Has anyone used TransferWise?

Butcher_2

Has anyone used TransferWise? They do currency transfers GBP/EUR for a flat fee of £1. I need to transfer money to France to buy a property, according to their website there is no upper limit which makes me a bit dubious on the £1 transfer fee.

Any experiences appreciated.

NB

catokelly

Butcher wrote: »

Has anyone used TransferWise? They do currency transfers GBP/EUR for a flat fee of £1. I need to transfer money to France to buy a property, according to their website there is no upper limit which makes me a bit dubious on the £1 transfer fee.

Any experiences appreciated.

NB

I would be quite dubious about using a company that was only established properly in January 2011. Also the address given by them seems to be a residential address, be careful especially if you are sending a large amount, do your research before you take the plunge!

I usually send regular payments to France and use Thomas Exchange www.thomasexchange.co.uk.

They charge £12 per transfer, or if the amount is over £5000 there is no fee. Their rates are much better than any high street bank - so you will save money because of the rate difference and lower fees. The payment is usually received by the bank abroad within a few hours.

They've been established for over 30 years and I highly recommend them. :money: I usually deal with Dom at their Maddox Street office.

You either pay by cash/card instore at one of their london offices by online banking if you are not in london or able to pay in person.

SouthLondoner

I've used Transferwise twice now but for small amounts, 300 and 400 GBP. It has worked fine and the rate was indeed practically identical to the rate you can see at xe.com etc.

However, I would not use them for anything like a property purchase. They are not a bank.

There are some good comments here
-- seems i cannot post links. Google" techcrunch transferwise skype of currency exchange" should get you there --
with some caveats especially applicable to your situation (eg the peer to peer matching).

That said, you could talk to your bank and see what rate they are willing to give you on a large amount. I've just looked at the Thomas Exchange site mentioned by catokelly and the rates I get when I buy EUR through First Direct are slightly better (I've converted quite a lot through FD and the rates are always 1.5 to to 1.9 percentage points worse than the online rate.

Grumpelstiltskin

taavet wrote: »

Hello - I'm co-founder of TransferWise. We are a new company in the FX arena, but we believe we have an offer that noone else can match.

Essentially what we do is simple - we do the exchange between people and bypass banks. This allows us to offer the best rate, the mid-market rate.

I quickly looked at the offering of Thomas Exchange - they had a rate of 1.1350 right now. TransferWise has mid-market rate of 1.1150 which is about 1.8% better.

Happy to answer any questions about TransferWise, just email/pm me.

Taavet

Taavet Have you got permission from MSE to post?

Please see Forum Rules regarding company representatives, and don't be surprised if your post is removed if you haven't got permission.

Richardah

Hi

I have used the system once to transfer £500 to my French bank account.

I received an immediate confirmation of my request (which inevitably involved giving details of the account). I then transferred the money from my bank account to the TransferWise account, and received an acknowledgement.

I was then placed in a queue and had to wait for a day before my transfer was made. This was presumably because more people were buying Euros than selling them at that time.

The eventual exchange rate was very good, in spite of the delay, but be warned that you could find yourself getting less than you expect if the market is fluctuating rapidly. (The system allows you to specify a minimum acceptable exchange rate).

I wanted to change another £500 a couple of weeks later, but this time I was asked for a scan of my passport, in order to comply with money laundering legislation. I sent an email querying this, and received a reply that was clearly intended to reassure.

I decided not to send the information, as I was unhappy that this was too much information in the hands of one organisation. You may feel differently.