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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

#211

Post by exolymph »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #184
StavrosK wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This. It is so absolutely, positively, disgustingly maddening to see companies like Stripe, Paypal, now apparently transferwise as well, based on this and other comments I've read, simply freeze accounts for seemingly trivial "violations" of some obscure TOC and then not only permanently ban you for what was in 99% of cases an honest mistake, but also simply refuse to state why they do so. What is the bloody fucking…

Dude, if you sign up for a payment processor without reading the TOC, you are an idiot. Just straight up. It's a huge dependency of your business and you need to understand the rules. (Silent changes are much more problematic, and I think companies can be legitimately blamed for that.)

> What is the bloody fucking point of rules that cause you to kick off customers if you can't even give some transparency on how those rules work. It's insane and even if it complies with some bullshit government regulations on money laundering, grotesquely shitty of major financial services companies. Users should at least be given the benefit of the doubt and told why they're being punished before being booted.

Your problem here is with United States KYC & AML requirements, not with payments processors.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#212

Post by Symbiote »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #200
Symbiote wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On InteractiveBrokers for example That is not a consumer-friendly site. Is it even practical for the typical case TransferWise targets: sending a few payments a year, or a few a month? The pricing page for foreign exchange has the cheapest category as under $1 billion -- is transferring $200 something they'd do? I don't know what a "basis point" is, or "trade value". https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?…

I'm not sure where in the provided link you found that, but I am not doubting you found something FX-related in there with $1 billion as a relevant number, since they serve lots of different professional populations. But yes, they can exchange even a dollar or two. I've exchanged five figures a few times there between CAD and USD, as an American living in Canada and actively using a US credit card. So far I've found…

Sorry, I think I pasted the wrong link.

From the homepage, Pricing → Commissions → Forex leads to the 1,000,000,000 cutoff.

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1590&p=fx

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#213

Post by graton »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #200
Symbiote wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On InteractiveBrokers for example That is not a consumer-friendly site. Is it even practical for the typical case TransferWise targets: sending a few payments a year, or a few a month? The pricing page for foreign exchange has the cheapest category as under $1 billion -- is transferring $200 something they'd do? I don't know what a "basis point" is, or "trade value". https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?…

I'm not sure where in the provided link you found that, but I am not doubting you found something FX-related in there with $1 billion as a relevant number, since they serve lots of different professional populations. But yes, they can exchange even a dollar or two. I've exchanged five figures a few times there between CAD and USD, as an American living in Canada and actively using a US credit card. So far I've found…

Well this page says something about trading less than $1 billion per month:

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1590&p=fx

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#214

Post by exolymph »

dmos62 wrote: post #10
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…

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.

The comment you're responding to seems genuine. However...

> I really hope that PR firms don't pick this up.

That ship sailed years ago, alas :(

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#215

Post by ska »

ransom1538 wrote: post #121

FYI American worker: When an international employee makes $40 per hour and they perform two weeks of work -- their US employer sends them 80 * 40 = $3200. No Federal Income Tax Withholding, no Social Security and Medicare deductions, no Federal Unemployment (FUTA) Tax, no State withholdings, nothing. Employers love it. No drama. Just straight gross cash.

This is just moving things around. The international employee deals with equivalent of withholding etc. It's exactly like a self-employed consultant/contractor locally, they should be factoring this into their hourly rate (including things like paying their accountants to sort out taxes, etc.).

If wage disparity is big enough, it can still be a "win".

Also it doesn't always work this way, often US companies have subsidiaries to handle payroll etc. in other countries.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#216

Post by graton »

rvnx wrote: post #103
mft_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to offer any insight (top level, non-confidential, obvs) into how TransferWise works, behind-the-scenes? i.e. how do they actually enact the exchange of the funds? Do they have a contract with one of the big investment banks? Do they work directly via Forex markets? Can they leverage their scale now to minimise actual exchange costs – for example internally matching up (say) a one customer transferring U…

In reality, internalised or not, TransferWise makes lot of money in fees. On InteractiveBrokers for example, you pay +/- 2.33 USD in total to convert 100'000 USD to EUR (+ 1 USD extra for withdrawal if you already did one this month). TransferWise charges end-user 900 USD + spread for the same operation, which is rather comical when you see their ads "banks are scamming you"

As someone who is interested in transferring money I will admit that I find InteractiveBrokers website confusing. I don't understand how it works. Let's say I want to buy Russian Rubles with US Dollars. How does that work? How do I get the Russian Rubles out? With TransferWise it is very obvious. I'd love to save more money but I'm not sure how to do it with InteractiveBrokers, but I would like to know.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#217

Post by decentralised »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #187
decentralised wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im in the EU and we don't have Fedwire here. I can tell you that ABN AMRO charges me ~10 euros for transferring ~200 eur to the UK (with conversion to GBP). Generally speaking I'm quite familiar with payment infra in Europe, I've worked on it for ~20 years after all.

I am not sure how to engage with this reply. It is of course unsurprising that European banks do not have integrations with the Federal Reserve for moving USD. European banks often have access to international systems like SWIFT and SEPA, and various national payments systems, instead. I have precious little information to offer you on the workings of European funds transfer services, however; I posted here to discus…

Well, first of all thank you for your earlier comment.

My anxiety is peaking lately... I have no idea exactly why I answered like that but what I meant was that while I'm not familiar with the US payment system, I do know the European one quite well and that's why earlier I'd expressed incredulity that any traditional banking system could offer zero cost transfers. I think I didn't notice you were not JumpCrisscross

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#218

Post by [deleted] »

brudgers wrote: post #124

There is a simpler solution. Charge more money for your freelance work. Higher fees compound. Cost savings diminish. Even better higher fees select for better clients. Working for clients where profits depend on your cost savings is a race to the bottom. And when clients pay more you can afford to outsource the work of setting up cost savings processes instead of doing the work yourself. There's nothing wrong with sa…

[deleted]

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#219

Post by ska »

brudgers wrote: post #124

There is a simpler solution. Charge more money for your freelance work. Higher fees compound. Cost savings diminish. Even better higher fees select for better clients. Working for clients where profits depend on your cost savings is a race to the bottom. And when clients pay more you can afford to outsource the work of setting up cost savings processes instead of doing the work yourself. There's nothing wrong with sa…

This is only half right. By all means adding 20/hr to your rates is more viable that faffing about trying to reduce every $20 fee.

On the other hand, this problem is partly fees, partly rates. The fee part gets taken care of by making sure you can absorb them as cost of business. The rate part doesn't, it grows with your revenue. So it's bad business to ignore it.

Freelancers are in a weird place on this because of the size of income. Just handwaving with numbers, if you are exchanging 10k the most you can save is about $100 or so, not worth a lot of time. At 100k though it's often worth it. At a million in forex, you are being irresponsible not to chase a good rate.

So freelancers usually fall somewhere around the middle, where there are real savings possible but it isn't worth a ton of time. Personally the last time I did this sort of thing 15 minutes on the phone saved me a few thousand a year so worth it.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#220

Post by Havoc »

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…

>They process your orders directly against the forex market

Sorta. Orders below 25k are odd lots

https://ibkb.interactivebrokers.com/node/1459

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