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TransferWise announces $280M investment

techcrunch.com

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Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#11

Post by Numberwang »

tomseldon wrote: post #6
alexee wrote: post #4

I wish they would issue credit cards soon. Every time I pay with credit card while travelling, my bank charges 1.5% for each transaction, in addition to bad conversion rate.

If you're in the UK, have a look at Monzo. Not a credit card, but very useful to use abroad. They don't charge a transaction fee when abroad, and the currency conversion is tracked to the MasterCard rate (whereas other providers tend to do card issuer + their own cut on top). Result is it's very cheap to use abroad. :)

I was considering them until they changed their name. I just can't get over it.

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#13

Post by andy_ppp »

tomseldon wrote: post #6
alexee wrote: post #4

I wish they would issue credit cards soon. Every time I pay with credit card while travelling, my bank charges 1.5% for each transaction, in addition to bad conversion rate.

If you're in the UK, have a look at Monzo. Not a credit card, but very useful to use abroad. They don't charge a transaction fee when abroad, and the currency conversion is tracked to the MasterCard rate (whereas other providers tend to do card issuer + their own cut on top). Result is it's very cheap to use abroad. :)

They actually plan to start charging for this because ATMs charge them:

£200 free allowance per month, 3% charge for withdrawals thereafter everywhere outside the UK

From here: https://monzo.com/blog/2017/09/13/atm-fees-abroad/

I would have just transparently passed on whatever the ATM charges rather than this weird 3% fee.

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#14

Post by marcosscriven »

richardknop wrote: post #10
marcosscriven wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, from the 18th December, that's stopping: https://monzo.com/blog/2017/10/17/atm-limits-announcement/

It's only for ATM withdrawals. If you are in first world country where card payments are well integrated this is not issue for you. Granted, in many developing countries you need cash so this will be issue.

My use case is frequent trips to Sydney for work - a surprising number of cafes and restaurants there are cash only.

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#15

Post by thisisit »

a_d wrote: post #2

I used to study remittance flows for a living. This was a problem that was (is?) begging to be solved. Incumbents like Western Union have always been very expensive and borderline evil. There are well known “corridors” of remittance flows that are still yet to be captured - like Kerala (India) Saudi Arabia (Middle-east more generally); Mexico US; US LatAm etc. My guess is TransferWise captured the UK Poland corridor…

I have zero experience in remittances, so I could be wrong but the whole model seems very capital intensive. It needed ~ 1 billion dollars worth of transactions to turn a profit. [1] [2]

Isn't that supposed to be a bad idea, specially for software based companies.

[1] Transferwise model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransferWise#/media/File:Trans...

[2] The company started back in 2011. And select quotes from the article:

> A source close to TransferWise, which has been profitable since early 2017, tells me the new funding values the seven-year old company at $1.6 billion.

and,

> The company now serves over two million customers and offers 750 currency routes, seeing customers transfer more than £1 billion every month.

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#16

Post by chrisper »

Numberwang wrote: post #11
tomseldon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in the UK, have a look at Monzo. Not a credit card, but very useful to use abroad. They don't charge a transaction fee when abroad, and the currency conversion is tracked to the MasterCard rate (whereas other providers tend to do card issuer + their own cut on top). Result is it's very cheap to use abroad. :)

I was considering them until they changed their name. I just can't get over it.

And what was their old name?

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#17

Post by richardknop »

marcosscriven wrote: post #14
richardknop wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only for ATM withdrawals. If you are in first world country where card payments are well integrated this is not issue for you. Granted, in many developing countries you need cash so this will be issue.

My use case is frequent trips to Sydney for work - a surprising number of cafes and restaurants there are cash only.

Hmm, that's surprising. I have traveled a lot in Asia (never to Australia though) and from that experience I know a lot of Asia is still cash based but Australia I'd expect every coffee / convenience shop to accept Visa/Mastercard.

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#18

Post by TulliusCicero »

alexee wrote: post #4

I wish they would issue credit cards soon. Every time I pay with credit card while travelling, my bank charges 1.5% for each transaction, in addition to bad conversion rate.

If you're American, there are cards that don't have a foreign transaction fee, like the Capital One Quicksilver Visa or Chase Amazon Visa.

Schwab's checking accounts are also great for this, the ATM card reimburses ATM fees and has no foreign transaction fee for pulling out cash.

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#19

Post by afarrell »

a_d wrote: post #2

I used to study remittance flows for a living. This was a problem that was (is?) begging to be solved. Incumbents like Western Union have always been very expensive and borderline evil. There are well known “corridors” of remittance flows that are still yet to be captured - like Kerala (India) Saudi Arabia (Middle-east more generally); Mexico US; US LatAm etc. My guess is TransferWise captured the UK Poland corridor…

https://www.wave.com/ is tackling the US/UK/CAN East Africa (and apparently now Ghana?) corridor

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#20

Post by TulliusCicero »

richardknop wrote: post #10
marcosscriven wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, from the 18th December, that's stopping: https://monzo.com/blog/2017/10/17/atm-limits-announcement/

It's only for ATM withdrawals. If you are in first world country where card payments are well integrated this is not issue for you. Granted, in many developing countries you need cash so this will be issue.

Haha, have you never been to Germany? Tons of places still don't take credit cards.
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