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I’m a former TransferWise employee and I cannot speak more highly of them. Yes, they aim to make money like every business, but I’ve never seen a company so foc

• koheripbal 7y ago
  I don't know... the only time I tried to use Transferwise was to make a transfer to Haiti. Their website claims they support it, they allowed for the transfer to be initiated - but in the end it failed for some unknown opaque reason. I'm sure it works for most large countries, but the reality is that they sell the idea that they can transfer anywhere, list almost every country to give the illusion of ubiquity, but haven't actually tested transfers to all those countries.
  • jeromegv 7y ago
    If they say they support it, it’s because they do support it. Problems are common in international bank transfer, that’s why their support team could have helped you. Your anecdata doesn’t prove that they don’t support this country, if it’s on their website it’s because they do.
    • koheripbal 7y ago
      The reply from support was that they don't support Haiti - despite the marketing on their website that they do. Support was responsive.
  • jkaplowitz 7y ago
    Sometimes they support countries in some ways but not others. For example, as of when I last checked, they support sending Canadian dollars south to Mexico to be converted into Mexican pesos for delivery there, but not the reverse transaction.
• dmos62 7y ago
  This is probably the best advertisement I have read. It's spot on about my concerns, heartfelt, empathetic and sincere. I really hope that PR firms don't pick this up. Would hate to seriously ponder if it's genuine or not. Oh damn, I'm already doing it. There's something to be said about cynicism and sincerity in today's world.
  • Taek 7y ago
    I am sure that dropping comments like this in threads on popular news aggregates has crossed the minds of many PR firms. Even if this comment is genuine, culture within a company is temporary, and once a company has built up a trusted brand, the amount of money that can be made by taking advantage of this trust grows substantially. Especially for fast growing companies built out of venture capital, most will eventually sell out. It becomes especially difficult to avoid these pressures after IPO.
    • DaveSapien 7y ago
      Indeed, not to be too pessimistic but I have seen radical changes in company attitudes that came with only age, success, and/or failure. Same people, evolving circumstances.
  • bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    As a general rule I look at the profile, emdowling has been a member since 2013, has a number of comments on different subjects, not a high reputation but no submissions, it seems most likely genuine to me.
  • exolymph 7y ago
    The comment you're responding to seems genuine. However... > I really hope that PR firms don't pick this up. That ship sailed years ago, alas :(
• sho 7y ago
  Congrats to you - I love them. There's not too many companies that I feel so happy doing business with, serving such an obvious and vital need, and doing such a fine job of it. It's just a great product, really well done. I just hope they don't get bought out :(
• coder1001 7y ago
  I haven't seen many companies do what they do! They lower their fees without the customer asking! Most customers will not go comparing them to others, yet, when they can they reduce the fees and tell you how much more you are saving! Wonderful ethics!
• mft_ 7y ago
  Are you able to offer any insight (top level, non-confidential, obvs) into how TransferWise works, behind-the-scenes? i.e. how do they actually enact the exchange of the funds? Do they have a contract with one of the big investment banks? Do they work directly via Forex markets? Can they leverage their scale now to minimise actual exchange costs – for example internally matching up (say) a one customer transferring USD to EUR, and another transferring EUR to USD, so that TW’s costs are minimised?
  • raverbashing 7y ago
    > for example internally matching up (say) a one customer transferring USD to EUR, and another transferring EUR to USD, so that TW’s costs are minimised? From what I've read, apparently that was their idea since inception, do their own reconciliation as far as they can.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • rvnx 7y ago
    In reality, internalised or not, TransferWise makes lot of money in fees. On InteractiveBrokers for example, you pay +/- 2.33 USD in total to convert 100'000 USD to EUR (+ 1 USD extra for withdrawal if you already did one this month). TransferWise charges end-user 900 USD + spread for the same operation, which is rather comical when you see their ads "banks are scamming you"
    • Symbiote 7y ago
      > On InteractiveBrokers for example That is not a consumer-friendly site. Is it even practical for the typical case TransferWise targets: sending a few payments a year, or a few a month? The pricing page for foreign exchange has the cheapest category as under $1 billion -- is transferring $200 something they'd do? I don't know what a "basis point" is, or "trade value". https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=4969 https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=4969
      • 7y ago
• andrewnicolalde 7y ago
  That's great to hear. I regularly use Transferwise and have always been happy with the service they provide.
• markdown 7y ago
  > fairness to customers is non-negotiable. Nice try, TransferWise CEO. I know someone who had their money frozen because they made the mistake of mentioning that the money being sent was for kava. You simply can't trust TransferWise to put their customers first.
  • eckesicle 7y ago
    So what you're saying is that their compliance and risk teams are on top of their game? Kava is illegal/regulated in Europe and the UK and therefore the money and account would obviously be frozen pending an investigation.
    • markdown 7y ago
      Neither the sender or receiver had ever stepped foot in Europe or the UK and had anything to do with those jurisdictions. Go read the Acceptable Usage Policy... nowhere in it will you find anything about every customer being subject to UK law. In fact they go out of their way to make you think the opposite is true... by showing you different AUP's depending on which country you're in.
      • mschuster91 7y ago
        US/EU banking / antiterrorism regulations apply to any entity worldwide which wants to do business in the respective markets. Assuming that there are two parties interested in doing a hawala exchange in two countries where this is legal, they still cannot (openly) use a bank that does business in US/EU because if the bank knowingly executes that transaction they could be facing serious fines.
        • markdown 7y ago
          Sure, but this is merely UK food safety regulation we're talking about. It is illegal in the UK to trade in kava for consumption (based on a German court decision that's since been thrown out). Kava is legal almost everywhere else in the world. The grandparent comment is about how the CEO of TransferWise is obsessed with customer satisfaction. If X is banned on TransferWise, then TransferWise should say so in their AUP. To simply lock accounts out of the blue is ridiculous.
• bromuro 7y ago
  I am using TransferWise since a year now to support my digital nomad business. Couldn’t be happier — The app is beautiful, it always worked, transfers are quick, and it is even cheap. Support is great too. Can’t thanks them enough for their business: traveling with my primitive European bank was a nightmare.
• ElCapitanMarkla 7y ago
  I’ve been working remotely between NZ and the UK for the last 7 years. I was dealing with HSBC and then Barclays Wealth in the UK but recently started using the TransferWise Borderless account after Barclays wanted £40 a month account fees... They make everything so painlessly easy. It could take a couple of days to get cash from the UK to NZ where it can be under an hour with TransferWise. I can’t sing their praises loud enough, especially after having the deal with UK banks
• vortico 7y ago
  Can confirm. I need to send payments from the US to ~30 international contractors per quarter. I generate a spreadsheet of their names and payment amounts. I click on their name in TransferWise's "saved recipients" page. I copy/paste the amount from the spreadsheet into the USD box, submit the payment, and then copy/paste the payment summary page into an email to the contractor verifying that I paid them. Couldn't be simpler than that. All of my contractors have previously agreed to pay all fees associated with their payment, so I always type into the USD box. TransferWise withdraws exactly that amount from my bank and in 2-3 seconds tells me the amount that will be deposited into their account. If hypothetically a new contractor wanted 1M RUB up-front, meaning that I would be responsible for payment fees, I'd simply paste 1000000 into the RUB box, and the recipient will get that exact amount, while TransferWise will calculate and tell me the USD amount to be deducted in my bank. Also couldn't be simpler. PayPal makes this a nightmare. In order to make a payment such that exactly $1000 USD is withdrawn from my bank, I have to basically apply Newton's algorithm (or successive guessing) to the Send Money page (with each load time being ~30 seconds), because the number you enter is post-fees but pre-exchange. They couldn't have chosen a more useless variable for me to input, since I'd only either want to enter an amount pre-everything in USD or post-everything in RUB. I don't want to enter some weird intermediate amount.
  • gchamonlive 7y ago
    > All of my contractors have previously agreed to pay all fees associated with their payment out of curiosity, do you have an estimate of how much are those fees?
    • vortico 7y ago
      You're asking about TransferWise? Says on their website. https://transferwise.com/ https://transferwise.com/
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • gchamonlive 7y ago
• traceroute66 7y ago
  "fairness to customers is non-negotiable" .... yeah, unless you run a VoIP company. In which case you get told VoIP is against TransferWise AUP and you get told your business account is suspended permanently. And yes, we are talking about a reputable long-established VoIP company here, not some fly-by-night spam operation. Similarly, the TransferWise business account is a bit of a joke. Features that should have been there on day one were not there, and are still not there. Things like multiple signatories, the sort of thing you take for granted at a real bank. Additionally "Borderless" is marketing hype. You can only actually deposit in a small number of the available currencies. You're better off with a real bank. Or the half-hearted implementation of M-PESA. Using Transferwise you can only pay private individuals on M-PESA. Paying businesses on M-PESA is impossible because TransferWise are not correctly integrated. Need I go on ? Not saying avoid TransferWise. I'm just saying caveat emptor, look beyond the marketing hype.
  • StavrosK 7y ago
    I have similarly been bitten by them. I tried to test the service by transferring $40ish or something small like that that from one of my accounts to another, and they told me they're not doing it and are shutting my account permanently, but they can't tell me why. This was my first transfer on my first ever account with them, it's not like I had any prior history with them. Woo.
    • shadowprofile77 7y ago
      This. It is so absolutely, positively, disgustingly maddening to see companies like Stripe, Paypal, now apparently transferwise as well, based on this and other comments I've read, simply freeze accounts for seemingly trivial "violations" of some obscure TOC and then not only permanently ban you for what was in 99% of cases an honest mistake, but also simply refuse to state why they do so. What is the bloody fucking point of rules that cause you to kick off customers if you can't even give some transparency on how those rules work. It's insane and even if it complies with some bullshit government regulations on money laundering, grotesquely shitty of major financial services companies. Users should at least be given the benefit of the doubt and told why they're being punished before being booted. I'd love to see some insider of these companies explain the obsessive habit of booting and then refusing to explain a single reason why.
• gbrodman 7y ago
  I interviewed with them about two years ago right now and while I didn't accept their offer, I came away with nothing but the highest level of respect for them, their work, and their culture. Even in the interviews / offer stage, they made sure that I knew that everyone's primary priority would be the customer and building a great product. The concept of "building metrics to support your ideas" is a bit of a daunting one if you have to do it for every project, but it showed a level of respect for the user and transparency that I appreciated. In addition, their interview included a debugging / code refactoring segment which felt more "real" than most other interviews that I've done, and hopefully provided a better signal to them.
• goatherders 7y ago
  Love Transferwise. Until a month or so ago I was using Xoom (paypal) and it was both more expensive and slower.
• deepGem 7y ago
  Can confirm that Transferwise is the best option out there for cross border commerce. Also stay away from Payoneer if you can. They eat 1-3% of the gross money transferred as commission, depending on the target currency. Also Payoneer's exchange rates aren't the best in the market. This is ridiculous when compared to TW.
• ilrwbwrkhv 7y ago
  Ya but remitly has far better rates every single time.