Wise - using for transferring house sale money to UK?

[Pitre]

I've used my bank and an online foreign exchange company for moving money to and from the UK, GBP to euros and back. However, I'm selling my French home soon to come back to blighty and perceived wisdom from various sources suggests that using Wise could save many ££££s on the funds transfer.

Bit apprehensive about using it first time for a relatively large amount of cash... can someone who knows explain how Wise works please?

[DonkeyApple]

Not sure what to add in regards to how it works other than as your bank protected funds transit through the physical FX market you essentially are unprotected and more exposed to default risk. What this means is that for significant sums you probably just want to break it down into smaller tranches just to hedge that risk. I'd put Wise as being much more kosher than many physical fx operators but would still protect myself.

When wanting to check if your quote is fair, it's worth noting that FX has no central exchange so 'spot' can be interpreted differently for the purpose of profit. What I tend to do is pull up IG's two way OTC price and just check that the physical quote I have isn't more than a few figures out. Again, not much of a risk with Wise but still worth doing.

[Mezger]

Pitre said:

I've used my bank and an online foreign exchange company for moving money to and from the UK, GBP to euros and back. However, I'm selling my French home soon to come back to blighty and perceived wisdom from various sources suggests that using Wise could save many ££££s on the funds transfer.

Bit apprehensive about using it first time for a relatively large amount of cash... can someone who knows explain how Wise works please?

I've used Wise many times for transfers ranging from 1k to 50k GBP, superb service. For something like a house sale, I'd be tempted to break into smaller transfers.

[Tintop2k]

For that sort of amount have a look at Revolut. You can set up a Euro account and a GBP account linked together then if you're on the Premium plan (£6.99 a month) you get unlimited FX conversion between your accounts. So you deposit in Euros using your Swift/BIC details then you can withdraw in GBP.

https://www.revolut.com/our-pricing-plans

[dmahon]

Wise is a decent product. I have a direct debit set up for them and use their debit card for all of my foreign spending.

Assume they are one of the safer players out there and they do beat the banks, though the sums are never as big as I expect when compared with Barclays or HSBC. £hundreds rather than £thousands on 6 figures.

[dmahon]

Tintop2k said:

For that sort of amount have a look at Revolut. You can set up a Euro account and a GBP account linked together then if you're on the Premium plan (£6.99 a month) you get unlimited FX conversion between your accounts. So you deposit in Euros using your Swift/BIC details then you can withdraw in GBP.

https://www.revolut.com/our-pricing-plans

Never had a problem with Wise.

Lost access to my Revolut account and couldn’t get access to my own money to the extent I just gave up.

Wouldn’t trust Revolut as far as I could throw them personally.

[DonkeyApple]

dmahon said:

Tintop2k said:

For that sort of amount have a look at Revolut. You can set up a Euro account and a GBP account linked together then if you're on the Premium plan (£6.99 a month) you get unlimited FX conversion between your accounts. So you deposit in Euros using your Swift/BIC details then you can withdraw in GBP.

https://www.revolut.com/our-pricing-plans

Never had a problem with Wise.

Lost access to my Revolut account and couldn’t get access to my own money to the extent I just gave up.

Wouldn’t trust Revolut as far as I could throw them personally.

Indeed. They're a micro transaction business. Not appropriate for serious stuff. Superb for holiday cash etc and as soon as you have an issue with the account just bin it. For real money you don't want to be fannying around with on trend businesses that play fast and loose with regulations and with no viable support desk used to dealing with HNW transactions.