Wise vs Bank Transfer

Wise provides a simple easy to use international money transfer service with digital wallet capabilities. Their digital wallet, or Borderless account also gives the individual local banking details in 6+ currencies including, EUR, SGD, NZD, USD, GBP and AUD. Their Wise Borderless debit card backs on to their Borderless digital wallet allowing you to spend directly out of your multi-currency account balances.

What Wise offers individuals

• International money transfers
• Borderless multi-currency receiving accounts
• Borderless Debit Card - FX optimised debit card
• Android and Apple apps
• Send money to email address
• Scheduled and recurring transfers - sufficiently funded Borderless account required for this to work.

What Wise does not offer individuals

• Personal account management
• Full support for regular transfers. Currently regular transfers or ‘scheduled transfers’ need to have a Borderless multi-currency account balance. Find out which countries support Wise Borderless account.
• Cash pick up or international bill payments

Banks usually offer no more than conventional international money transfers to foreign bank accounts. However, some banks offer travel debit cards too.
 

What banks offer

• International money transfers.
• International travel cards (offered by some banks).

What banks don’t offer

• Cash pickup.
• Regular transfers.
• Account managers.
• Digital wallets.

In addition to the services Wise offers the individual, there are some features only available for a business. Unfortunately, as Wise is online only, a business customer does not have support with currency fluctuations and trends. Wise does however offer easy to use transactional foreign currency receipts and payments.

Scheduled transfers is a recently added feature. This can reduce admin for those standard monthly, weekly payments to suppliers and staff. A sufficient balance in the Business Borderless account is required. Wise will remind the account owner to make sure there is sufficient funds in the multi-current account. What is not supported is standing orders from a business bank account through Wise. This may mean that businesses need to alter their business structure to ensure continuous sufficent Borderless account funding.

What Wise offers businesses

• Batch payments
• Xero and Quickbook integration
• FX optimised business debit card
• Multi-user account access
• Regular and scheduled transfers

What Wise for business doesn’t offer

• Business account management
• Risk management tools

Some banks offer foreign currency denominated accounts through their online banking systems. However, these forreign currency accounts are located within a bank's home country. Therefore, when someone sends funds in a foreign currency to your account from an international bank, additional intermediary bank charges might apply.
 

What bank business accounts offer

• International money transfers.
• Multi-currency accounts (offered by some banks).
• Currency hedging tools (offered by some banks).
• FX-optimized travel cards (offered by some banks).

What bank business accounts don’t offer

• Currency specialists.
• Accounting integration.
• Online seller solutions.

Wise offers the real time exchange rate at the time of your transfer. Therefore fees are visible in addition to the transfer amount. The fee structure is complex as it differs depending on the currencies you are sending from and to. Fees also apply to the type of Borderless account transaction. Fees can also apply on the use of the Wise Borderless debit card. Fees are briefly summarised below. Read the detailed Wise review for more details on Wise fees.

Banks tend to offer poor exchange rates, adding margins/markups of up to 5%. This basically means that you lose 5% of the transfer amount to the exchange rate margin. In addition, transfer fees can be up to US $25, or its equivalent in another currency.

The Wise app design and user experience of their technology is great with simple, intuitive processes.

Registration - Fast and easy account creation

ID verification - Instant in some countries

Transfer speed - It can be instantaneous in some countries. Fast payments to Wise comes at an additional cost.

Minimum transfer amount - $1

Mobile app - Simple and easy to use. Probably the best designed app of the international money transfer companies.

Payment options - Wise has the broadest range of payment options. Local bank transfer, debit / credit card and country specific solutions such as POLi.

Signing up - You don't need to create a new account if you're an existing customer. Setting up an international bank transfer is usually easy, as you can do so directly through the online banking platform or your bank's app. 

Speed - Wire transfers carried out through your bank can take 4 - 7 working days to process. One benefit is that you send directly from your bank account, so there's no additional time involved for your payment to go through.

Phone transfers - Not many banks give you the option of initiating transfers over the phone.

Wise’s supported countries vary with different services having different supported customer countries and destination countries. These are detailed in the Wise Countries and Currencies article and is summarized below.

Send from - 23 countries plus the Europe SEPA countries

Send to - Over 60 currencies

Borderless account and debit card - Over 6 countries can sign up to their Borderless services.

Banks that carry out international money transfers support transfers to most countries. However, exceptions can include countries that have existing capital controls in place.

Some countries that imposed capital controls on outward movement of funds in recent times include Russia, Cyprus and India. Examples of countries that have imposed capital controls on incoming funds include China, Brazil and Taiwan.

The customer service you receive is as good as your bank's customer care reputation.

Wise is fully regulated by the FCA and their customer funds are segregated from their business banking activities.

Wise is rated on TrustPilot as Excellent. Unfortunately there have been some poor reviews on TrustPilot indicating sudden account closures with funds being returned with no explanation.

Wise continues to raise capital through private funding. This could be a concern for the future when the shareholders are looking for aggressive growth and / or a return on their investment.

Safety - Largely depends on your bank's reputation.

Transparency in pricing - Not transparent in exchange rate margins and fees.

Reviews - Check customer reviews on local forums such as ConsumerAffairs.com in the US or Whirlpool.com.au in Australia.