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

41–50 of 256 posts

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#41

Post by unnouinceput »

msadowski wrote: post #28
unnouinceput wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You "lose" thousands of dollars per year on Upwork no matter what you do. But this is a non-issue in the end, am I right? That's why I used quotation, because I prefer having this loss on a high volume of work rather than work for pennies in my country and saving transaction fees. In the end I don't care about these fees, it's the world we're living in and I prefer to have fun with my projects instead.

Instead of "loss" I consider it a service price for discoverability and the payment guarantees for hourly projects. I also don't mind paying since so far it's been the best method to get projects for me so far.

That's exactly what I said in my words, no?

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#42

Post by arulpugazh »

stared wrote: post #34

As a freelancer often working remotely: I have a great experience with Revolut Business. From time to time I used TransferWise, and I am happy with the service. However, it is a transfer, not an account. For some contracts (universities in various places) a bank account is a must, so to fulfill local procedures. Revolut Business works like a bank account (including SWIFT transfer) with seamless exchanges between acco…

Transferwise now also provides a bank account with a proper IBAN and a Master card. I have been receiving my salary for the past six months in this account without issues. From last month, they also added Direct Debits feature. The only annoyance is that I can't use the Master card in many shops in Belgium because they only work with Bancontact cards.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#43

Post by newsbinator »

ashleysmithgpu wrote: post #33

Just to add a dissenting voice to the conversation, I recently attempted to transfer some money with transferwise and they refused just after I had uploaded all of my ID etc. In the end I went with worldremit and they were much easier to deal with. Slightly more expensive but I'd choose that over the hassle of tw.

To add another voice, I spent several weeks in Bulgaria unable to use my Transferwise "borderless" card in any shops (including all the major ones, like Lidl and DM).

The first few times Transferwise insisted it's a broken card reader, then a few calls and emails later it became the merchant's terminal that's at fault.

On some of the calls, Transferwise simply hung up on me when I didn't take "you should try it again" for an answer.

Finally after escalation it became the terminal's providing bank, which didn't recognize my Transferwise card number (issued in New Zealand).

Meanwhile other people used their Transferwise cards at the same locations mine failed. So I requested a European version of my Transferwise card but TW insisted that would break their contract with Mastercard or something.

3 or 4 weeks later, after I had already left Bulgaria, they emailed to update that my card would now be working.

Needless to say, I always travel with more than 1 provider's card with me, and this runaround from Transferwise is why.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#44

Post by bromuro »

stared wrote: post #34

As a freelancer often working remotely: I have a great experience with Revolut Business. From time to time I used TransferWise, and I am happy with the service. However, it is a transfer, not an account. For some contracts (universities in various places) a bank account is a must, so to fulfill local procedures. Revolut Business works like a bank account (including SWIFT transfer) with seamless exchanges between acco…

I connected TransferWise with my Xolo and N26 account.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#45

Post by eckesicle »

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 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.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#46

Post by eternauta3k »

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…

> I've used TW to move between currencies in the same bank account

How do you do this? Last I tried, TW didn't let me choose currencies (it used the default currency for the source/destination country)

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#47

Post by solarengineer »

thomseddon wrote: post #38

Recent TransferWise horror story of a public company, processing millions, who had their account suddenly shutdown: https://blog.simwood.com/2020/03/emergency-bank-details-chan...

The TransferWise Acceptable Use Policy dated 24 July 2019 doesn’t allow VOIP business to use TW. The blog post from SimWood is from 19th March 2020.

I’ll leave it to TW to explain when they changed their AUP, how come SimWood s was able to use them later, and also for SimWood to explain how come they didn’t track the AUP changes at TW, and instead felt the account closure to be sudden.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#48

Post by jsty »

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/...

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#49

Post by charlesdm »

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. When you then exchange the USD into EUR, you'll generally pay tax on the exchange difference (= capital gain)

My Belgian bank accounts are all multi currency. I can hold, receive and send USD/EUR (and others if I wanted to).

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#50

Post by markdown »

eckesicle wrote: post #45
markdown wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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.

Post reply on HN