Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

blog.jurn.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 256 posts

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#111

Post by Symbiote »

markdown wrote: post #50
eckesicle wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that their compliance and risk teams are on top of their game? Kava is illegal/regulated in Europe and the UK and therefore the money and account would obviously be frozen pending an investigation.

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.

You have something to do with the jurisdiction of the UK when you use a service based in the UK. Illegal drugs are clearly forbidden in the acceptable use policy, and the terms of use states English law is used.

UK law on kava (and many other drugs) is stupid, but that's not TransferWise's fault.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#112

Post by jeromegv »

koheripbal wrote: post #110
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 don't know... the only time I tried to use Transferwise was to make a transfer to Haiti. Their website claims they support it, they allowed for the transfer to be initiated - but in the end it failed for some unknown opaque reason. I'm sure it works for most large countries, but the reality is that they sell the idea that they can transfer anywhere, list almost every country to give the illusion of ubiquity, but ha…

If they say they support it, it’s because they do support it. Problems are common in international bank transfer, that’s why their support team could have helped you. Your anecdata doesn’t prove that they don’t support this country, if it’s on their website it’s because they do.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#113

Post by gbrodman »

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 interviewed with them about two years ago right now and while I didn't accept their offer, I came away with nothing but the highest level of respect for them, their work, and their culture. Even in the interviews / offer stage, they made sure that I knew that everyone's primary priority would be the customer and building a great product. The concept of "building metrics to support your ideas" is a bit of a daunting one if you have to do it for every project, but it showed a level of respect for the user and transparency that I appreciated.

In addition, their interview included a debugging / code refactoring segment which felt more "real" than most other interviews that I've done, and hopefully provided a better signal to them.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#114

Post by [deleted] »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #95
eckesicle wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that their compliance and risk teams are on top of their game? Kava is illegal/regulated in Europe and the UK and therefore the money and account would obviously be frozen pending an investigation.

Kava also means coffee in one of the European languages (Lithuanian). On top of that it is legal in a lot of pacific islands.

[deleted]

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#115

Post by jeromegv »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #104
adanto6840 wrote: post #2

Over the last year or so it seems like TransferWise has rapidly come onto the scene & taken over much of the landscape for our international contractor payments. The fees tend to be much lower than existing alternatives; importantly, the administrative friction is incredibly low, too. We're able to handle international payments essentially the exact same way we do with most other vendor & contractor payments, via ACH…

> Over the last year or so it seems like TransferWise has rapidly come onto the scene They've also increased some of the fees over the last year

Depends on the currency. Mine has gone down.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#116

Post by gchamonlive »

vortico wrote: post #89
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…

Can confirm. I need to send payments from the US to ~30 international contractors per quarter. I generate a spreadsheet of their names and payment amounts. I click on their name in TransferWise's "saved recipients" page. I copy/paste the amount from the spreadsheet into the USD box, submit the payment, and then copy/paste the payment summary page into an email to the contractor verifying that I paid them. Couldn't be…

> All of my contractors have previously agreed to pay all fees associated with their payment

out of curiosity, do you have an estimate of how much are those fees?

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#117

Post by modamilk »

TransferWise highly recommended. If you spend/receive money in multiple currencies, you can also track your money with Lunch Money app. Jen, founder was on the indie hackers podcast. I'm not affiliated with either service and i haven't used lunch money. I have had great experience using TransferWise for international payments

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#118

Post by vortico »

gchamonlive wrote: post #116
vortico wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. I need to send payments from the US to ~30 international contractors per quarter. I generate a spreadsheet of their names and payment amounts. I click on their name in TransferWise's "saved recipients" page. I copy/paste the amount from the spreadsheet into the USD box, submit the payment, and then copy/paste the payment summary page into an email to the contractor verifying that I paid them. Couldn't be…

> All of my contractors have previously agreed to pay all fees associated with their payment out of curiosity, do you have an estimate of how much are those fees?

You're asking about TransferWise? Says on their website. https://transferwise.com/

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#120

Post by 0xfaded »

sho wrote: post #9
0xfaded wrote: post #7

I use TransferWise for me as a private person. However, For my company I recently needed to pay a USD invoice ~$3.000 to a vendor who couldn't accept a credit card. I looked into setting up TransferWise for my company, but half way through the validation process I decided to check what my bank charged. ~$30 with the actual exchange rate, compared to about ~$14 for Transferwise. I applaud TransferWise for taking it to…

> ~$30 with the actual exchange rate, compared to about ~$14 for Transferwise I have never seen this (TW user here too!) and I transfer money pretty often. Are you sure the exchange rate was the same? Because that's how they get you - a fairly minimal charge (your $30, or often "free") but then pad out the exchange rate in their favour, sometimes up to 5%(!) Or maybe you just have a really excellent bank. None of min…

Yep, the rate I got was equal to what ddg showed me, unless they're in on the scheme as well.
Post reply on HN