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Payment in Euro - avoiding Bank & CC charges

R

rtrt

pfm Member
Anyone used Transferwise / similar (or aware of others) to pay for HiFi or other expensive stuff?

https://transferwise.com/

On the face of it looks like a good deal.

I think I paid something like 2 or 3% on top last time I did something like that.
 
If you are in Europe and you want to transfer money within Europe then you can use a European money bank transfer. There are no costs attached to that. Every customer of a bank in Europe has a European bank account number (IBAN). If you don't know that number you can ask your bank.
 
My euro current account permits no cost bank transfer to any other account in the euro zone. For rest of world payments of £3k or over Smart Currency is as good as it gets. Best for you (if they'll take it) is one of the few credit or debit cards that don't load the 'foreign' transaction rate.
PM if you want more detail.
 
If you are in the UK and transfer to Euro. they still stiff you for currency conversion.

I have used Transferwise, - very good. I purchased my Hypex N-cores from Holland

C £1 K.
 
If a retailer who takes credit card a Halifax Clarity credit card is unbeatable with no loading, no fees and interbank exchange rate.
 
Thanks vm everyone for all the responses.

I probably should have said in the original post that I'm uk based, so there is a currency conversion involved. iirc thats where the majority of 2-3% went last time.

Anyway more importantly, a quick update. I decided to do a trial run with a small purchase (80 something Euro) via ebay this evening. I went through the Transferwise process entering my details and the recipients details etc, only to get the following helpful message

We cannot currently accept payments to this recipient.

According to the sellers ebay posting, the do accept bank transfer and so of course provide their bank details - IBAN etc. Seller is based in Germany so not exactly on the edge of civilisation!

Anyway paypal went through in about 10 seconds flat.

Ive mailed the Transferwise support desk, will see what they respond with.

May try one of the other options mentioned above.
 
I used transferwise twice a year or two ago - worked perfectly. My guess is that the bigger they become the better and less risky they'll get.

It felt like a bit of a risk to send money to a random UK based bank account, but I did some checking and they are FSA (now FCA) registered. Sent one payment to Poland for about £250 and another to France for about £2k. The big benefit is that they convert at the mid rate rather than a really crappy buy rate - reckon I saved about £100 - £150 on the £2k transaction.

So impressive that I use them as an example in my lectures of how the internet creates new business structures/processes (one of the 6i's for anyone that's interested). The big banks must be in the process of losing a small but very lucrative income stream, like the impact of Skype/VOIP on BT's foreign phone calls.

Phil
 
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