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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

#161

Post by nabeards »

vasco wrote: post #148
nabeards wrote: post #145

I tried to use TW to transfer from a client’s UK bank account that was in USD, to my US bank account also in USD. I couldn’t find a way to choose this in the estimator, so I contacted tech support. They replied that this was a scenario they didn’t cover. I continue to get regular wires between the accounts, costs $25 in Interbank and my place charges an additional $10. ):

Might be cheaper for you to open a EUR account somewhere with low fees and do 2x transferwise than paying $35 per transfer

TW support told me they just don’t support an account in another country that isn’t in that country’s native currency. Which seemed odd. This was about a year ago.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#162

Post by sho »

markdown wrote: post #31
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…

> fairness to customers is non-negotiable. Nice try, TransferWise CEO. I know someone who had their money frozen because they made the mistake of mentioning that the money being sent was for kava. You simply can't trust TransferWise to put their customers first.

So what exactly do you want? The law might be stupid, I agree it's stupid, but it's the bloody law. You wanted TW to break the law just to help our your friend? Then guess what happens? No more TW.

It is literally the first item in the AUP that you're not allowed to use the service for anything unlawful. Of course they monitor that. They did everything right. And I'm sure your "friend" got their money back reasonably promptly after TW completed their review.

Criticism is fine, but taking a company to task for refusing to break the law for you is just silly. They didn't make the rules, and they'd be risking their own existence by breaking them.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#163

Post by EastSmith »

jsty wrote: post #48
EastSmith wrote: post #21

I am receiving SWIFT payments each months in EU as a commercial entity. I am invoicing in USD, providing a bank account number, where the money I receive are automatically converted to the local currency (not EUR). Just checked the exchange rate on TransferWise and it seems it is way better than any bank exchange rate in my country (not EUR). So, what I am concerned about right now is taxes. It seems I can create an…

It may also be worth looking into whether you can open a Foreign Currency account with a bank where you're incorporated which is probably a lot simpler than opening one cross-border. E.g. in the UK, Barclays offer these for a range of currencies: https://www.barclays.co.uk/business-banking/business-abroad/...

Thanks, I can open an USD account, but then I need to pay fees for it and the currency exchange rate is not as good as TransferWise's rate.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#164

Post by EastSmith »

charlesdm wrote: post #49
EastSmith wrote: post #21

I am receiving SWIFT payments each months in EU as a commercial entity. I am invoicing in USD, providing a bank account number, where the money I receive are automatically converted to the local currency (not EUR). Just checked the exchange rate on TransferWise and it seems it is way better than any bank exchange rate in my country (not EUR). So, what I am concerned about right now is taxes. It seems I can create an…

Depends on the tax and accounting laws of your country, but generally the taxable event happens when you invoice. So I'm doing accounting in EUR and invoice 10,000 USD. For accounting purposes my 10,000 USD gets converted to EUR on the invoice date, at the ECB USDEUR exchange rate. Then you hold that 10,000 USD for 2 months in your USD account, and the USDEUR exchange rate has dropped or increased 10% in that period.…

Thanks, the exchange difference indeed looks like capital gain.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#165

Post by livre »

underthensun wrote: post #149

I find TW amazing but it doesn't ship debit card to my country (due to my over complex government's legislation). Does anyone knows a bank (can be a fintech) that allows me to open an account all online?

Argentina? People have been recommending Payoneer (not a bank) or Dukascopy (online bank). As far as I know Payoneer still ships cards, I'm not sure about Dukascopy. You can open an account 100% online with both of them.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#166

Post by hackathonguy »

I see lots of praise for TransferWise here and I regret not trying them out earlier.

For what it's worth, I can add my two cents regarding PayPal. From a customer experience perspective, PayPal is pretty great - the UI is smooth and I like being able to pay with my PayPal balance online.

Having said that, their fees are nothing short of exorbitant - for international transfers, if I'm not mistaken, the fee is 4.4% + a fixed price per transaction + 2.5% on top of that if you also want to exchange currencies. A $1,000 bill paid to my PayPal account by a U.S.-based client can easily become $930 or even less by the time it reaches my bank account. I've stopped accepting payments via PayPal for that reason.

Furthermore - this isn't personal experience, just word on the street - I hear PayPal Customer Service can be pretty atrocious to merchants, which is another thing I'm not too happy about when it comes to their service.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#167

Post by StavrosK »

traceroute66 wrote: post #97
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…

"fairness to customers is non-negotiable" .... yeah, unless you run a VoIP company. In which case you get told VoIP is against TransferWise AUP and you get told your business account is suspended permanently. And yes, we are talking about a reputable long-established VoIP company here, not some fly-by-night spam operation. Similarly, the TransferWise business account is a bit of a joke. Features that should have been…

I have similarly been bitten by them. I tried to test the service by transferring $40ish or something small like that that from one of my accounts to another, and they told me they're not doing it and are shutting my account permanently, but they can't tell me why.

This was my first transfer on my first ever account with them, it's not like I had any prior history with them.

Woo.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#168

Post by the_svd_doctor »

Youden wrote: post #157

FWIW, where possible, I advise having both a TransferWise account and a Revolut or Interactive Brokers account. TransferWise is fantastic for receiving money. They have local bank accounts in USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, NZD and PLN. However for sending money and converting money, their fees can really suck: for $10k USD -> EUR (EURUSD is one of the most liquid forex pairs), they charge 81 USD in fees, or %0.8. Even for local…

Is there somehow a way to receive with Transferwise and send with Revolut ? I guess not. Then how would it work having both ? Receive in Transferwise a bunch of payments, and once in a while send to your bank. Then once in a while send to revolut, and send smaller payments from there ?

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#169

Post by [deleted] »

vortico wrote: post #118
gchamonlive wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

[deleted]

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#170

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

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…

I will chime in here as well. They seem to manage their relationship with banks rather well. When I was working in the wire unit, everything was usually ready to go in a way requested by the bank and despite working on another continent, any issues tended to be resolved the same day. I never dealt with them as a customer though.
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