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Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service
Good morning everyone! My co-founder and I recently moved to the UK after working at Robinhood for over 5 years. We were stunned at the fees it was costing us to move money across borders with existing fintech solutions, so we decided to start Atlantic Money - the world’s first fixed fee (with no FX markup) money transfer product. For £3 you can transfer up to £1M. Let us know if you have any questions!
- param 5y agoHelpful tip for founders: India has a ton of diaspora abroad and is always looking for a deal to send money back home
- janandonly 5y ago
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- sparsely 5y agoI did a quick comparison with Wise (previously TransferWise) This is cheaper for GBP->EUR transactions over £800, but a lot slower (arrives "Friday" instead of within 5 hours. In practice I've found that Wise transfers are normally nearly instant). It's quite substantially cheaper for large transfers (e.g. about £2000 for transfering near their max) and possibly faster. I can't tell if you can lock in a rate like with Wise.
- wdaareg 5y agoWe also support instant transfers into EUR - but transferring money across borders instantly requires capital buffer to be held somewhere, which is a true variable cost that the business can't cover with a fixed fee. So there's an additional 0.05% fee for instant transfers. With Wise you're effectively forced to pay that fee. With us, you just pay if you need the urgency, which people don't always need.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoI’ve never had a wise transfer complete in anything like 5 hours. I’ve done dozens to Russia.
- amir734jj 5y agoI am worried the 3-euro flat rate is sustainable in the long run. I regularly send money with MoneyGram to family overseas in Armenia and I see that there is a lot of things happening behind the scenes for each transaction.
- wdaareg 5y agoWe've set up extremely efficient bank transfer and currency conversion infrastructure and we're profitable on every transfer, so i can assure you it's sustainable :)
- oli5679 5y agoHow do you avoid adverse selection from traders that have lower latency? E.g if £/$ drops from 1.94 to 1.92 can someone aware of this before you convert £ to $ on your platform?
- wdaareg 5y agoGreat question! We hold rates for customers for up to an hour and customers can only hold one rate at a time, so the risk is minimal - but we do price that risk into our business model.
- londons_explore 5y agoSo I can shuffle $1M between £ and $, costing £6/hour, and earning guaranteed money whenever the rate moves by more than 0.00003 in a half hour period? Sounds open to abuse!
- Corinthian 5y agoWhy would that be guaranteed? Do you have a magic formula that tells you exactly what the exchange rate is going to do at any given moment? If so, can I see it?
- Keyframe 5y agoThat's fairly standard, even among banks. I have a bank account and account with their FX desk, when I need to do conversions. They give me a spot rate real close to what you'd "seen on google", but I have to close the offer within the hour or it's not valid anymore. It's a big european bank.
- londons_explore 5y agoIf the rate moves in my favor, I complete the trade and earn money (minus the £6 fee). If the rate moves in the opposite direction I cancel the trade and retry in half an hour.
- 5y ago
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service You know, I have a Capital One bank account that I opened because it advertised no foreign transaction fees. And yet whenever I make a foreign transaction on the debit card, I pay 1% more in dollars than I get in FX. That 1% number is eerily consistent. I still use it. 1% is a reasonable fee. But I'd be a lot happier if they admitted they were charging it. It takes a lot of effort to tell the difference between "ZERO foreign transaction fee! (but your prices are 1% higher than they should be)" and "ZERO foreign transaction fee! (but your prices are 8% higher than they should be)".
- wdaareg 5y agoGlobal money transfer has to be the place where some companies offer the most opaque fees. It's absurd - and we want to compete hard with those businesses by offering cheaper, simpler, and more transparent services to customers.
- marcusklaas 5y agoThat's an admirable goal. I'm rooting for you folks.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoWhat exchange rate are your customers getting?
- wdaareg 5y agoOur customers always get the live exchange rate, direct from the world's biggest currency exchanges. We add zero markup to the rate. So customers really pay just £3.
- theptip 5y agoThis is core to the FX (foreign exchange) business model. You have two places you can get paid: fixed transaction fees and the “spread” on the underlying exchange rate. Most companies offering FX services will charge both. Most consumers are not sophisticated enough to do the calculation to blend the fee into the quoted rate to get the true rate. Institutions will be. The risk of a “no fee” pricing scheme (or why there are fees in the first place) is to avoid getting wiped out by lots of small transactions, where your per-transaction overhead dominates. OP clearly has automated enough that they are not worried about this. And given the amount of manual work still involved in FX (do not get me started on some of the process hell I saw running international payments globally over an “api” payment provider), there is also a lot of room to reduce total cost through automation. But in summary, everyone is making money from the FX rate spread, and you are always getting charged more than the provider is paying for the currency. The question is just whether fee or spread dominates.
- FinTechEngINT 5y agoThat looks great. Could you please elaborate a little bit more about your interbanking network, your connection to these etc.? How do you route from UK to Australia, e.g.? To EU? Do you support instant payments on any of yours connections? If yes, which scheme(s) do you support?
- wdaareg 5y agoWe're operating a hub-and-spoke model. Our spokes are domestic bank transfers in and out of the currencies we support. And our hub is a centralized counterparty where we convert currency. Then we receive the converted currency in our local bank accounts. That currency conversion counterparty is world-leading in the services they offer to institutions, and we're excited to offer it to consumers for the first time. We support the fastest possible domestic rails (GBP Faster Payments, EUR SEPA Inst, USD ACH Same Day, etc). Unfortunately most domestic rails aren't instant (like USD) - and we can't make them any faster - but for those that are (like EUR) we support instant transfers. Our default delivery speed is two business days - this incurs no cost of capital to the business. But we know customers are sometimes transferring money urgently, so we offer an Express delivery. This is instant for EUR and as fast as the schemes support for other currencies. Express incurs a cost of capital equal to the currency forward rate, which is a true uncapped variable cost. So we have to pass that on to customers through a separate fee (0.05%), as it's something our signature fixed fee just can't cover. But it's always optional - and customers can always make a transfer regardless of size for just £3.
- dgan 5y agoNo sending to Russia? :) I am using PaySend regularly, still works
- Bellamy 5y agoI guess it keeps working if it's converted to rubles.
- danielovichdk 5y agoGood one
- dgan 5y agoI talked too fast. Doesn't work anymore
- gorbypark 5y agoIs this only for GBP into other currencies?I use Wise to transfer from my Canadian bank into my Spanish one, would Atlantic.money work for me? Most of the fees I pay are for my Canadian bank to get the money into the Wise system, but this still seems cheaper.
- wdaareg 5y agoWe're starting with GBP → 9 currencies but can't wait to add more corridors. Inbound EUR is next with more coming after. We're starting with a smaller set of currency corridors because we're building this network from scratch - that's why our fees are so low.
- esperent 5y agoI'm not cranky but I do, with good reason, always assume that finance companies are trying to hide fees until it's very definitely proven otherwise. So here's a quick UI suggestion: > × 1.199473 live rate Turn the "live rate" into a link that shows where you get the live rate from.
- donalhunt 5y agoInterested to see USD -> EUR. Bonus points if you launch fees in EUR too.
- timdaub 5y ago
- wdaareg 5y agoWe're hearing average people are most interested in transfers of fiat currency between bank accounts. In our research, we could use crypto in our central treasury for conversion or cross-border transactions, but the fiat ⭤ crypto onramp and offramp steps remain so those transfers are not quite instant or free. But if there's a way to use crypto to make our transfers faster and cheaper, I'm all ears :)
- jfk13 5y agoThat's not "money" in a useful sense for most people in most places. So then you're left with the problem (and expense) of converting it to/from usable money at each end.
- Nursie 5y ago> Moving money across borders is virtually free and instant. If you want cryptocurrency at each end, sure, and don't mind exposure to the rapidly fluctuating values, and pick a cryptocurrency that has low transaction fees.
- ilaksh 5y agoCheck out Algorand. Fee is 0.001 ALGO.
- allisdust 5y agoCrypto is not comparable to this at all. With crypto you lose twice (on and off ramps) during conversion to fiat. Not to mention trading fee etc.
- red2awn 5y agoWhile you are at it, Solana's fee is $0.00045. But as the others have said, you lose so much money transferring from and into fiat.
- Corinthian 5y agoCan you transfer TO the UK? Specifically from Spain and Qatar? I'm literally about to send a huge amount of money home, and it boils me up how much even the reputable money transfer companies take from you on the exchange. It seems scandalous how much money they take for something which is surely, almost entirely automated.
- wdaareg 5y agoWe're starting with offering services to residents of the UK sending GBP outbound to 9 currencies. We're actively working on our EU license, which will allow residents of UK or EU residence to send GBP or EUR to the currencies we support. We're starting with a particular set of currencies as we're building our network from scratch - it's why our fees are so low!
- rurounijones 5y agoThis may be offtopic so feel free to ignore but: When you say "working on your EU license" is this something that is an extra steo due to Brexit that would have been automatic before? (i.e. you would only need one license for UK and EU)
- wdaareg 5y agoWhat you're saying is generally correct
- beefield 5y agoSorry, a bit cranky today. It very much looks like you are just hiding the markup on your fx rate, and not even letting people figure it out by showing your bid/ask.
- wdaareg 5y agoWe sure aren't! We're tired of seeing traditional players hiding fees in the rate - and we're not about it. Our rate is the interbank rate directly from the world's biggest exchanges. Customers really are paying just £3 to move any amount all the way up to £1 million.
- mcjiggerlog 5y agoRight this second it reports that transferring 10,000 GBP would give you 12,000.71 EUR vs the 11,949.73 EUR you would get by using Wise, which is probably the best known competitor. Seems pretty good to me!
- pkavanagh 5y agoHi - other founder Patrick here, thank you for your interest and analysis. It's worth noting that the rates you see on the pages often have a bit of delay - I believe both Wise and Atlantic would end up having very similar underlying FX rates, since there's no markup on either. However, with Wise, the more you send, the more you pay in fees - so there's a break-even where it starts to become more economical to use Atlantic.
- randogeuebdb 5y agoThank you for explaining this. It’s rare to see someone acknowledge the quality of a direct competitor. Seems to me that the biggest risk to Wise and Atlantic is growing so large that the incumbents will change their pricing.
- vidarh 5y ago
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- someotherperson 5y agoIs there any limitations on transferring to companies? Or is it just to personal accounts? > Please note that you may only send funds to the country of the national currency. For example, you may only send US dollars to the United States This seems fairly restrictive. I send USD to Colombia, for example, to pay my staff. The Colombian banks then convert that to COP on arrival. Is there any particular reason why this limitation is in place? Makes it significantly less useful than, say, Worldfirst.
- wdaareg 5y agoYou can certainly send to companies as well. Our outbound payments are all domestic bank transfers, so if your Colombian bank can receive a USD ACH payment by routing and account number it should work. But I'm guessing your USD to Colombia is delivered by international SWIFT wire? The cost of a SWIFT wire is orders of magnitude higher than a domestic bank transfer, and we wouldn't be able to support that in our fixed fee.
- someotherperson 5y agoIt would be SWIFT, yes. That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying.
- OJFord 5y agoExample on the home page costs £3, arrives Friday (it's currently 9am Wed). Slightly beats Wise (£3.69) - but they estimate 4 hours. I'm not sure how this is 'the world's first fixed fee money transfer product'? Wise guarantees a rate for 2h (which swings both ways so isn't really a markup IMO) - are you claiming to offer closer to spot pricing?
- wdaareg 5y agoWe're fixed fee because we'll charge only £3 regardless of how much you send. If you want to send £2000 on Wise, that fee is doubled. But with us, it's still just £3.
- OJFord 5y agoI just noticed that and was about to delete my comment - nice! - for some reason I thought Wise was flat too. Maybe you should show that off with a different homepage example? Since Wise also defaults to £1000, and at that price point isn't very different to you (and tbh more compelling, given the speed).
- NiekvdMaas 5y agoRevolut has the same currency pair sample on their website, and it's a few bucks cheaper: https://www.revolut.com/currencies https://www.revolut.com/currencies
- wdaareg 5y agoRevolut has likely the most complex fee structure I've ever seen. I think their first 1k per month is free, but after that you get charged. They also charge additional fixed fees just for the international payment. Good luck! https://assets.revolut.com/legal/terms/International_Payments_Pricing_Sheet_22%20December%202021.pdf https://assets.revolut.com/legal/terms/International_Payment... https://www.revolut.com/en-GB/legal/standard-fees/ https://www.revolut.com/en-GB/legal/standard-fees/
- actuator 5y agoRevolut is a super app model and there are many reasons one might have the paid plan beyond the 1k forex limit like forex fees free debit card, free stock trading, crypto trading etc > They also charge additional fixed fees just for the international payment. This seems new. I have done international payments before and wasn't charged.
- abofh 5y agoThose fees have been there for a while, but for the most part, they only apply to "weird" transfers - particularly uncommon currencies, or landing "foreign" currency in a new country. If you pay dollars to the US, euros to Europe and so on, you typically don't hit them. I have interests in three currencies, and revolut has been a godsend compared to Wise and direct bank transfer fees.
- shafyy 5y agoNot if you have a paid account. I use it all the time to do international transfers between EUR (Germany) and CHF (Switzerland). And they also give you the interbank exchange rate (except on weekends when the markets are closed, they add a markup to cover their asses).
- jack_riminton 5y agoAs usual lots of nitpicking naysayers on here. If what you say remains true then kudos, great job and good luck!
- wdaareg 5y ago<3
- InCityDreams 5y agoHello, nitpickers. Please keep up the good work. Hopefully all the questions end up on an faq on their site (with links and credits). As a frequent money-mover, i enjoy disruptors in the market...but if basic questions have still to be asked, and answered, then its only thanks to naysayers that there is any chance of transparency and clarity. "If what you say remains true....."? Escape clause in the tos and eula, much?
- IshKebab 5y agoDon't keep up the bad work nitpickers. There's a big difference between asking questions in good faith because you want to know the answer, and naysaying because you want to feel like you know better.
- jack_riminton 5y agoLet's be honest HN doesn't exactly shine when it comes to giving feedback on new products... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- robk 5y agoCan you add to the usa app store please? Many of us in UK use the usa app store.
- wdaareg 5y agoHmm this is a good point. To be honest I was in that bucket for a while too. I think you're right, we'll just need to figure out how to prevent US app store users in the US from getting confused. I would recommend you sign up on the website for now and we'll make sure the app is available in the US app store when the service launches!
- dia80 5y agoIt's expensive for a reason... Technology, banking fees, compliance department, margin loans... I'd be interested to see your financial model!
- dia80 5y agoOh... You think selling the flow info of consumer FX will pay for all that.
- carnitine 5y agoWhat do you mean flow info? Generally selling flow means letting market makers fill orders for a fee. How much is just the info worth, especially in FX?
- pkavanagh 5y agoWe're betting that we'll be profitable on the 3 GBP alone. No need for any games or hidden rebates, but appreciate the skepticism :)
- wdaareg 5y agoEach leg of our transaction carries a substantially fixed fee to the business - which is unusual in currency exchange. Having achieved those economics with our partners, we summed them up, added costs for operations and compliance, and added a margin to run our business. That's how we ended up at £3!
- resheku 5y agoany plans to add ¥ transfer to Japan? I'll be relocating there soon and in the meantime have to send some money to the wife
- 3np 5y agoWithout having checked it out properly outside of the landing page, here's a brain-dump of things that competitors get wrong and you can improve by a lot: 1. Support self-custodied 2FA: TOTP/U2F. Do not require phone-number/SMS "for your own protection". 2. Be honest with your customers and users. Don't succumb to dark UX for the sake of control, engagement and growth. Allow setting separate notification settings for marketing/"news"/functionality/security, and don't silently add and enable new marketing channels. 3. Full functionality even on devices without Google Play Services/SafetyNet/Apple. Preferably I should be able to do everything through the web UI, without requiring involvement of a native iOS/Android app. 4. Adhere to a strict interpretation of the GDPR, regardless of where users/customers are geographically residing or located; No sharing PII with third-parties (above what you are legally required to do). No loading assets from third-party servers. 5. Allow access over anonymized channels (mainly tor/paid VPNs) A pinky promise on the above would make me sign up and recommend you to my network in a heartbeat. Would also be very curious to hear if you agree with me that the above are completely reasonable requirements/requests or if any of them stand out as something you may not be able or willing to do. It looks like you're aiming for a USP of competitive fees but I think I'm not alone in being very happy to not get the absolutely cheapest rate compared to Wise/Revolut/Paypal/N26/PS/MG et al if you stay aligned with the above. / Someone who's fed up with the existing landscape
- wdaareg 5y ago1. We follow a "trusted devices" model, where you 2FA using your phone number for the first login on a device. Future logins on that device aren't 2FA'd. I agree that using a code gen is a good improvement we can make over time. 2. Marketing opt-out is prominent in account settings. Any email that is very strictly not transactional is considered marketing by our team, and can be opted out of. Developing simple, focused products is core to our identity and we won't add irrelevant features that might upsell to 10% of customers. I assure you there won't be a "refer your friends" badge blinking on the home page of the app. 3. Unfortunately we're not on web yet - but we'd love to get there after iOS and Android. We hear from most people that iOS or Android are their preferred platforms, so we have to start there. 4. We share data as required to support financial transactions and other core parts of the business, but we do adhere to the GDPR. 5. I think VPNs are allowed - at least I don't think we block them in particular. We're excited to bring a fresh perspective and better pricing to a landscape with a lot of providers doing approximately the same thing. We'd love for you to try out the app once it's available - if you decide to register on our site we'll be sure to keep you updated.
- villmann 5y agohttps://wise.com/ https://wise.com/
- Bellamy 5y agohttps://www.quora.com/TranferWise-lost-my-2300-transfer-what-to-do https://www.quora.com/TranferWise-lost-my-2300-transfer-what...
- Youden 5y ago"We always convert your money at the live rate: the rate on Google." But this is a lie - I checked. At time of writing, you claim 100k GBP is equal to 131390 USD, while Google claims it's 131620 USD, a difference of nearly $300! Even saying "the live rate" is a lie. There is no one "live rate" (and therefore no "the" live rate). The price depends on your liquidity providers. IBKR shows "the live rate". Revolut shows "the live rate". Wise shows "the live rate". Google shows "the live rate". Despite all of them showing "the live rate", all of them have subtly different prices because all of them are part of slightly different markets. Claiming otherwise is a lie. It'd be more honest to say "we pass on the prices from our partners without markup" or something like that. You should also make clear which rate you're talking about. The market has a spread, how do you handle it? Do you give clients the mid-price or do you just pass through the bid/ask? The "Learn more" next to the rate info doesn't actually tell me anything more as well. I'd expect it to show me a page with more detailed information about your liquidity and how you determine the price. The box I already saw at the top of the page isn't "more".
- YetAnotherNick 5y agoIt would be fine if the other side transfer rate is the same. 0.18% difference between exchanges could happen.
- throwaway4good 5y ago0.18% difference for USD to GBP sounds like a lot.
- MikeDelta 5y agoThat is about 24 pips, if you can find that price difference on exchanges it'd be arbitraged for sure.
- pkavanagh 5y agoHi and thanks for your interest! We use the interbank rate from global exchanges. Both being from fintech, we are aware that it is easy to mislead (and to be misled) in money transfer and its a reason why we built this product in the first place. We have worked hard not to have any middle-men that mark up rates in our liquidity provision, and are quite certain that our rates are fair and extremely competitive. I do think that the takeaway from your comment is that we could build out a part of our page that allows a customer to dig deeper to validate this themselves. We understand the sentiment as there is still a lot of mistrust given the opaque nature of the market, and we need customers to believe that we are truly 3 GBP to succeed. Our core thesis in building this product is that we will win with a fixed fee on larger transactions, given the variable fee nature of the current industry incumbents(either transparently disclosed, or embedded in the FX spread).
- evgen 5y agoNot sure who told you that you could get away without having a cookie opt-out option, but even in post-Brexit UK you still need this. Having the alternative to 'accept all our tracking' be a 'learn more' that just goes to a document is bullshit.
- wdaareg 5y agoCustomers are opted out by default - opting in is optional. Although I agree it would be nice to have a mechanism to hide the cookie banner. Something we should look into adding.
- YYYdoIdoit 5y ago> without having a cookie opt-out option A financial company playing fast and loose with the law, and especially data protection law, does not bode well. One to avoid methinks.
- blunte 5y ago> A financial company playing fast and loose with the law That escalated quickly.
- YYYdoIdoit 5y ago> That escalated quickly Pfft The company clearly had poor legal advice and/or didn't think things through, yet they want my money and personal data? At the very least, you should consider this error analogous to the Van Halen 'no Brown M&Ms rider', in that it flags sloppy practice elsewhere [1]. [1] https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9 https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9
- blunte 5y agoThey were approved by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. That surely takes some serious legal effort and attention to detail. Also, their About Us page suggests that they are staffed by people from relevant financial services companies. Plus they are backed by some VCs who would not take risks by handing money to a company if they thought the legal side wasn't up to par. We don't know why there wasn't an annoying cookie popup. So assuming that the company in general plays "fast and loose" doesn't seem warranted.
- edent 5y agoNice! The logo looks eerily similar to TUI's… Is it possible to send money on the web - or is it iOS only? Best of luck with the launch.
- pkavanagh 5y agoHaha have passed the TUI feedback to our designer ;) We're going to start with iOS, and then move to more platforms. Thank you for your kind words!
- throwaway4good 5y agoOut of curiosity. What does this app sit upon in terms of banking and brokers?
- shafyy 5y agoLooks great. Another example why we don't need blockchain to do fast and cheap international transfers. And before you tell me that this doesn't cover all currencies and countries: Ok, but it just shows that this is not technology problem (i.e. can be done with existing and better tech than blockchain), but a business model / regulation problem.
- pkavanagh 5y agoThank you! We definitely are open to using Crypto in the future, but it just didn't seem to make sense to get people the best possible rate today.
- shafyy 5y agoPlease, don't use crypto. At least not as long as it has all the negative externalities it has today, like fucking up the environment and enabling scammers and fraudsters.
- chockchocschoir 5y agoSeems like adding cryptocurrency support wouldn't disable the functionality of sending other currencies, it would be an additional feature so you're not really forced to use it. What if they just support cryptocurrencies that are "environment friendly", would that change your mind about that point? Money will always enable scammers and fraudsters, there is simply no way around that. Every single network that handles money (including Visa), enables scammers and fraudsters, even more so than cryptocurrencies. Based on your last point, I feel like the environment point you raise is just trying to add more juice to your argument while in reality, your argument is mostly based on not liking cryptocurrencies emotionally.
- shafyy 5y ago> Based on your last point, I feel like the environment point you raise is just trying to add more juice to your argument while in reality, your argument is mostly based on not liking cryptocurrencies emotionally. I don't like cryptos because of their negative externalities, not the other way round :-) As long as the majority of crypto transactions have these negative externalities, any action that promotes crypto is bad. As software engineers, you should already know that blockchain tech is inferior to existing technologies, and that it won't be relevant in the long-term. So why help promote cryptos now?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eric_khun 5y agoAny plan for TWD? It's a real challenge to transfer USD or Euro to TWD. Fees are crazy high. I can hook you up with the foreigners community, probably 100+ beta testers
- pkavanagh 5y agoDefinitely something we're going to be considering as a future currency corridor! We've heard similar feedback on fees!
- whinvik 5y agoThis looks great. Any chance you can add transfers to India soon?
- pkavanagh 5y agoDefinitely a corridor we are looking at. INR has some interesting characteristics due to capital controls that we'll need to find a reasonable way to play nicely with. Due to these capital controls, Banks appear to also have a cartel on currency conversion...
- nik736 5y agoI like the idea, dislike the TLD. Could be the most reliable and serious company, but I won't be using it with a .money TLD.
- pkavanagh 5y agoNoted!
- chockchocschoir 5y agoLooking into the .money GTLD more, it seems Donuts (Outer McCook LLC, based in the US) is the owner of it, which seems to have been solely created just to own various GTLD. They currently have the largest portfolio of GTLDs (242) which seems to continue to expand. Not sure how I feel about one company sweeping up so many GTLDs, but that's beside the point. The business seems serious, so not sure what you have against the .money GTLD? Is it a principle thing or something else?
- monkeydust 5y agoLooks good but: 1. Needs comparisons against other players by size (as others on this thread are having to work out) 2. It seems better for larger size but that's where the user will start to question the service and trust comes into play i.e. do I trust it enough to warrant the saving of X. I think you need to work on this point via messaging in the design and site in general. For me I would stick with Wise for now.
- pkavanagh 5y agoThank you - we'll look to include the table more prominently. Our feature in Sifted today does include a comparison table that shows the difference in fees: https://sifted.eu/articles/atlantic-money-transfer/ https://sifted.eu/articles/atlantic-money-transfer/
- monkeydust 5y agoAny table should show all fees so I send X, recipient gets Y as most people now get lower upfront fees can be offset by wider bid/offers.
- BukhariH 5y agoSince, Wise & Revolut have been mentioned quite a bit and I'm an ex-Revolut & ex-Wise engineer where I built a lot of the FX infrastructure so I'll throw in my 2c. My assumption of what you & Neeraj are doing based on your backgrounds: You've decided to build a smart order router for retail FX hence the slow transfers because you need to wait for the spot order to settle T+2. Story at Wise Funnily enough Wise started in the early days with a fixed fee of £1! Since all Wise did was match orders between customers so no money was actually moving borders hence no need for conversion or transfer fees etc. But that fixed fee model was quickly scrapped when Wise started making the market between customers and improving the product experience by introducing rate locks (hedging costs), instant transfers (buffer costs) and actually started considering all the other cogs that go into making an international FX payment. But there's one significant cost of high value transfers that's been a struggle for both Wise & Revolut to bring down even at scale: The transaction monitoring, AML & support costs of high value transfers - a single high value transfer can easily cost £3 - £150 for all the due diligence needed to get it done. If you're going to keep the product fixed fee - this is where you'll need to focus in terms of innovation. The Story at Revolut Revolut has an Unlimited Zero Mark up FX with a single free SWIFT transfer (every additional international transfer is capped at £5) on the £6.99 premium plan. But international payments is relatively a recent addition. The vast majority of the time when people are sending money to each other on Revolut, it's a Revolut-to-Revolut or Revolut to local own bank account payment. Revolut's core strategy is to be the everywhere wallet so that when you're sending money to your family member in Romania from the UK - you just do it as a Revolut to Revolut payment which is bit different to the gap you're trying to fill. And, there's very little interest at Rev to deal with high value transfers because the AML, transaction monitoring and support costs are too prohibitive when transfers between users are free or capped at £5 for SWIFT payments. Is there a market for this product? A resounding YES. This is something we realised at Wise - we weren't as competitive as we liked to be on high value transfers and even though they committed resources to improving this - in typical Wise fashion the progress is very slow. Now I'm not convinced you'll stick at the £3 mark for long but there's definitely a large untapped market here. I'm confident that you & Neeraj have what it takes to win in this market & will be rooting for you from the outside! P.S. The app doesn't seem to be available in the UK app store?
- 5y ago
- danielovichdk 5y agoI guess you need to have a banking license for doig this sort of business ? And then you can leverage the international bank network, swift being one, and set a fixed price fee, because in reality the fee is actually much lower than 3GBP. As long as your conversion rates stick then this should be a good business. Good job
- dgellow 5y ago> We were stunned at the fees it was costing us to move money across borders with existing fintech solutions Isn’t TransferWise already pretty cheap?
- hawk_ 5y agoFor transfer above a certain amount the .5% or whatever they charge still adds up.
- tvaughan 5y agoDepends on currency. Wise takes ~3% to transfer USD/EUR to CLP (Pesos Chilenos)
- wdaareg 5y agoNot relative to our pricing! For a £5k transfer we're charging 83% less than Wise. I'm certainly happy to pay 83% less for substantially the same service :)
- dgellow 5y agoI'm a happy Wise user, they provide me an easy way to get paid by my US clients when doing contracting work and offer very quick transfers for quite cheap. If you can compete as well as you say on a pair USD-EUR I would be more than happy to try out your service. Is there a way to get notified when you will add support for other currencies?
- phphphphp 5y agoA clever solution, nice work. That said, I'm very curious about your long term view on this model as a differentiator. My understanding is that Wise fees are essentially a pass through to customers, so your differentiator is that you've chosen "slow and cheap" over "fast but costly"... but if you validate that there's a market for "slow and cheap" alongside "fast but costly" won't Wise (and others) introduce the "slow and cheap" option because you'll threaten their place in the market as you also offer "fast but costly"? The profitability of Wise is not predicated on "fast but costly". I am not a fan of "...but what if you're copied..." argument against the viability of a business, because often the easy-to-copy outward expression of a business is only possible because of difficult-to-copy underlying business strategies. However, in this case, Wise do share the same underlying business strategies as Atlantic (that is, transact efficiently and take a small fee) so the only differentiator (as far as I know) is the product decision to offer cheap + slow (and therefore be able to transact even more efficiently). There's lots of room for different players in the space and so "there's room for us alongside Wise" is a very valid answer, I am guessing there's a different answer though, so I'd love to understand what you imagine the future to be: maybe you have some insight into why, actually, there are operational complexities that mean Wise aren't going to ever offer this service in the same way. Thanks!
- Gareth321 5y agoIf they force Wise to offer slow and cheap then we all win. I just checked the cost on a GBPUSD transfer, and it's 350 pounds + some kind of exchange rate cut. The difference between Wise and Atlantic is an entire ocean and I'm not convinced Wise will undermine their gravy train by trying to compete with a plucky upstart. Only if said plucky upstart becomes a billion dollar company; any by then they don't need to worry about being competed out of existence.
- wdaareg 5y agoWe're trying to put that gravy back into your pocket! These are the exact problems that motivated us to build this product - because we ourselves were forced to pay these fees when we moved to the UK from the US.
- 5y ago
- aeyes 5y agoIt looks like this is for people transferring money from the UK to other countries. But you are not using a .co.uk domain and it doesn't say so on the first page of your website. I have to guess that you only to transfers from the UK from the £3 price tag.
- mfrommil 5y agoGreat to see more competition in this space. Would be nice to see currency pairs not currently supported by other services (like wise, etc.) If I was going to transfer 4 or 5 digits of $$, even if I save a couple bucks of fees, I would choose the more trustworthy option (e.g. Wise has thousands of reviews across websites, social media, etc.), even if it means an extra bit in fees. But if you can support currency pairs that aren't supported by the existing players in the space, would give potential customers a very good reason to try out a new app like this.
- blunte 5y ago> I would choose the more trustworthy option Gotta start somewhere. They can't have a track record until they have some history. The low flat transfer price will make them more attractive than Wise, so that should help them get some following (and reviews).
- asb 5y agoDo you have any plans to offer EUR => GBP?
- wdaareg 5y agoWe sure do! We're actively working on our EU license and that will enable inbound EUR payments for UK residents, plus EU residents will be able to use the service. We can't wait to expand further.
- briodf 5y agoGreat to see more and more competition in the money transfer space, congrats on the launch. Here's a little comparison by amount received (incl. all fees) with the cheapest provider found on Monito.com (comparison site I co-founded) vs Atlantic Money: Sending £1000 to: - EUR: €1,199 vs €1,196.83 - CAD: CA$1,693 vs CA$1,686 - PLN: zł5,737 vs zł5,826.58 - USD: $1,311 vs $1,310 As we can see, the competition on pricing for popular routes will be quite intense! Do you plan on mainly focusing on customers who need to send larger amounts? Or are you planning on developing other differentiators (New routes, customers service, user experience etc...))
- mritchie712 5y ago> USD: $1,311 vs $1,310 Who is the alternative in this case? So Atlantic is saving me $1?
- vineyardmike 5y agoIt looks like this represents the "amount received" so it looks like they're costing you a dollar.
- fsniper 5y agoDo you plan on having transfers without exchanging currencies? I have 2 country presence and have Euro accounts on both countries. Ireland/Turkey. Also will you be adding more countries?
- wdaareg 5y agoI would be interested to learn more about why you're unable to transfer money directly between those two accounts!
- fsniper 5y agoI can do it through a Swift transfer. It is costly, as there can be multiple banks in between and each bank applies their own "un advertised" fees. Also it can't be tracked. It's like throwing money to a worm hole. It can arrive at the destination in a few working days or not. No view into what happens in the worm hole. So swift transfers are unpredictable. There is Revolut, which can do this free or low cost, but lately this service seems to be akin to swift transfers and can be fee deducted by interim banks. Our circle has been using Revolut for similar transfers up until some of us fee deducted by huge amounts. So this leaves us with Transferwise. And Transferwise only does exchange transfers across borders. This is not really something we are happy with because there are exchange taxes applied in Turkey to move it into the Euro account back.
- throwthere 5y agoI think this is fantastic! there’s a lot of pessimism here about people kind of assuming you’re taking it out of the spread. Sounds like that’s not happening, and for people who actually use these services they’re going to compare the end amount of final currency among services anyway— which you show front and center. So it almost doesn’t matter what people are saying here but I wonder if there’s a way you can be more transparent about the “live rate.” Why are other services so expensive?
- wdaareg 5y agoOther services are expensive, because they try to serve everyone - they are basically cross subsidizing between their customers that make them all of their money (by moving larger amounts), who end up paying for their customers who move small amounts. On average, this doesn't seem like a big deal, but it ends up being expensive for the folks who move most of the money.
- zajio1am 5y agoIs this really that unusual? Bank i use offers international payments for fixed fee (~8 EUR) for many years.
- supermatt 5y ago8 EUR > 3 GBP
- karaokeyoga 5y agoCheck the FX!
- wdaareg 5y agoThis is a great question and we see it a lot. Really, it highlights just how opaque FX fees are in the industry, particularly with large institutions. It's important to notice that we're the only product that combines a fixed fee and zero FX markup. Banks are charging you a fixed fee, but marking up the FX rate by 1-3% typically. So you're actually paying 8 EUR explicitly + 1-3% hidden fee which, in total, is a (very high!) variable fee.
- zajio1am 5y agoI wrote about just international money transfers within the same currency, not about currency exchange. These are different and independent services. It is true that the bank has high spread, so i do not use it for money exchanges, just for money transfers. But as others wrote, saing 'zero FX markup' is opaque and nonsensical. Proper way to is just to annonuce your spread. Even companies that have some FX markup can offer smaller spread than 'zero FX markup' if they have balanced flows between currencies and can pair most of their transactions internally.
- rory 5y agoWeird bug on this site... I have crappy $10 plug-in earbuds, and when I open atlantic.money I hear periodic "clicks" of interference roughly every 1300-1500ms (the interval is constant, I'm just not sure of the precise timing). I can't hear anything with the headphones unplugged, and it goes away as soon as I close the tab. Anyone have an idea what could cause this?
- wdaareg 5y agoThanks for raising, have shared with the web team!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ninjahattori 5y agoI would love to use this if I could transfer from CAD to INR.
- mellowagain 5y agoLooks nice. Are there any plans to support CHF (Swiss Franc)?
- wdaareg 5y agoWe're absolutely working on expanding our network over time, and CHF is on the list
- remote_only_eng 5y ago
- searchableguy 5y agoPossible to add INR as an option for transfer to? Love the site and product otherwise.