Large currency transfer - Transferwise?

1huge1

Hi All,

A family member needs to send c. €100,000 to another family member who is living in the UK.

He is with AIB but the fee's look to be quite high, for this kind of money, would people recommend using the likes of Transferwise?

I had a quick look on the Wise website and they said they can transfer (at todays rates) €100,000 into £86,201. Their fee would be €409.

The fx rate looks to be competitive but I am unsure about the fee, obviously seems good compared to what the banks would charge.

Also, would this be the only fee one could expect, would AIB or the receiving bank (Natwest) have any charges for using the Transfer Wise service.

Thanks in advance.

theteal

When buying the house over here, we used CurrencyFair iirc. That was the best rate at the time. No hidden fees, what was stated on the site was what was charged. Recipient bank was Natwest.

And yes, banks are a rip off for this kind of thing hence Revolut etc. is so popular.

1huge1

theteal wrote: »

When buying the house over here, we used CurrencyFair iirc. That was the best rate at the time. No hidden fees, what was stated on the site was what was charged. Recipient bank was Natwest.

And yes, banks are a rip off for this kind of thing hence Revolut etc. is so popular.

Thanks very much, yes this is to help with the purchase of a home as well.

The final amount seems to be very similar for the likes of CurrencyFair/TransferWise. Not much between them.

dennyk

Transferwise will do the currency conversion and will send the money in GBP to the recipient account via a UK bank transfer, so most likely there will be no fee for receiving it (though the recipient would have to check with their bank to be absolutely certain). Similarly, if it's funded via a SEPA bank transfer from his AIB account to Transferwise's Euro account IBAN, there should be no extra fee from AIB (though again, check his account's fee schedule to be sure). I've sent money back and forth between my US and IE accounts via Transferwise and the only fees involved were the Transferwise fees themselves.

(Do note that there are other funding options for Transferwise transfers, such as wire transfers, and using one of those instead of a SEPA transfer might incur a fee from the sending bank. They can sometimes be faster than a standard SEPA transfer if the money is needed urgently, but if there's no rush and it doesn't matter if the money won't get there for a few working days, just use the SEPA transfer to avoid any extra fees...)

athlone573

For large amounts (more than 20k or so) I would check out specialist brokers such as Caxton and oanda

You can use Wise as a benchmark.

1huge1

Thanks all for the replies, much appreciated.

We we're seeing minor differences between the fee's for Wise & Currencyfair, and seeing as the recipient already had a Currencyfair account, we transferred from AIB to the Eur IBAN from Currencyfair, and then from there into the English bank account, wen't very smoothly.

Have had to do it over a few days because of daily transfer limits from AIB.

athlone573 wrote: »

For large amounts (more than 20k or so) I would check out specialist brokers such as Caxton and oanda

You can use Wise as a benchmark.

We had already begun the transfers by the time I seen this post, out of curiousity, do you think there would of been much a difference, I was very impressed with the fee's from Currencyfair/Wise.

athlone573

1huge1 wrote: »

Thanks all for the replies, much appreciated.

We we're seeing minor differences between the fee's for Wise & Currencyfair, and seeing as the recipient already had a Currencyfair account, we transferred from AIB to the Eur IBAN from Currencyfair, and then from there into the English bank account, wen't very smoothly.

Have had to do it over a few days because of daily transfer limits from AIB.




We had already begun the transfers by the time I seen this post, out of curiousity, do you think there would of been much a difference, I was very impressed with the fee's from Currencyfair/Wise.

Maybe not, it looks like those rates are quite competitive (around 40bps for Wise and 50bps for CurrencyFair) and you have the comfort that they are well known companies, should have an EU license.