it's a brilliant idea (and yes, their exchange rates look phenomenal)!
There's also a service called PeerTransfer for foreign tuition payments that essentially aggregates outgoing payments, and buys forex in bulk.
Another cool development in the area is Visa (The Card issuer) opening up their APIs to allow direct Card-Card transfers like with Square Cash when they just started out. Barring regulatory hurdles, this method (Card-Card transaction using the Visa/MasterCard/Amex network) is probably the most efficient way of sending money across currencies.
Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup
#150Hello all. I used transferwise in November to move money to Japan. The exchange rate applied was the actual fucking exchange rate. I paid Transferwsise a couple of quid. Worth every fucking penny. Worth swearing. Use Transferwise.
What's the foremost authority for realtime ForEx rates?