Review of Wise: A Solution to Hidden Fees in International Money Transfers

Problem: When you send money internationally using a traditional bank, you're often charged hidden fees in the exchange rate. This can add up to a significant amount of money, especially if you're sending large amounts of money on a regular basis.

Solution: Wise is a money transfer service that offers a transparent and affordable way to send money internationally. Wise always uses the mid-market exchange rate and charges low, upfront fees. This means that you can save a significant amount of money on your international money transfers.

What is Wise?

Wise is the global technology company building the best way to move money around the world.

What’s the Wise account?

Wise, formerly TransferWise, is an international account for over 50 currencies, with instant, super-cheap money transfer, a card to spend in any currency, bank details to get paid in 30 different countries, multi-currency direct debits, and other revolutionary stuff.

Wise is on average 7x cheaper than old-school banks when you send, spend, or withdraw money around the world. (This depends on each country, please refer to our website to check out the coverage of our products)

What are the main features of the Wise account?

·  Balances – you can hold and convert money between the 50+ currencies in which we offer Wise balances. We always use the real exchange rate to convert your money which makes our service up to 7 times cheaper than traditional banks.

·  Bank details – we offer local bank details in 10 currencies (US dollars, British pounds, Euro, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and Singapore dollar, as well as Hungarian forint, Romanian leu and Turkish lira). You can use these bank details to receive money for free into your Wise account, which you can then convert or hold.

·   Direct debits – our US, British pound and Euro bank details allow you to set up direct debits to pay for utility bills or any other subscriptions or automated payments.

·  Debitcard – with the Wise Visa card, you can spend in over 200 countries without the hidden fees. Add it to your Apple or Google wallets for convenient use.

· Moneytransfers – send money to over 60 countries at the real exchange rate and low, transparent fees.

·  Jars – Money in a jar is kept separately from your balances, if you are saving it for something later. You can’t accidentally spend it with your debit card, and you can’t send it or use it to pay Direct Debits. You can open as many jars as you need to organise your money.

What’s Wise Business?

It’s the business account for going global. It’s the only business account you need to grow and operate internationally — without the high fees, hefty admin, and headache of a local bank.

Who is the Wise account for?

Wise is perfect for anyone living an international life. This includes expats, travellers, freelancers, international students, businesses, and digital nomads. Anyone who needs to send, spend or receive money internationally will benefit from using the Wise account and debit card.

What is our mission?

Our mission is money without borders - instant, convenient, transparent and eventually free.

How do we work towards achieving our mission?

Wise builds products that solve the problems of the clunky old-school financial system, making international banking and cross-currency payments fast, easy, transparent, and ridiculously cheap. Today, over 10 million people and businesses use Wise products to make money easier when they live, work, travel or do business around the world.

How did Wise start?

Wise, formerly Transferwise, was co-founded by Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann in 2011. It is one of the world’s fastest growing tech firms having raised over $1 billion in primary and secondary transactions from investors such as D1 Capital Partners, Lead Edge, Lone Pine, Vitruvian, IVP, Merian Chrysalis Investment Company Ltd, Andreessen Horowitz, Sir Richard Branson, Valar Ventures and Max Levchin from PayPal. Over 10 million people use TransferWise, which processes over £4.5bn in cross-border transactions every month, saving customers over £1bn a year.

Disclaimer: This is my affiliate link to Wise. If you click on it and open an account, I will earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Your support helps me to continue writing articles like this and sharing my honest opinions and experiences with you. Thank you!