Foreign currency transfers

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julians

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Does anyine know who is best for foreign currency transfers (gbp to euro if it matters) these days?

I have a hifx account and they were decent 12 years ago,but i havent used them since and i have no idea if they are still competetive. Im not talking about a huge sum here (£5k ish) if that makes much difference.
 
IDAMAY said:
+1 for Revolut. The ap is great and enables you to switch between multiple currencies including pound, euro and dollar amongst many others. No charges for transfers or for using their card abroad. IIRc there may be some limits on cash withdrawls.
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Revolut is a must for regular visits to EU, not tried it in USA yet - caveat is you’re only getting 400€ pcm from an atm and you’re totes FOC transaction limit is £5k pcm - but at least that gives you a good amount of zero commission at the actual rate.

It’s app based and really makes you wonder how the high street banks will cope with the Uberfication of this segment of their sector....also, and it’s a strong USP - contactless works with a revolut card throughout the EU, it’s not region locked like the crappy U.K. bank cards or Apple Pay for that matter.



Rich, you nagged me for a year to get a card and wish we’d done it earlier....
 
Nigelpickin said:
Revolut is a must for regular visits to EU, not tried it in USA yet - caveat is you’re only getting 400€ pcm from an atm and you’re totes FOC transaction limit is £5k pcm - but at least that gives you a good amount of zero commission at the actual rate.

It’s app based and really makes you wonder how the high street banks will cope with the Uberfication of this segment of their sector....also, and it’s a strong USP - contactless works with a revolut card throughout the EU, it’s not region locked like the crappy U.K. bank cards or Apple Pay for that matter.



Rich, you nagged me for a year to get a card and wish we’d done it earlier....
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Revolut looks to have the best exchange rate, are there any catches/limits to sending money to a spanish bank account?
 
If you don’t opt for premium it’s limited to £5000 a month, but then again both my wife and I have an account so in reality our family is limited to £10000. It’s brilliant and even the basic account gives us transfers that occur on the day. We change £ to € then send the € to our French account and it all happens in a day. Honestly it is that simple. We also use the account features for our rental property so our personal accounts are never seen by clients.
 
mcanderson said:
If you don’t opt for premium it’s limited to £5000 a month, but then again both my wife and I have an account so in reality our family is limited to £10000. It’s brilliant and even the basic account gives us transfers that occur on the day. We change £ to € then send the € to our French account and it all happens in a day. Honestly it is that simple. We also use the account features for our rental property so our personal accounts are never seen by clients.
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Shame they dont allow top ups from amex cards, i get1.25% cashback on any spends on that
 
Hmm, not too impressed with revolut so far. Their exchange rates are as good as you could ever get, but they have really small top up limits, so I cant add more than £250 to my account per day. Just trying to speak to human now and get that increased.
 
Nigelpickin said:
I don’t understand that....we just drop 5k per month with no trouble....
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Seems that its a limit when topping up from a credit card - there is no limit if you transfer money into your revolut account directly from uk bank account.

Not a big deal I guess, would have just meant that if I could top up from my credit card then I could hold on to the money in my bank account for a month or so longer than transferring it directly from my uk bank account.
 
I'd not heard of Revolut before, but I have signed up. All looks very simple, although I'm reading through their T&Cs - interesting revelation is that if you use the card in an ATM machine or any kind of payment abroad when the markets are closed, they add a 0.5% - 2% margin on the transaction rather than just the Interbank. It would therefore make sense to ensure that you have plenty of Euros ready in your account rather than exchange during the transaction
 
revolut do appear a bit sneaky (but no more sneaky than the other banks), I'm playing with the app now, and there are a few things that are misleading - eg they say you can have a free atm/payment card - and you can, but you have to pay £5 for delivery, if you want free delivery of the card you have to change to their premium card (~£6 per month charge). And in addition to the 0.5%-2% charge for transactions (observed by Markc above) made when the markets are closed, they charge a standard 2% for any ATM cash withdrawals - presumably regardless of whether you have loaded your account with euros (assuming you are using a euro ATM) in advance or whether you are incurring an FX transaction as part of the ATM withdrawal.


I suspect (as usual when dealing with fin services) you need to be careful with what you're doing otherwise unexpected charges will be incurred.

As usual the devil is in the detail - but all the guff on their website about them being different to a regular bank is just that, guff. I have no doubt they will be cheaper than a regular bank by quite a margin, but the implication from their marketing is that there's a lot of free services, but when you actually try to use it, there's various catches and gotchas and charges.

I'll be using them for this transfer I need to do to spain - unless of course some significant charge/gotcha/limit appears just before I hit the confirm button.
 
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