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Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

blog.jurn.io

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Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#11

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

I used TW for a real estate purchase. It was fine, although I sent the money in stages, because money-in-transit is not covered by any deposit protection scheme.

My understanding is this applies to all of the services operating in this space, not just TW.

But the suggestion that banks are more expensive is not necessarily correct. My new bank charges nothing at all for IBAN transfers to my old bank in another country. Money usually arrives next day, or sometimes same day if sent early enough. The exchange rate seems to be the interbank rate and not a consumer rate, so it's all very simple and cheap.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#12

Post by sho »

emdowling wrote: post #6

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…

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 just hope they don't get bought out :(

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#14

Post by dmos62 »

Depending on your situation (regulation and logistics), cryptocurrencies can be a good way to move money internationaly. I've used Bisq for that with success, though it's more involved than a simple KYC crypto exchange or the (usually costlier, right?) traditional banking methods.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#15

Post by unnouinceput »

msadowski wrote: post #8

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…

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.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#17

Post by jonathanstrange »

Reminds me of the Kagi cheques I used to get via snail mail. Once I had a cheque of around 160 USD and got back less than half of it from my former bank, the Berliner Sparkasse. I went to the local branch and they kindly explained to me that every institution "in between" the "billing chain" for foreign cheques can siphon off an almost arbitrary transaction fee. I still think that was fraud.

Anyway, I opened an account at a US bank with branches in Germany and it cost me only the usual fee (which was still high, though). Nowadays I'm using Fastspring.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#18

Post by coder1001 »

emdowling wrote: post #6

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…

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!

Wonderful ethics!

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#19

Post by tchaffee »

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.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#20

Post by briodf »

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!

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