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Transferwise account - opinions requested

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TheMotorcycleBoy
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Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269035

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » December 4th, 2019, 1:07 pm

Hi folks,

At my work we get our bonus in US listed stock, deposited onto US etrade brokerage accounts. To realise our money in pounds in our UK banks we typically associate the output of our stock sales with a wire instruction to our UK current account branch. This was the path of least resistance which many of us choose, and Etrade handles all of it, until the money hits one's UK bank branch. However it's painfully slow (about a week elapsed time from the sale), and FX charge is between 1.5-3.0 percent. A colleague mentioned today that a bunch of them use some people called "Transferwise"

https://transferwise.com/

basically that entails firstly getting the transferwire account then creating a new wire instruction based one's transferwise account. Then they configure their stock sales transactions to output funds to this wire not their UK bank account. Apparently then after the funds are wired to transferwise you then set up a payee from this account to your UK branch and pay into the UK here. Apparently the FX charge on this is much less than the default Etrade->their middle man->Barclays (or whatever branch) route and also the payment from transferwise onwards is all done in less than day.

I wondered if any Lemon Fools had experiences of transferwise and had any good or bad words to say about them.

Many thanks
Matt

neversay
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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269051

Postby neversay » December 4th, 2019, 3:21 pm

We have accounts in the US and UK. We live in the UK but with an American wife (and half-American) kids spend extended spells in the US.

I've been using Transferwise since it launched and have been very happy with the results. Mostly we shuffle a few thousand pounds (not tens or hundreds of thousands) but it has been efficient, cheap and with a good exchange rate. Looking back my past few transactions took either 2 or 3 days.

The only time I haven't used them was when a friend was returning from the US to live in the UK and we did an exchange at the prevailing rate without any fees. Otherwise, Transferwise is the next best option.

In other words, I highly recommend it!

N.

TheMotorcycleBoy
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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269072

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » December 4th, 2019, 4:54 pm

neversay wrote:We have accounts in the US and UK. We live in the UK but with an American wife (and half-American) kids spend extended spells in the US.

I've been using Transferwise since it launched and have been very happy with the results. Mostly we shuffle a few thousand pounds (not tens or hundreds of thousands) but it has been efficient, cheap and with a good exchange rate. Looking back my past few transactions took either 2 or 3 days.

The only time I haven't used them was when a friend was returning from the US to live in the UK and we did an exchange at the prevailing rate without any fees. Otherwise, Transferwise is the next best option.

In other words, I highly recommend it!

N.

Fantastic review! :D

Many thanks - I wish I had heard about them years ago.

Matt

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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269107

Postby stevensfo » December 4th, 2019, 6:52 pm

Get a Transferwise and Revolut account and then compare them. Both are free. I prefer Revolut, but only because I know it better and find the App easier, but I don't think there's much to choose between them for transfers. I save at least 3.5% on the exchange rate when compared to euro-pounds in my bank, so I imagine it must be similar dollars- pounds.

Do remember that neither has the FSCS guarantee, so best not to keep a huge amount in the accounts.

Steve

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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269118

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » December 4th, 2019, 7:31 pm

stevensfo wrote:Do remember that neither has the FSCS guarantee, so best not to keep a huge amount in the accounts.

Steve

Cheers Steve,

Thanks for the FSCS mention. TBH I'm only looking at this for a very shortterm transfer+FX mechanism, probably between $2-15k just whipping through it for a couple of hours about 2-4 times a year. I'm not looking at keeping anything there, I'm permanently in the UK, even holidays!

Matt

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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269221

Postby todthedog » December 5th, 2019, 10:00 am

Whilst living in Sweden and France used TransferWise on many occasions excellent service.

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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269361

Postby panamagold » December 5th, 2019, 6:51 pm

As an option to Transferwise there is an alternative p2p transfer organisation which would support your needs assuming you are not a US resident. CurrencyFair who are based in the Irish Republic and operate via a fixed fee of €3.
I've used them for 10 years for shifting multiple currencies around with no issues whatsoever and they have excellent customer service. If you decide to use their 'Market Place' rather than 'Exchange Now' you can achieve, sometimes, a better than market rate.

Here is a comparison article comparing Transferwise to CurrencyFair.

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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269444

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » December 6th, 2019, 6:35 am

panamagold wrote:As an option to Transferwise there is an alternative p2p transfer organisation which would support your needs assuming you are not a US resident..
....
Here is a comparison article comparing Transferwise to CurrencyFair.

Many thanks for this PG,

CurrencyFair who are based in the Irish Republic and operate via a fixed fee of €3.
I've used them for 10 years for shifting multiple currencies around with no issues whatsoever and they have excellent customer service. If you decide to use their 'Market Place' rather than 'Exchange Now' you can achieve, sometimes, a better than market rate.

I guess you are referring to the essence of this, which I quote from transfersumo:

On top of this, CurrencyFair charges 0.25 percent or 0.3 percent for transfers made using the marketplace and between 0.4 and 0.6 percent for non-marketplace exchanges.

Reading between the lines the marketplace option will probably result in longer transfer times, but potentially a better rate, and definitely a lower variable (i.e. %) fee. But for more impatient people the non-marketplace (exchange now?) is faster but correspondingly less advantageous vis-a-vis amount recovered. Does that sound about right?

Yes CurrencyFair look like a good, if not better option. However, I note that most of the CF bumpf, at least what I found, refers to movements between pounds with euros. Have to say that I will only be using a scheme of this sort to go $ to £ after flogging my works shares. So I'd be more interested in the fees (%) and one-off charges for only that FX. I'll probably need to net chat them this weekend - unless you've the one-off fee and the % fee to hand for that pair.

Going by these quotes from transfersumo it looks like CF will be the cheapest option for me:

TW: As a guide, the fixed fee is generally between 50p and £2 while the percentage is usually between 0.5 percent 1.5 percent.

CF: On top of this, CurrencyFair charges 0.25 percent or 0.3 percent for transfers made using the marketplace and between 0.4 and 0.6 percent for non-marketplace exchanges.

That being on the proviso that CF's fixed fee is on a par with TW's.

I can probably forget fixed fees, I imagine since 90% of my usages will be over $2K. The only smaller transfers are rare (only done one so far) and that was to scoop up cash from divs. and residues from etrade's automatic tax-paying sales.

I can see I need to do some more research.

thanks again,
Matt

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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269475

Postby panamagold » December 6th, 2019, 9:21 am

Below is the rate copied, 10 minutes ago, from CurrencyFair rate quote $ to £. What you see is what you get (minus £2.50).

Bank Comparison Details
How we collect our data

How we collect our data is very simple - we base our price comparisons on exchange rates we get from other bank websites.


Provider You Send ......Exchange Rate......Fee......You Receive......Date Recorded
Currencyfair $10,000.00....1 = 0.7569.... £2.50....£7,566.50....December 06, 2019
Typical Bank $10,000.00....1 = 0.7384....$30.00....£7,361.85....December 06, 2019
Get Started Now

By using this website, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with the CurrencyFair Cookie Policy.

TheMotorcycleBoy
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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269669

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » December 6th, 2019, 5:03 pm

panamagold wrote:Below is the rate copied, 10 minutes ago, from CurrencyFair rate quote $ to £. What you see is what you get (minus £2.50).

Bank Comparison Details
How we collect our data

How we collect our data is very simple - we base our price comparisons on exchange rates we get from other bank websites.


Provider You Send ......Exchange Rate......Fee......You Receive......Date Recorded
Currencyfair $10,000.00....1 = 0.7569.... £2.50....£7,566.50....December 06, 2019
Typical Bank $10,000.00....1 = 0.7384....$30.00....£7,361.85....December 06, 2019
Get Started Now

By using this website, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with the CurrencyFair Cookie Policy.

Thanks again PG,

I'm not sure how much the £$ rate changed today since your post. i assumed it was about 0.76. On that basis then by my reckoning CF only charged a 0.4% variable fee. Very good.

I'll probably apply for it in the next day or 3. The thing I'm really not looking forward to is adding it as another "wire instruction" onto my ETrade account. I do find ETs interface hard work, and my recollection of when I added my Barclays UK account as a wire was of a rather painful experience of having to discover SWIFT and IBAN codes from barclays and writing them into the e-form on etrade. But I was a bit green in the gills then, and maybe CF will make this a bit easier.

Matt

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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269849

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » December 7th, 2019, 4:27 pm

Now CurrencyFair
I'm doing a bit more investigation into currency change account providers. Just looking at The CurrencyFair review of TransferSumo.

I'm probably being a bit stupid here, but in the cons the review states:

Need to have money in your CurrencyFair account to secure rates

Are they saying that:
  1. You must always have minimum float in the account?
  2. Or if your account is overdrawn you won't get as good a rate?

This is also in the review and it says:
for people with a service that seems geared to smaller amounts below about $7000 USD/£4000 GBP/€4500 EU/$9500 CAD/AUD/SGD.
I'm not sure whether this might be a problem, since the last stock sell and wire to UK transactions were both over £5k. So I'm not sure how I should that particular remark.

Will try to make an account with them and TransferWise I guess and ask them some questions.

Matt

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Re: Transferwise account - opinions requested

#269981

Postby panamagold » December 8th, 2019, 5:06 pm

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Now CurrencyFair
I'm doing a bit more investigation into currency change account providers. Just looking at The CurrencyFair review of TransferSumo.

I'm probably being a bit stupid here, but in the cons the review states:


Need to have money in your CurrencyFair account to secure rates

Are they saying that:
  1. You must always have minimum float in the account?

Your account can be empty. However to exchange cash from one currency to another there needs to be cash in the
account to enable a rate to be quoted against the value of your exchange rate request. In 'Exchange Now' you can either accept the quoted rate or reject it. For 'Market Place' you choose the rate you want and park the amount you wish to transfer in the market and wait.


  • Or if your account is overdrawn you won't get as good a rate?


  • It isn't possible to overdraw your account. Currencyfair are a p2p exchange/transfer company, not a bank. All funds deposited with them are ringfenced in accounts worldwide where they execute transfers.


    This is also in the review and it says:
    for people with a service that seems geared to smaller amounts below about $7000 USD/£4000 GBP/€4500 EU/$9500 CAD/AUD/SGD.
    I'm not sure whether this might be a problem, since the last stock sell and wire to UK transactions were both over £5k. So I'm not sure how I should that particular remark.


    I tend to deposit as and when I need a particular currency, usually for covering local taxes and some 'pin money'.
    The amounts I deposit are usually between 10,000 and 20,000 of whatever currency I need converting.


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