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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

#51

Post by stared »

arulpugazh wrote: post #42
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.

Thank you for the update.

Last year it was not possible (and took me some time to discover that).

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#52

Post by Taek »

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.

I am sure that dropping comments like this in threads on popular news aggregates has crossed the minds of many PR firms.

Even if this comment is genuine, culture within a company is temporary, and once a company has built up a trusted brand, the amount of money that can be made by taking advantage of this trust grows substantially.

Especially for fast growing companies built out of venture capital, most will eventually sell out. It becomes especially difficult to avoid these pressures after IPO.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#53

Post by sambarina »

I am surprised that there is no mention of Bitcoin. My current project is also in another country (US) and I live in Europe. I am getting paid in BTC, and I pay even less then via Transferwise.

It is cheaper because the company already owns Bitcoin, so it doesn't need to buy them. What I do is:

- Getting BTC transferred to a wallet at an exchange I trust - Sell the BTC ones I receive them and put the money on my bank account

I switch between using Transferwise and BTC. The downsides are obviously that the price can fluctuate quite heavily. But my experience is that I saved a few hundred Euros each year (around 450 Euros) from using BTC instead of Transferwise.

That's not a lot in the grand scheme of things. What I like about a BTC transaction is that I can monitor it, it is even more transparent then Transferwise and I truly "own" the BTC ones sent.

It is a bit sad that I can't use it as much as I would like so I sell around 90% immediately to pay rent, buy stocks etc, and 10% stay there for future gains.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#55

Post by pal_9000 »

sambarina wrote: post #53

I am surprised that there is no mention of Bitcoin. My current project is also in another country (US) and I live in Europe. I am getting paid in BTC, and I pay even less then via Transferwise. It is cheaper because the company already owns Bitcoin, so it doesn't need to buy them. What I do is: - Getting BTC transferred to a wallet at an exchange I trust - Sell the BTC ones I receive them and put the money on my bank…

I believe fiat withdrawal fees / trading are a lot higher than transferwise fee, at least in my case. Which exchange do you use if I may ask?

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#57

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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.

As a general rule I look at the profile, emdowling has been a member since 2013, has a number of comments on different subjects, not a high reputation but no submissions, it seems most likely genuine to me.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#58

Post by throw0101a »

For CAD-USD exchanges, Norbert's gambit is a popular procedure:

> Here’s how you can use this ETF to exchange $10,000 Canadian:

> 1. Get a quote for DLR and calculate how many shares you can buy for $10,000 Canadian.

> 2. Place an order for that number of shares. The trade will settle in Canadian dollars.

> 3. Call your discount brokerage’s customer service desk and ask them to take your DLR shares and “journal them over” to the U.S. dollar side of your account, where they should show up as DLR.U.

> 4. Place an order to sell all of your DLR.U shares. The trade will settle in U.S. dollars.

* https://www.moneysense.ca/magazine-archive/norberts-gambit-a...

* https://www.finiki.org/wiki/Norbert%27s_gambit

* https://canadiancouchpotato.com/2013/12/03/norberts-gambit-t...

Technically this would work with any interlisted stock, though the DLR ETF is very popular for this because of its liquidity. One could probably find stocks for GBP and EUR as well:

* https://www.tmxmoney.com/en/research/interlisted.html

The overhead of the exchange is the cost of buying/selling the stock, which is fixed price, so it it's not like a percentage cut.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#59

Post by mschuster91 »

markdown wrote: post #50
eckesicle wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

US/EU banking / antiterrorism regulations apply to any entity worldwide which wants to do business in the respective markets.

Assuming that there are two parties interested in doing a hawala exchange in two countries where this is legal, they still cannot (openly) use a bank that does business in US/EU because if the bank knowingly executes that transaction they could be facing serious fines.

Re: Saving money on international payments as a remote freelancer

#60

Post by jannes »

throw0101a wrote: post #58

For CAD-USD exchanges, Norbert's gambit is a popular procedure: > Here’s how you can use this ETF to exchange $10,000 Canadian: > 1. Get a quote for DLR and calculate how many shares you can buy for $10,000 Canadian. > 2. Place an order for that number of shares. The trade will settle in Canadian dollars. > 3. Call your discount brokerage’s customer service desk and ask them to take your DLR shares and “journal them…

Depending on where you live this could make your tax declaration more complicated, which could require the services of a tax consultant if you don't know how to do it yourself... Just something to keep in mind if you want to save money.
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