London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/london-s-lonely-unicorn-two-frugal-expats-and-their-billion-dollar-startup

by tokenadult • 9 years ago

276 176 9 years ago

bloomberg.com

kbenson2• 9 years ago

As the embedded video alludes, it's not that revolutionary an idea to pool transactions and use local resources to fulfill more cheaply if possible.

That said, the world is full of wildly successful companies that just executed well on not very revolutionary ideas, and they provide real value that was largely absent before they grew to prominence. Sometimes it's not about doing something new, it's about doing it well, or doing it in a way that allows more people access.

jlg233• 9 years ago

Or, in the case of international money transfer: They see through the existing system and just openly do what most banks have been doing all the time behind the scenes, passing most of the savings to the customer.

The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justification for the existence of the new players. (Mind you, still a great win for the customer!)

lumberjack• 9 years ago

The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justification for the existence of the new players.

Yes exactly what I was thinking. But by that time Transferwise could be a reputable brand with lots of customers so they could pivot to offer other financial services.

kriro2• 9 years ago

Ideally this is solved by positioning. Since they are associated with this concept it should be hard to copy as long as they executed it well, even if (or especially if) it's copied by a huge traditional banking brand (e.g. a British bank). At the very least they should be positioned well for a buyout (as that's likely the best way of going about it by a traditional bank).

csomar• 9 years ago

I don't think it's possible without significant restructuring (for banks). They have huge costs that TransferWise is avoiding.

elastic_church2• 9 years ago

sometimes you say? it is always about execution

being passionate about things that nobody wants, and disrupting things nobody cares about will get you nowhere. a low margin grocery store fulfills a need and thats why they are everywhere.

phil212• 9 years ago

Ideas are utterly worthless. Execution is everything.

I freely give every single idea (some actually valuable!) I've ever had away for free. Because I know if someone is better at implementing it than I am, they are the ones who provided the world value. Not me for dreaming it up and then doing nothing about it - there are millions of me's, and ideas without execution are not interesting.

kbenson2• 9 years ago

I guess if you only value ideas by the money that ends up in your pocket in the end, then sure, ideas a worthless and execution is the only thing that matters.

nickpsecurity• 9 years ago

For an example, FedEx established the business model of paying extra to get something there sooner in a high-volume, economical way. It's always been there in a custom, luxury form despite the early doubters acting like it was a dumb idea entirely. Fred Smith and company just executed it very well vs all prior attempts. Billions in income followed.

dmoo• 9 years ago

Like Drucker said, there is efficiency and effectiveness. When you do both it's a good outcome.

mstade• 9 years ago

I use this service all the time when I need to transfer cash,. It's simpler than using a bank, often faster, and almost universally cheaper. The idea is old as dirt, but execution is everything, and boy do they execute well.

CamMacFarlane• 9 years ago

This is great, as someone who frequently transfers money from the US to Canada I wish I had known about this sooner. Hopefully they can actually make some money.

petra4• 9 years ago

> I wish I had known about this sooner.

A common occurence these days, with the rapid rate of innovation. It's like we're missing some efficient product discovery tool.

deathhand• 9 years ago

If there was only a news aggregation site based upon the startup culture where these sorts of things can be promoted.

hackerboos2• 9 years ago

I use them every two weeks to move Canadian dollars to British pounds.

Nobody else comes close in terms of exchange rates and level of service.

briandear• 9 years ago

WorldFirst does. There are plenty of competitors in the space that do a great job at this.

Bombthecat• 9 years ago

They are bleeding a ton of money.

For there idea to work they need to get money transferred into all directions...

They had Nigeria as a supported country. But they removed it (sadly)

But money was probably transferred only one direction. So they lost money.

Lordarminius2• 9 years ago

They had Nigeria as a supported country. But they removed it ...

I am a Nigerian and I consider this an unpardonable failure of basic market research. If they had spent a quality hour of their time investigating the Nigerian market, they would have found out that inflow overwhelmingly dwarfs outflow.

Makes you wonder what their decision making methodology is

kore2• 9 years ago

If you have a need to transfer large amounts of USD-to-CAD or vice versa, have a look into Norbert's Gambit. It'll effectively let you perform the transfer for 0.2%. Probably not worthwhile for small amounts, but if you're converting ~$10k, might be worth the effort.

This site seems to break it down: https://norbertsgambit.com/

Someone1234• 9 years ago

That's all kinds of sketchy, least of all because of the taxes, but also because you're playings games with public stock that they or anyone else could manipulate.

I've used TransferWise for over $8K and think the service is fantastic. I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole and my git is screaming "scam!"

inopinatus• 9 years ago

Is this basically electronic Hawala?

jlg233• 9 years ago

Yes, though without the negative connotations the term "hawala" carries in the West because all transactions are still fully documented and the broker gets a much lower share (for pure monetary international transfers in the hawala system, fees can go as high as 60% with 25% already being considered a "good deal"). And one does not have to pass high/drunk armed guards and is not paid from a huge pile of cash that just sits on the floor in a corner of the room.

PS: Sorry, no source for the numbers but my own experience in Northwestern Africa.

true_religion2• 9 years ago

At 60% fees and drunk/armed guards, Hawala sounds like money laundering except... even worse rates.

aaronbrethorst• 9 years ago

Value creation > 'innovation'

uladzislau• 9 years ago

Read about some challenges they are facing as many other money transfer startups. It's actually a very hot niche at the moment.

http://uladzislau.com/online-money-transfer-startups/

jerf• 9 years ago

(Tone: Genuine question I'm curious about because I don't know fintech.) How does this model end up interacting with wire transfer laws?

rfrey• 9 years ago

From (way down in) the article:

"In April, after New Hampshire’s banking department cited TransferWise for operating in the state for a year without meeting money-transmitter regulations, the company agreed to pay a penalty equivalent to the fees it had earned during that time. (The startup has since begun offering its services in the U.S. through a partnership with a fully licensed bank, New York-based Community Federal Savings Bank, and has obtained its own money-transmitter licenses in many states.)"

mingabunga2• 9 years ago

I've been using this for the past 6 months. It works really nicely and removes a lot of friction - it's just like sending money to another local account. I've paid people in Netherlands, Australia, Germany and they recently started allowing US$ paid to Ukraine, so I've been able to pay software developers there.

nikon• 9 years ago

Forgive my off-topicness - do you have any advice on sourcing developers in the Ukraine specifically?

ccozan• 9 years ago

Generally LinkedIn. Just say your what are you looking for, and they will find you.

I am getting at least 2-3 of them ( meaning, companies in Ukraine ) per month.

mingabunga2• 9 years ago

Not really sorry, I've been using the same devs there for the past 9 years. They've been great

Animats• 9 years ago

That's what banks do. They compute the net flow, and each day, there's a settlement payment between the banks if there's a significant difference.

zby• 9 years ago

Have you used UKForex before Transferwise? How do they compare?

ucaetano2• 9 years ago

If you're poor, you're an immigrant.

If you're rich, you're an expat.

twic• 9 years ago

If you're rich and old you're an émigré.

robjan• 9 years ago

They are an émigré from their country of birth or an immigrant into their new country.

blowski2• 9 years ago

Reminds me of the Einstein quote:

If I am proved correct,” he said, “the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew.

WildUtah• 9 years ago

^rich^white

CptJamesCook3• 9 years ago

There have been dozens of articles written about rich "immigrant founders" the past few weeks.

https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/02/01/study-immigrant-st...

http://fortune.com/2017/01/30/tech-immigrant-founders/

https://hardavenue.com/immigrant-founders-trump-muslim-ban/

etc

Swizec2• 9 years ago

While this sounds true and everyone likes to harp on it, there's another consideration. An immigrant is somebody who intends to stay forever, an expat is someone who plans to go back home eventually.

There are also legal considerations. My US visa for example specifically says it's a non-immigrant visitor's work visa. Legally speaking, I'm an expat.

Culturally ... I like to call myself a dirty immigrant. Riles people up a bit :P

edit for background: I come from the border between Central and Eastern Europe. Some say Slovenia is one, some say another. In the UK I would most definitely be an evil evil immigrant. In the US nobody really cares as long as I'm not brown.

ucaetano2• 9 years ago

Same here, technically I'd be an expat in the country I currently live and work. But technically, an "illegal immigrant" from Mexico in the US is also an expat.

So I'm an immigrant, and my grandparents were immigrants and refugees.

notahacker• 9 years ago

I've seen an awful lot of references to Eastern Europeans in short to medium-term stints in the UK as "migrant workers" and nearly as many characterisations of British retirees buying property in Spain as "expats"...

NoMyGodIsThis• 9 years ago

" I come from the border between Central and Eastern Europe. Some say Slovenia is one, some say another."

Compulsory link, shirley? https://youtu.be/bwDrHqNZ9lo

thecupisblue• 9 years ago

As far as I remember, you're in SF right now? Mind sharing what kind of Visa you're on? Croatian here, so wondering what kind of Visa I could get to work in US except a H-1B.

smnscu• 9 years ago

Reminds me of the recent The Grand Tour episode, when they mention how if you're famous for something positive you're called British, otherwise you're Scottish/Welsh.

mjw1007• 9 years ago

Do they give any reason to believe that what they're mentioning is true?

I've looked informally for this phenomenon and I haven't been able to find it.

The only concrete piece of research I know on a specific case came up negative: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-349098...

acchow• 9 years ago

It's about color, not wealth.

clamprecht• 9 years ago

Search Google Images for "expat" and "immigrant", and see what the difference is in the people you see in the photos. Skin color.

maverick_iceman• 9 years ago

Interesting that they use the word expat instead of immigrant. I don't think if these two were from Asia/Africa they would have been called expats.

idiot_stick• 9 years ago

I don't think if these two were from Asia/Africa they would have been called expats.

And you base that on....? Why do people search for injustice?

alistproducer2• 9 years ago

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.[0]

-MLK

[0] https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

CptJamesCook3• 9 years ago

The left has been teaching people to believe they are victims for more than a decade now. That's why they search for injustice.

Kexoth2• 9 years ago

Actually most western European countries have 'expat programs' for eastern European countries with job offerings mostly as babysitters/valets/waiters.

They're intended for young people & the stay is between 6 months & 2 years.

In that context 'expats' is used for temporal residence in foreign countries with no intentions to be made permanent. It's mostly intended for young people to travel around, not much for the financial benefit.

So in my understanding it's the intentions which define, not skin color / continents.

PS. The written above is a definition from my personal point of view :)

_m8fo2• 9 years ago

It's pretty well known that (relatively affluent) white immigrants are called expats instead of immigrants.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jnylander/2015/04/03/in-china-wh...

umeshunni• 9 years ago

Eh - no. I was a 'brown' person living in the middle east and called an expat.

Expat implies an intent to return or a temporary worker and is a frequently used term in the middle east/asia. E.g https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-25/expat-fee...

Not everything has to be viewed from an SJW angle

blowski2• 9 years ago

If they were working in a coffee shop, they would also be called immigrants.

raverbashing• 9 years ago

To be honest expat does not necessarily imply a permanent move

throwawaytwise4• 9 years ago

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it.

It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their (mandatory) team-holidays were, how everything and everyone was so siiiick here, mate.

I did all the rounds up to the one with the VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) and then spent the rest of the hour bragging about how last week he had turned down an "amazing engineer" (his words) because he wasn't "cool enough" to be one of them. You know, he was a bit of a loser, mate.

It really felt like a cult of ego-obsessed people with some narcissistic disorder; even worse, it felt like everyone was lying.

That said I'm sure there are a lot of nice people who work there, this is just my experience so take it with a grain of salt. The product is also good, I used it a few times myself.

averagewall2• 9 years ago

It sounds like a culture that's not objectively bad, just different from what you respect. People use slang words and bragging everywhere. They're just different words and different ways of expressing their brags.

But to be honest, they do have a very noble goal and they have reason to be proud of it. Poor people all over the world are constantly pouring money into Western Union and banks for this seemingly trivial service.

throwawaytwise4• 9 years ago

they do have a very noble goal

LOL

they ain't no charity, their goal is to make $$$, period. Incidentally they do so in a way that is also good for their customers, but that's nothing more than a nice coincidence.

We're all grown ups, I don't need to be sugar coated with all the "we're making the world a better place" nonsense. But no, these people want you to believe in their damn dream, as if working 5 days a week to make them rich wasn't enough already. That's true for many companies out there, not just TransferWise.

Also, mocking former candidates because they aren't cool enough is objectively a shit culture in my book, eh.

KevinBongart2• 9 years ago

Their marketing material in NYC was incredibly douchey, like "stick it to the big banks".

I was using Xoom (https://www.xoom.com) at the time, which had a brand image of a trustworthy and cut-the-bullshit kind of financial company.

TransferWise's subway ads focused on a people's revolution: http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Rjm3dY.BU5FmdQmId3yj1w--/Y... or http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03525/TransferWi... are two examples.

Another thing that threw me off is how needlessly technologically-heavy their website was at the time: Javascript front-end app with big animations and the unavoidable browser-incompatibility bugs it created back then (you refresh the page and it redirects to the root page for instance).

Anyway, I tried it once and had slightly better rates than Xoom, enough to convince me to go through their bullshit to save some money on large transfers, but I almost kept using Xoom because of how much I didn't like Transferwise's image.

All that to say: I'm not surprised by your interview experience, it perfectly matches what I assumed from their team.

petra4• 9 years ago

Is it really their fault, or is i just how marketing works in this day an age ?

Heck, they even got you, and you hated their marketing!

stronglikedan2• 9 years ago

VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding)

I agree that a VP in a late stage interview should not be asking this of the candidate, but I will say that I recently had to hire a new team member, and FizzBuzz helped me to immediately weed out the candidates during the initial interview. I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me the code. Another acted like I was asking him to produce something for the company for free, before even reading the three lines of requirements, and then tried to back peddle when he did read them - of course, I was already holding the interview room door open for him by that time. All told, a FizzBuzz test in the initial round saved hours of my (and their) time.

rattray2• 9 years ago

Out of curiosity, what sort of (non-personality) mistakes did you see?

jldugger• 9 years ago

I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me the code.

I'm still trying to reconcile this with my own experience at work. I work for a university department, and hire student employees. Zero people have ever failed our fizzbuzz question on the interview, while it was on there.

You would think that post graduation there would be a _lower_ number of degree holders who can't code.

orthoganol• 9 years ago

Ah that definitely explains the vibe I got from their "naked march" where they got what looks like a sea of frat boys and sorority girls (I assumed largely their employees/ friends, in reality) to strip down to their underwear and scream and shout and walk around for a "viral" stunt. I know I'm just piling on here, but the vibe certainly had some doucheyness and it made me think their founders were the party bro types trying to get rich.

[http://www.techworld.com/news/startups/transferwise-leads-na...

throwawaytwise4• 9 years ago

I assumed largely their employees

Nah, they just paid a bunch of random guys to pretend to be hysterically excited about low-fees bank transfers. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufqOLl6ajE

da02• 9 years ago

I remember Nerve.com doing the same thing back in the mid-90s. (Correction: 2000 Maybe you see some more similarities: https://vimeo.com/2413616 )

Were you impressed by anything at TranferWise? Their security and stability? Maybe their confidence comes from top-notch engineering skills?

mrb• 9 years ago

It is funny how I will instinctively trust more an anonymous post on HN over an article published on a "reputable" site like Bloomberg...

nothrabannosir2• 9 years ago

Among others this is probably confirmation bias at work. I'm feeling exactly the same right now.

throwawaytwise4• 9 years ago

To be fair the original article is good though, it presents different sides of the story and reports criticisms too. There's even an interesting history fact on how old the tradition of swapping currency actually is!

My intention wasn't to discredit their product or the article, but to offer a (hopefully interesting) "insider view" on a certain kind of culture.

danpalmer• 9 years ago

I worked in the same coworking space as them when it was ~2-5 people, and chatted with the founders a bunch at lunch. They were honestly nice people who seemed to genuinely care about doing something well.

Not trying to down-play your experience, thank you for sharing, just providing my own experience.

late2part• 9 years ago

Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

swang• 9 years ago

It would be nice if this could be applied to places where I don't have a bank account and just need say, $500USD converted into another country's currency. My bank here allows me to withdraw twice from foreign bank ATMs but I have a feeling they are messing with exchange rates and I'm still stuck with a bad deal. I won't even bother with real exchanges in the States or in the other country. Everything just feels like highway robbery.

chx• 9 years ago

I am just a very satisfied customer. They managed to be cheaper than using even a dedicated FX company for international transfers (I do Canada-Austria, Austria-Canada, Canada-Hungary) and the process is pretty seamless and it doesn't take longer than a SWIFT transfer usually.

CalRobert• 9 years ago

I will say, their product is excellent and I've used it to transfer quite a bit of cash over the last few years. I tried a competitor of theirs (currencyfair) and the UI wasn't as nice a few years ago, which was about the only differentiator. Hope they can turn a profit soon.

throwaway5752• 9 years ago

"The company says it is always improving the software that automates the matching process, including complicated solutions that cover, say, a pound-to-dollar transaction with multiple dollar-to-euro and euro-to-pound swaps. If TransferWise can’t find a match, it becomes a market maker, using its own money to complete the deal in the hope that another customer who wants to send at least as much money the opposite way comes along later. In doing so, it is essentially acting just like a traditional foreign exchange broker."

And this is how it spectacularly imploded 5 years from now.

pdeuchler• 9 years ago

Yeah this caught my eye as well... seems like an extraordinary increase in risk for a relatively small gain, not to mention the other costs of changing your business model from a glorified escrow service to an investment bank.

I hope for their sake they have someone who knows what they're doing running that department and hedging appropriately...

theoh• 9 years ago

Heh, that reminds me of Yaron Minsky's talk about Caml, in which he stresses the need for absolute correctness of software when you are a market maker or arbitrageur, at risk of your high-throughput trading engine going off the rails...

schintan• 9 years ago

USD to INR rate is less competitive than an Indian bank. Probably because not many adopters in India.

EliRivers• 9 years ago

Hello all.

I used transferwise in November to move money to Japan.

The exchange rate applied was the actual fucking exchange rate. I paid Transferwsise a couple of quid.

Worth every fucking penny. Worth swearing. Use Transferwise.

DarthMader• 9 years ago

What's the foremost authority for realtime ForEx rates?

phillc734• 9 years ago

Don't know about foremost, but I always use xe.com

isolli• 9 years ago

There is no foremost authority in foreign exchange, it's mostly an unregulated market.

blibble• 9 years ago

there isn't one, because that's not how the market works

it's like asking what's the world price for a tuna sandwich, there's a few million places you could buy one, and they all have a different price

keeptrying• 9 years ago

Hmmm I heard these guys make less than $10million a year in revenue.

Possibly the lowest revenue to valuation ever?

jkaljundi• 9 years ago

Their revenue in the year ending March 2016 was 28 million pounds, transaction volume 800 million pounds per month. Last September they already did 5 million pounds a month, growing ~2x / year.

to3m• 9 years ago

In case anybody else is wondering - these details are public. Any time you see a story about a UK company, and this one is no exception, you can get some information about it from the company registry at Companies House: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/

1. type in company name or part thereof

2. select it from the list

3. click the "people" tab and see if you recognise any names from the article or whatever (this can be helpful if there were several likely-looking results)

4. click "filing history" and download the accounts and annual return (with list of shareholders)

Most of the time this isn't actually very interesting, but if you're being nosey, there's no reason not to. (The reduced accounts you have for small companies (turnover < £15m, something like that...) are usually particularly unilluminating, though some of the figures can be suggestive and the shareholders list may be interesting.)

kristianp• 9 years ago

How does this compare to xe.com, which I have used in the past? They're a canadian company, been doing this for a long time, low cost.

rohi• 9 years ago

I think https://www.instarem.com/ does something similar.

dboreham• 9 years ago

Surprised to not see any mention here of legal and regulatory risk. One of the reasons moving money between countries is hard and expensive is that it is often done by people either trying to avoid tax liabilities, and/or by people involved in illegal activities and as a result governments are understandably keen to tie transfer agents up in rules regulations and liabilities. Ask HSBC...

Symbiote• 9 years ago

They're compliant with British regulations.

I was given extra checks to make before my first transfer, since I was paying into an unusual type of account.

phillc734• 9 years ago

Once my total transfers had exceeded £15k, I was required to undergo further identity verification checks. Pretty standard KYC procedures I thought.

_ymw0• 9 years ago

While I haven't used TranferWise yet, I think it's a brilliant idea (and yes, their exchange rates look phenomenal)!

There's also a service called PeerTransfer for foreign tuition payments that essentially aggregates outgoing payments, and buys forex in bulk.

Another cool development in the area is Visa (The Card issuer) opening up their APIs to allow direct Card-Card transfers like with Square Cash when they just started out. Barring regulatory hurdles, this method (Card-Card transaction using the Visa/MasterCard/Amex network) is probably the most efficient way of sending money across currencies.

phillc734• 9 years ago

Transferwise is by far the best international money transfer service I have ever used.

I regularly move money between Euros and Pounds Sterling, sometimes into Australian dollars too. These are typically not large monetary amounts, maybe up to a few thousand Euros, but often just a couple of hundred.

I haven't specifically counted, but I gueas I've made around 25 transfers with Transferwise. Compared to using banks directly, and even other "traditional" Forex services over the last 16 years, Transferwise is fast and very low friction.

I did have to verify my identity once my transfered totals had exceeded £15k, but that has been the only delay. They just do a very, very good job.

kriro2• 9 years ago

I wonder how much of their valuation the Brexit vote cost them. It might eradicate a good chunk of their customer base. How would one go about modeling this, how are VCs modeling this?

Imagine a company built around some service for expatriates in Britain closed their series A and their series B was happening sometime around/after Brexit. I guess that would be down round territory?

lordnacho2• 9 years ago

Transferwise is a great service, I use it myself. They even give you a volume discount if you ask for it.

But what really surprises me is that it got to where it is at all. If you look at it, their business model is not revolutionary. Their prices are not cheaper than for example UKForex (OzForex), who provide the exact same service, and were around years before.

The business is simply a click interface for exchanging money; you send in your currency, and they send in the agreed amount to the other side. The price difference between these shops is minimal.

It could not be simpler. I've traded currencies as a professional, there's not a whole lot of other steps behind the scenes.

But I doubt most people have heard of UKForex. Transferwise however are on billboards everywhere, acting as though they invented the idea of swapping one currency for another. And acting as though you are cutting out the middle man, which you are not. You still need a bank.

Well played to them though, it seems they've used some of that startup hype attitude to get themselves a nice little business.

orf• 9 years ago

The TV adverts and billboards where also particularly good, involving people spitting out their cup of tea in surprise when they realised they could save money with transfer wise.

Very English, very effective.

gabemart• 9 years ago

The first-run experience of Transferwise blows UKForex out of the water.

If I want to convert 1000 EUR to USD, the number one thing I care about is how many USD I will get for my EUR.

The front page of Transferwise has a giant input right at the top of the page that tells me exactly how many USD I will get, and tells me that rate is guaranteed for 48 hours.

The front page of UKForex has a much smaller input, and it's "market rate" - if I want to find out how many USD I will actually get, I have to register and create an account.

This is just one example, but it speaks to my whole experience of Transferwise vs. other foreign exchange providers. The user experience is best-in-class.

falsedan4• 9 years ago

  > They even give you a volume discount if you ask for it.

Just contact support? How much volume do they look for?

I'm struggling moving USD -> GBP, hitting the daily ACH limits & frustrated that the creaky US banking system doesn't have a better interbank transfer system than wiring funds for tens of dollars a pop (and presenting a physical form).

lordnacho2• 9 years ago

Yeah just go on the chat and tell them you've sold a house.

fapjacks• 9 years ago

Transferwise was great, at first. I was an early adopter of Transferwise. Some years ago, my brother (and I, sort of) started filming documentaries and I handled a lot of the money and payments to some of the people involved in his documentaries overseas. At one point without warning, Transferwise left my brother stranded in Europe without a way to get money. Transferwise held onto a few thousand dollars for a few weeks without any contact or update or anything. Every time I would email or call, I would get some customer support who would ignore my replies or transfer me around with increasing wait times between transfers until they hung up, sort of typical phone hell. When we finally got a hold of someone at Transferwise, it turns out they decided that what we were doing was a cover for illicit activities (which is pretty bizarre, if you knew the people involved, and despite his published documentaries, footage, and even the receipts we kept for tax purposes).

Having family stranded overseas by this billion-dollar unicorn left a really bad taste in my mouth. The worst part was being left with absolutely zero recourse for the thousands of dollars that they were just holding on to for weeks without any contact with us. If you don't want to serve us because of some bizarre, hallucinatory conspiracy, fine, but don't hold onto the money for weeks in the interim without an explanation.

London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

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