Fintech friends: Monzo partners with TransferWise for international payments

Nope - But there isn’t on Transferwise either.

On their site, you get this drop down option?

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edit: I see the others are for different payment methods!

Great to see the continued drive for new features. Can someone give me a real world example as to when you might use this? I’ve never had to send money internationally before? Love it though!!

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Maybe you have family over seas and you want to exchange or send money with them, Maybe you work for for a company based in another country and need to transfer your salary.

Maybe you purchase something from someone abroad and they require payment.

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If I have friends travelling abroad it would be better to transfer within Monzo though right instead of doing an international transfer?

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Haha, I was going to say - There is certainly no obvious option on the app.

I haven’t tried sending to a non Euro account though, so perhaps this differs.

Yes correct, this is more if they have an account in another currency, maybe they live abroad and have a bank account in that country. Or your employer works in Euros and so pays salary in Euros for example.

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Having used TransferWise monthly since early 2012 I can give a little explanation here :slight_smile:

It says “fast” because it’s getting money from your debit card, which is faster than from a bank transfer. Even though bank transfer using Faster Payment Scheme are instant, it takes time to go in your app and trigger the transfer, then it takes time for TW to check it and mark it as received. Sometimes it’s instant, sometimes it’s not (specially during weekend).

That’s the first step, on which the user has control (your three options). Obviously with Monzo integration it’s using the “fast and low cost transfer” because it’s already in app, and validation happens instantly.

The rest of the transfer lag is shared across what they call “conversion” which is internal technology where they match your transfer with another one in the reverse direction (to avoid converting currencies), and which can take several hours to days if there aren’t enough movements the other way around, or if it’s done during weekend (I don’t know why they are slower on this stage during weekends, they say “security measures” but I don’t see the point).

The last step of your transfer is SEPA payment from TW Estonian/German accounts to your EUR bank. It highly depends on the recipient bank. SEPA payments are not as fast as UK’s Faster Payment Scheme (but it’ll be improved later this year normally). It takes usually 6 to 24h to complete, with again, slower speeds during weekends.
In France, for example, all banks are closed during mondays, and they freeze all operations settlement during this time (which is an incredibly painful experience, and the reason why Monzo would make a splash there).

That said, I did see an “instant GBP>EUR” conversion happening on a friend’s app, but I don’t know how it happened. I never managed to replicate (the other way around is easier thanks to FPS). I suppose they used some machine learning decision process to choose whether the transfer was risky/able to complete instantly or something. Anyway, I bet GBP<> EUR instant transfer will be the norm pretty soon on Transferwise.

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Thanks for that. Good insight. I can now see how they keep costs low by looking for reverse transactions, it stops any money actually moving if that makes sense :slight_smile:

I use TransferWise fortnightly (Thursday) and it takes around 2-3 hours transferring to a Philippines bank account.

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Well it is great to have this new addition, but having said that even if all 50ish TranferWise countries/currencies were available, that is still quite restrictive. So I have been using WorldRemit which offers THREE TIMES as many destination countries. Does anyone know why TransferWise is so limited?

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This doesn’t mean we can receive international transfer from somebody without transferwise account, does it?

No incoming, Only outgoing transfers are supported for now.

Hi,

New to this :slight_smile:

Can someone please explain how this works? Do i need a TransferWise account? or would it show up on my Monzo accounts?

Thank you!

Monzo can. They wrote a blog post:

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Not according to my recent chat with COps — I was told I had to wait as it’s only available to a limited number of users, even after explaining Monzo people on the community directed me :frowning:

Not sure if they have had to limit it, but I was initially told “not at the moment”, until I said “The forum said it was good to go” - He went away and came back saying it had been done!

I mentioned the community etc. and after a lot of back and for this was the reply:

“Hi Jai,

Unfortunately we can’t activate it at this point. Only a certain percentage of users are able to use it at the moment. We’re rolling it out over the next week or so just to make sure we can fix any unexpected problems or bugs +1 After we are sure that it’s all running smoothly, you’ll be sent a notification.

I’m sorry again, hopefully it won’t be too long a wait!”

That is the downside to releasing things quickly - The frustration if you can’t get it!

True, begs the question why it has not been released through :monzo: Monzo Labs? Seems to have been neglected a bit recently.

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