TransferWise has saved me a _lot_ of money over the last couple of years. The website has gotten worse I must say but otherwise their service has been nothing but satisfactory. I'm still hoping they'll offer a credit or debit card to make it possible to pay in foreign currency on the spot without paying horrific conversion fees.
TransferWise announces $280M investment
161–170 of 176 posts
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#162I'm now paid in USD, but I live in Canada. My bank offered me the 'competitive' exchange rates of 2.5% more than the market offered. TransferWise is literally saving me thousands of dollars per year. I can't thank them enough.
I am in a very similar situation (outrageous exchange rates from by Canadian bank). Do you use TransferWise to transfer between your own accounts in a Canadian bank or from your US bank to your Canadian bank?
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course they would. Most people don't understand how the fee structure works, so will comply. You can open up a brokerage account at Interactive Brokers with a few thousand and use it to exchange FX. It's pretty accessible.
Is this relevant? http://news.forexlive.com/!/interactive-brokers-to-cut-off-u...
Might be. I'm actually not based in the US (but I did exchange FX recently).
Perhaps someone in the US using IB could check?
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#164I recently had a client ask me to pay them with Transferwise. It was a horrible experience. After weeks of trying to get it to work, even with the help of support, we eventually gave up and used bitcoin instead. The Transferwise website was horrible. It gave error messages and kept telling me to fill out some field that didn't exist. After sending screenshots to their support team, they just sent me back links that d…
Username and password for you bank account? Ough, what a big no no.
I'm pretty sure they use plaid for verification, who also do this. It's for instant verification; you can choose to do the old school two-deposit verification too.
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#165For everyone that's interested in TransferWise, I'd recommend Revolut ( https://www.revolut.com/ ) instead. They have no fees for transactions or currency changes (up to a quite high limit), as well with a lot more features (international prepaid MasterCard that charges no fees ever being my favourite one, and you can go to ATMs for free as well). I've been a happy customer of them for quite some time and I have abso…
Thought I'd give these guys a chance. Your brief write up piqued my interest. Their website says, give us your phone number and we'll send you a link to download the app. I'm thinking this is great, a direct APK download and no Google Play Store interference, they just want to protect the download link a bit. I enter my phone number. I receive my SMS with the download link ( http://revolut.com/get ). Not being an htt…
Most users don't allow installs from untrusted services. Users that aren't you would have a very hard time.
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#166As a customer, I love TransferWise. The banks charge outrageous rates and fees. The competing money transfer/currency services promise the best rates, but make you sign up before telling you. Then you get constant calls from your "personal currency advisor". In the end you find out their rates are higher, and now you're on call with a sales person. This includes companies HN posters in a previous thread were recommen…
I think you're entirely right on the media thing. I've used them on JP->US and US->JP over the years as my sources of income and expense destinations have shifted around. They're pretty brilliant, but it's clear that they're just buying dollars from UFJ (who has a lot of dollars to sell) at a rate better than the one UFJ would quote me.
Which is fine! It does exactly what it says on the tin.
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#167Transferwise has been a godsend for me the past couple years as I've been moving my life to the UK from the US. XE was bought out awhile ago and hiked their fees up, while banks like HSBC have always had high rates to begin with. Although I'm wondering if jumping on a bitcoin exchange like GDAX to go from USD -> bitcoin -> GBP would be even cheaper these days?
You're paying higher spreads, twice, and (likely) higher fees, twice, and also going long BTC for at least a portion of the day. This is unlikely to be cheaper than Transferwise unless you win at Casino Bitcoin.
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#168As a customer, I love TransferWise. The banks charge outrageous rates and fees. The competing money transfer/currency services promise the best rates, but make you sign up before telling you. Then you get constant calls from your "personal currency advisor". In the end you find out their rates are higher, and now you're on call with a sales person. This includes companies HN posters in a previous thread were recommen…
TransferWise reserve the right to cancel out transaction if the market moved too far.
I think you're right they would eat a fairly big loss to avoid the bad press this would generate, but there is ultimately a limit.
It bugs me this aspect of their business model is never cited, so most people assume they are selling the same product as the banks. They're not: banks take the risk; TransferWise leave it with the customer.
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#169TransferWise has saved me a _lot_ of money over the last couple of years. The website has gotten worse I must say but otherwise their service has been nothing but satisfactory. I'm still hoping they'll offer a credit or debit card to make it possible to pay in foreign currency on the spot without paying horrific conversion fees.
Revolut provides this service.
(disclaimer: I haven't used Revolut yet and thus can't vouch for them)
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#170I believe, With a brokerage account, it's easy to get your foreign currency sent to a bank account in another country.
to your account yes, but not if you want to send money to your friend or employee.