Website to Compare Costs for International Money Transfers

[daydreamer]

I found a new site (new to me) for comparing the cost of money transfers to Thailand and other countries.  I have read that many members of this board, plus members of Sawatdee and Gaybutton boards use Transferwise to send money to Thailand.

I just did a comparison, and Transferwise came in least favorable in the comparison.  Yes, Transferwise may offer a bit higher of an exchange rate, but after their transfer fee, other options offered may give you a higher amount of Thai Baht.  Here's a screenshot of what I checked today - I used a 3,500 USD amount as an example, transferred and exchanged to THB.  

 

 

 

Just put in the amount of currency you want to check or transfer, and see for yourself that there may be better options to transfer your funds. 

The website is https://www.finder.com/international-money-transfers     

Scroll down the page a bit, and you will see this box:

 

 

 

 

It's not a huge savings, but maybe this will be helpful for some people.  Don't get hung up on the exchange rates, the bottom line is how much baht you will receive after the fees on the Thailand end.  You may find that other options are better than Transferwise.  The amount received column on the right side shows what you will receive from the different companies after the various exchange rates and fees are computed.

Also note that some of these companies have minimum amounts they will do a transfer for.  It looks like the larger the transfer, the more companies there are making offers.

Another nice thing about this comparison site is it tells you the expected amount of time the transfer will take, I noticed one of the options is within the hour, that's fast.

In the example I used of 3,500 USD to THB, the best transfer option was XE giving you 741 baht more than Transferwise.  That's about $24.70 more on that transfer, so it may be worth it to take a look.   I would rather have the 741 baht to spend in Thailand, than to give it to a transfer company.  I know everyone is looking to save a little here and there, given the climbing value of the baht.  This may be helpful to you.

 

 

[DivineMadman]

thanks.  useful info.

a couple of thoughts.

1.  The comparison site finder.com says it's "independent" but then acknowledges that it's paid by advertisers and on referrals, and then if you go to XE.com from Finder, there's a screen that says you are going to XE the "partner."  And there do seem to be prominent XE.com ads on the Finder.com website.  Also, there's an "article" on the Finder.com site that basically says XE is just better than Transferwise, which is a tad bit suspicious to me.  https://www.finder.com/xe-vs-transferwise  Maybe it's true, but I wonder if there might be a deliberate bias in the Finder.com site.  Just a thought.  

 

2.  When I compared the overall fee that Finder.com was saying Transferwise would impose it was higher (by roughly a paltry $6.00.) than the overall fees that Transferwise itself was actually quoting me at that time.  And the comparison site didn't use the then-current Transferwise exchange rate - they used a slightly worse exchange rate than Transferwise was offering.  So it's not like it's a real-time accurate comparison site.  hmmmm

Transferwise

Finder

3.  The folks at Transferwise have an article out XE (so there!) and they don't come down and say one is better than the other, but they point out that XE uses the SWIFT network and banks along that chain of transfers can all take a bite out, so the amount you are quoted to receive by XE is not guaranteed to be the amount you actually will receive.  XE tells you there may be charges along the way and that's not their problem.  https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/xe-money-transfer  [It's funny because I find the Transferwise "article" more trustworthy because doesn't quite come down so hard on the competition.

It will be interesting to see if there are any of those little charges on your transfer.  I certainly hope there aren't any.  (You do read about people transferring from the U.S. to a Thai bank and if it goes through an intermediary bank that intermediary bank(s) may all impose a fee.). Bangkok Bank imposes a fee of .25% on incoming transfers, but it maxes out 500baht so not a huge deal, but those sorts of things are hidden costs, or potential hidden costs, that Transferwise doesn't have.

So I think comparison shopping is definitely the way to go, but I guess I am a little dubious Finder.com so I would still go the actual transfer co to make sure I am getting an actual quote for comparison purposes and, personally, I would ding XE (or other SWIFT co's) for saying "there still might be other charges."  

 

[Up2u]

Divine Madman raises some good points. I also noticed the Finders website overstates TW fees. TW is now back in good graces with the Thai expat community as they have apparently "fixed" their coding issue on foreign transactions that are posted in our Thai bank passbooks. This is critical to us that must prove to Thailand Immigration that monies received are foreign sourced for our annual retirement extensions. If these transfer service companies use intermediary bank is used there could be problems. I personally use Bangkok Bank. 

[Guest]

Thank you for your posts guys.

 

I just tried the comparison site for UK ==>Singapore transfers.   £5000.

Firstly, there was a box stating OFX would be the best for my transfer.    I ignored that and clicking on the comparison tab, it turns out that OFX are NOT the best option, costing me SGD 53 more than the best shown on their site.      Stating OFX would be best is fraudulent in my view.

Worse still, they did not show Transferwise.    So I went onto Transferwise and that had the best rate and it's fast (well within 1 hour usually).

Additionally, Transferwise pay into the Singapore bank in SGD, so there is no additional fee for receiving the forex.    When I made transfers using HiFx (now owned by XE), then the exchange rate was worse and my bank had a charge of ~$10 for receiving foreign currency.

 

For Thai Baht, again Transferwise was not showing on their site.  

Both XE and World Remit came in a fraction better than Transferwise.   Charges levied by banks for receiving currency may or may not eliminate that advantage.

 

I always have used the XE mid-market rates as a benchmark for any foreign currency transaction.   Typically targetting 0.5% loss.     However, as XE are increasingly also pushing more of their own money transfer services, it's getting to the point where I should find an independent source of mid- market data.   Even if I don't yet have any reason to question XE data.

  

 

 

 

 

[2lz2p]

In addition, you may want to check requirements from these other transfer services.   In late 2018 when Bangkok Bank made their announcement re stopping ACH domestic transfers, I either used this finder site or something similar - Worldremit appeared to be a good choice re fees and exchange rate.  I joined giving them my USA residence address (which I still use as my legal residence) and everything seemed fine; but I did not immediately try a test transfer.  The next day, I rec'd an email from them wanting to know if I was resident of Thailand (Ooops! I didn't turn on my VPN before joining) as that was the URL that showed up -- I explained my legal residence was USA, but I temporarily did stay in Thailand as a retiree.  An answering email  with "sorry" but we cannot do transfers for anyone not within the geographical  area of where they were licensed to do business.

For some of the others, they want documentation sent to them to verify your identity and address.

So, for me, I will stick with Transferwise so long as they continue to deposit it in my Bangkok Bank Account as a foreign source of funds vs what they did last July in sending it through Kasikorn Bank and it showing up as a domestic transfer - but, as Up2U notes, they subsequently added a new "purpose" to their drop down list for "long stay" in Thailand. Based on my experience and others (members of the Transferwise Solutions Facebook Group), no one using that "purpose" has had a problem with the transfer not going to their account if it is with Bangkok Bank.

A friend sent me an email this morning asking my thoughts about a new transfer service called Everex that has no fees, creates a "wallet" to deposit the funds and from which you can transfer baht to your bank account or withdraw from ATM with no fees (cardless - uses codes for ATM machine). The company operating it is based in Bangkok.  I advised him that if he was using monthly income to qualify for his retirement extension, it would probably be a problem as it was most likely, IMO, to not show up if deposited to his bank account as a foreign source transfer.  Of course, using the ATM feature would not be acceptable for Immigration.  Their exchange rate was a bit less than TW - so I did a comparison for sending US$2,500 - with this new company, you would receive 50 more than from TW (deducting TW  fees and using their current exchange rate & using Everex exchange rate with no fees).  I also mentioned that it was probably high risk and if he plans to use he should do his due diligence and start out with a few small transfers.  Here is link if anyone is interested: https://everex.io/thv/MoneyTraveling/?utm_source=thaivisa&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=THV-Advertorial&utm_content=Advertorial-1&utm_term=International-Transfer-ATM#/invite/H6da1vz