WISE account transferring money

Brie

Hi there

I've set up a WISE account to enable me to transfer CAD from my bank in Canada to GBP in my bank in the UK.

It all looks fairly straightforward but there's nothing on the transfer to say what account the CAD is coming from.  How do I know what's happening.  I've tried the WISE facebook chat but that's just referring me to the on line how to's which don't seem to tell me anything.  

What I would expect is to see something like 

XXX CAD
from CIBC/TD or whatever bank with account details

fees charged

XX GBP
into whatever UK bank with account details.

but the line above in bold is missing.

what have i missed?

[Deleted User]

Check their app or website in the first instance to see what is happening. 

They use a local bank to receive the CAD funds domestically, so they may not even receive funds directly from CIBC or any other Canadian bank. 

Brie

@Deleted_User
I can't find anything relevant on their website or via their facebook chat.  However they get the CAD it should at some point come out of my CAD account in CADland! 

What I don't want is for somehow them taking it from my GBP account in the UK, paying to have it converted to CAD and back again before being returned to the same account.

Futuristic

They cannot magically take money from your accounts, its unclear what you are asking to be honest.

You pay to their CAD bank account it gives you with the ref etc or via card and then they'll transfer GBP from their UK account to the account you entered. 

mebu60

If you're using in the UK make sure that you've locked the currencies the right way round for CAD to GBP as it will default to GBP to CAD (which is a perfectly reasonable assumption).
Then, as Futuristic has said, you'll pay them in CAD.

Brie

OK so it turns out that in order for WISE to get the CAD a wire transfer needs to be set up from my account.  I don't know at this point if this is a one off thing or can be set up as something more regular but i'll leave that bit for the time being.  Unfortunately it appears that in order to set up a wire transfer I have to go into a bank branch which is a bit difficult when my branch is a 7 hour flight away.  

I have asked my bank for more info and whether a wire can be set up by phone or any other way or if I can set up WISE as a payee like I might do to pay bills in the UK.  I shall have to wait and see what they say.  It may be that I need a different type of account at my CAD bank to facilitate movement of any sort. 

And here I thought it was all going to be so simple once I got the WISE account set up!!

jbrassy

Can I ask how much you are looking to transfer? If it's less than £1000 worth of CAD, it may be just as easy to set up a Revolut account. I wouldn't normally recommend Revolut, but they do let you convert up to £1000 worth of foreign currency for free over the course of a month. 

With Revolut, you can set up a CAD account which will have its own bank account details. Then you can transfer the money from your Canadian bank account to the CAD account with Revolut. Then within Revolut, convert the CAD to GBP and finally transfer the GBP to your UK bank account. 

SusieT

If you have a debit card from the bank you can use that as a payment method, but I have no idea if the Canadian banks give debit cards. Otherwise you would need to do the bank transfer making very sure to use the reference number. Not an easy option from a distance, but would probably be the same with all accounts. 
You can have a CAD bank account with Wise, as in an account number and routing (or whatever Canadian accounts have), so if you were to open one with them you could do a regular payment to it and just make sure you transfer the funds out straight away.

Brie

@jbrassy
thanks but it's more than $1k.  I was going to do $1k as a testy and then move the rest once I knew it was working.

@SusieT
Yes they do have debit cards.  I don't know whether the bank will allow me to transfer using that.  It's looking at this point that the problem is the bank in Canada rather than WISE.

wmb194

Don't send a wire, pay using an EFT credit. Send from your Canadian account to the details of your *Canadian* Wise account. It will be received as CAD and then you can decide what to do next.

https://wise.com/help/articles/2978083/how-do-i-use-my-cad-account-details

Brie

thanks @wmb194
will have to investigate EFTs as I've never heard of them and are not obvious on my personal account.