I work freelance on a language teaching website called Italki who pay their teachers in USD via Payonner or Paypal.
In the past, I’ve had Payonner send this money on into my normal UK bank account as GBP which Payoneer charge a roughly 2% conversion fee for.
My question is: if I tell Payoneer to send the money in USD to my new Monzo account, will Monzo convert that into GBP for me and will I be able to take advantage of the better, unadulterated conversion rate Monzo uses? Has anyone tried this, will it work? There’s one other similar topic from someone trying to do this, but they were still on a pre-paid card, so I imagine the situation was different then.
So, within the UK using the BACS and FPS network any transfers have to be GBP (from my understanding). If you were to send money from an account in another currency, it would have to be send via SWIFT which Monzo doesn’t support (they don’t have an IBAN). They are looking at doing Transferwise however: International transfer
So, I think you’d still have to get Payonner to pay you in GDP with their 2% charge.
Unfortunately I don’t think that would work for my particular situation. The website I work on, Italki, won’t send money via Transferwise, only Payoneer or Paypal.
Couldn’t Paynoeer transfer into your Transferwise account in USD, and then Transferwise can send it to you in GBP - check their rates to see if it works out better than the fee Payoneer charge you.
Good suggestion. I’ve thought about that and had a look around for anyone who’s done the same thing. Theoretically, I could ‘withdraw’ my Payonneer money through Transferwise, but according to the calculator on their website, what I’d get after the fee would be only very slightly better than what I’m getting now. So maybe a bit of a faff for what I’m earning (only 3 figures) but a good idea for larger amounts.
As much as I can’t stand Revolut, you might want to look into them for this. I have in the past managed to link my Revolut account to PayPal (using UK sort order and account number, not BIC/IBAN) and then convince PayPal to withdraw my EUR balance into my GBP Revolut account without converting it (I can’t remember how, but there was an option very well hidden somewhere). Revolut did the conversion for me, using their rates (just make sure you do this on a weekday, as they charge extra on weekends!)
YMMV, though. I heard others were not successful with this, so you might want to try this with a small amount first.
