Wise vs Travelex

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 TransferWise Borderless account.
• Cash pick up or international bill payments

Depending on where you live, you may use Travelex to send money to different countries. However, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, Travelex has closed its online and retail operations and stopped trading in the US, Canada and France. It continues to provide international money transfer services through OFX in Australia and New Zealand.
 

What Travelex does

• Travelex money transfers.
• Travelex money card.
• Access to forex dealers.
• Regular transfers.
• Cash pickup through partnership with Western Union and Xpress Money.
• Travel insurance.

What Travelex doesn’t do

• Digital wallet.
• Dedicated account managers.

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

Travelex UK provides forex solutions for business clients. Travelex also provides services for businesses in Australia and New Zealand.
 

What Travelex for business offers

• White-label travel money solutions.
• Travelex international payments and currency services.
• Travelex Business Cloud for Multi-Currency Processing (MCP) and Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC).
• Wholesale banknotes.
• Prepaid cards.
• Dedicated account management.
• API integration.

What Travelex for business doesn’t do

• Risk management tools.
• Integration with Xero or QuickBooks.
• Online seller solutions.
• Multi-currency receiving accounts.
• Digital wallets.

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 TransferWise review for more details on Wise fees.

Travelex currency rates and additional fees show the total cost of using Travelex.
 

Travelex exchange rates

Travelex rates for international money transfers depend on your country of residence.

Australia and New Zealand - Existing OFX exchange rates apply.

France - Existing Xpress Money or Western Union rates apply.

Japan - Existing Western Union rates apply.
 

Additional currency fees

Transfer charges that you need to pay depend on where you live. This is because Travelex partners with different international money transfers companies. For example, if you're sending money from Australia or New Zealand, OFX transfer fees will apply. It stands at AUD $15 for transfers below AUD $10,000. If you send money from Brazil, you need to pay R $ 9.90 per online international transfer.
 

Travelex ATM fee

Travelex does not charge ATM fees. However, you might be subject to operator-specific charges in some cases. 

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.

What Travelex does well

Payment methods - Depends on where you live. When sending money through OFX from Australia, you can pay via a bank account transfer or POLi. Western Union and Xpress Money accept payments via different methods.

Transfer methods - OFX provides transfers only to bank accounts. However, other Travelex partners such as Western Union and Xpress Money provide additional payout options such as cash pickup.

Transfer speed - If you send money through OFX, your transfer can process within 1 - 2 business days. Transfers to cash pickup locations carried out through Westren Union or Xpress Money can go through within minutes or hours.
 

Where Travelex could improve

Sign up and verification - Signing up with Travelex is fairly simple, although account verification may take some time.

Minimum transfer amount - If you send money from Australia or New Zealand, you need to transfer a minimum of AUD $250. Other region-specific limits may also apply.

Travelex app - Travelex provides apps for Android and Apple, which you may use to manage your Travelex travel card. However, you can not use the app to set up transfers. In addition, a number of Travelex reviews on Google Play Store and Apple App Store have highlighted concerns surrounding poor functionality of both apps. 

Wise’s supported countries vary with different services having different supported customer countries and destination countries. These are detailed in the TransferWise 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.

Supported destination countries - You can transfer money to most countries in the world due to Travelex's partnerships with OFX, Western Union and Xpress Money.

Supported registration countries - You can use Travelex cash converter services from Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Oman, Qatar, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and the UK. However, Travelex does not provide online international money transfer services for any of these countries except for Australia.  

Travelex money card supported currencies - You can top up your Travelex money card with up to nine currencies including Euros, British pounds, Australian dollars, US dollars, Canadian dollars, Singapore dollars, Japanese yen, Hong Kong dollars and New Zealand dollars.

Multilingual website - The Travelex website is in different languages.

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 - Travelex online money transfers and branches went offline in late December 2019. This was due to a ransomware attack. The ransomware took out most of their systems resulting in over one month of down time. This is a major concern. Travelex may not have previously invested in IT security, and it poses a risk on whether something like this could happen again.  

Regulated - Travelex is regulated by financial governing bodies of different countries.

Trustpilot Travelex reviews - Travelex rates as Excellent on Trustpilot. It gets an average score of 8.8 out of 10, with over 42,000 reviews. It appears that Travelex is fairly responsive with customer reviews on Trustpilot. However, some reviews complain about delayed transfers and poor customer service.