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Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

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Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#61

Post by needle0 »

tchaffee wrote: post #19

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 o…

Are stablecoins viable in the real world for this kind of use case? Anyone have any firsthand experience?

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#62

Post by Ayesh »

sambarina wrote: post #53

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…

I'm genuinely looking forward to a day that we can do this. Digitally transfer money between each other.

Right now, you are probably losing more money that Ttansferwise because it costs a considerable amount of money to convert them to Fiat currency.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#63

Post by Ayesh »

msadowski wrote: post #28
unnouinceput wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Instead of "loss" I consider it a service price for discoverability and the payment guarantees for hourly projects. I also don't mind paying since so far it's been the best method to get projects for me so far.

Yes, the 20% definitely raises eyebrows. Uber charges 20%I no longer use Upwork, and the "loss" is only one of the reasons. But it's probably the best way to find projects easily though.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#64

Post by tchaffee »

needle0 wrote: post #61
tchaffee wrote: post #19

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 o…

Are stablecoins viable in the real world for this kind of use case? Anyone have any firsthand experience?

Unfortunately the viability of this is going to depend a lot on what country you are trying to transfer to. In my destination country of choice (population > 200m) there are two small exchanges and four cryptocurrencies you can trade.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#65

Post by Ayesh »

nedsma wrote: post #30

Using the opportunity to pressure TW to expand into more markets. Why only focus on the EEA countries? Come on, expand onto whole Europe/world, if Payoneer/Skrill can do it, you can too. Edit: make debit cards available anywhere.

I suppose being a European company, there are more regulations at play.

Payoneer is US based.

Skrill is UK based, and I don't think they have prepaid debit cards? Even if they do, nobody should use them. They were moneybookers once, and from first hand experience, they are highly unpredictable when it comes to fees and conversion rates.

Revolut is also European and doesn't offer debit cards throughout the world.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#66

Post by DaveSapien »

Taek wrote: post #52
dmos62 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 am sure that dropping comments like this in threads on popular news aggregates has crossed the minds of many PR firms. Even if this comment is genuine, culture within a company is temporary, and once a company has built up a trusted brand, the amount of money that can be made by taking advantage of this trust grows substantially. Especially for fast growing companies built out of venture capital, most will eventual…

Indeed, not to be too pessimistic but I have seen radical changes in company attitudes that came with only age, success, and/or failure. Same people, evolving circumstances.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#67

Post by msadowski »

Ayesh wrote: post #63
msadowski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of "loss" I consider it a service price for discoverability and the payment guarantees for hourly projects. I also don't mind paying since so far it's been the best method to get projects for me so far.

Yes, the 20% definitely raises eyebrows. Uber charges 20% I no longer use Upwork, and the "loss" is only one of the reasons. But it's probably the best way to find projects easily though.

I think this depends a lot on what kind of projects you take. If you do lots of small projects for many customers and rarely charge them more than $500 then the charges are indeed terrible.

If however you do more long term projects (I have one active project that has been open for 2 years) then you quickly get to the 10% charge.

I wish they reduced the amount of money you need to earn to enter 5% charge range (it's currently $10k AFAIK) and I imagine it's quite rare for freelancers to get there.

What I think is quite bad on UpWork when it comes to charges is the 'connects' that you have to pay for since last year I think. Last I checked it was up to $1 USD per project proposal, which might make it very difficult for some people to get their foot in.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#68

Post by markdown »

mschuster91 wrote: post #59
markdown wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither the sender or receiver had ever stepped foot in Europe or the UK and had anything to do with those jurisdictions. Go read the Acceptable Usage Policy... nowhere in it will you find anything about every customer being subject to UK law. In fact they go out of their way to make you think the opposite is true... by showing you different AUP's depending on which country you're in.

US/EU banking / antiterrorism regulations apply to any entity worldwide which wants to do business in the respective markets. Assuming that there are two parties interested in doing a hawala exchange in two countries where this is legal, they still cannot (openly) use a bank that does business in US/EU because if the bank knowingly executes that transaction they could be facing serious fines.

Sure, but this is merely UK food safety regulation we're talking about. It is illegal in the UK to trade in kava for consumption (based on a German court decision that's since been thrown out). Kava is legal almost everywhere else in the world.

The grandparent comment is about how the CEO of TransferWise is obsessed with customer satisfaction. If X is banned on TransferWise, then TransferWise should say so in their AUP.

To simply lock accounts out of the blue is ridiculous.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#69

Post by cik »

throw0101a wrote: post #58

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…

This is exactly how I transfer money between the US and Canada. Outside of Corona, it's easy to minimize this impact by choosing either bank stocks or indexes, and always after 1045 EST when the market jitter is done ~90% of the time.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#70

Post by cik »

sambarina wrote: post #53

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…

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%

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