Why I use Transferwise!

Why Transferwise? Hmm - because I rather invite my wife for dinner than spending money on banking fees!

So, I use Revolut (see my other post). Why do I use then Transferwise?

You guess it - because I rather invite my wife for dinner than spending money on banking fees :-)

Same, same but different - the use case has some similarities to Revolut, but nevertheless differs. I sometimes need to transfer money to a foreign party - that's when Transferwise comes into the play with me.

---

How does Transferwise work and how do I use Transferwise?

Setting yourself up for Transferwise is quite easy. Just register for free on their homepage - you can do it with your personal email. Upon registration, you are ready to start. Just tell Transferwise how much money you want to send or convert (I like that you can input easily either the sender's amount or recipient's amount and it just makes the little calculation for you). In a next step, you then add the recipients bank details.

Then, you have to switch application and log into your online banking. Go to your payment form and register the payment as per Transferwise's instructions. Important: as with Revolut, make sure that you include the reference number! Once you initiated the payment in your online banking, you switch back to Transferwise and you hit the button confirming that you did the payment! That's it - Transferwise will receive your money, convert it at the current exchange rate and sends the converted amount to the recipient.

How long does it take till the money arrives with the recipients? In my experience, it never took more than 2 days, often only 1 day!

As with Revolut, I normally use Transferwise in connection with holidays. When I went on honeymoon with my Miss (Namibia) I had to make a few transfers to pay for accomodation and I happily used Transferwise. In an other use case, I had to make a downpayment for a sailing boat in Croatia - again a use case for Transferwise.

Did I ever encounter problems with Transferwise?

100% of smoothness and happines so far with Transferwise.

---

How much do I save using Transferwise?

As a consultant, I have learnt to base decisions on hard facts aka data. So, I did one payment for our honeymoon by credit card and one payment by Transferwise to have a direct comparison!

Result:

• I saved 194 bucks equalling 3.28% by using Transferwise! That pays for a nice dinner!

• In detail, I only paid a fee of 19.16 with Transferwise vs. 119 with the credit card. (I also like the fact that Transferwise is true to the penny - transferring back to me even the 0.04 I paid to much.)

• Exchange rate was better at Transferwise by 1.5%, i.e. 94!

Quite an obvious choice!