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 the banks, but saving ~$16 on the occasional international transaction for me isn't worth explaining to my accountant a random debit from my account.
> ~$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 mine even come close. Hell, I've used TW to move between currencies in the same bank account because of the clip the fuckers wanted for the privilege of moving some numbers from column A to column B.
It was SGD to USD and you're able to use SWIFT to any country for USD (so I just pointed it at the same Singapore bank). It was slightly more expensive but still less than DBS was going to charge.
It would definitely be nice if they opened that up a bit, plenty of countries these days can do multi-currencies.
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 the banks, but saving ~$16 on the occasional international transaction for me isn't worth explaining to my accountant a random debit from my account.