When your bank is asking for a fee of $25 to process a simple international money transfer, you know something is not right. Nowadays, people are not dependent on handling their personal finances only through mainstream global banks. There are hundreds of independent financial platforms and companies, who offer competitive rates.
In this article we will help you cut the high fees and send money online cheaply.
What features are important to you?
There is an abundance of remittance services online. A simple Google search of “send money online” gives out instantly million results. Even though, you can send money through all of these companies and platforms, each of them offer different benefits, features and quality of service. You need to determine what is important for you in this particular transfer.
Transaction speed
First of all, decide if you are in need of cheap transfer or maybe it’s an urgent payment and you need to have it delivered quickly. Often, the cheapest platforms take the most time to deliver your transfer.
Some platforms specialize in “instant” transfers, which (for additional fee) deliver your money to the recipient in a matter of minutes. If you need to send money urgently there are platforms like TransferGo or EasySend just to name a few.
Security
When you need to send a large amount of money it’s better to not try some random company blindly, but choose a more trusted and more established platform. Obviously, the safest transfers are conducted by large banks, as their systems are very good and the strict financial regulations and transparency prevent them from simply running away with your money.
However, you can also choose reputable platforms like for example PayPal, which has been on the market for many years now.
Transfer costs
And here we move on to the most essential aspect which is the cost of your transfer. This part is not as simple as you may think and often the transfers with the lowest fees turn out to be quite expensive after some hidden charges and biased exchange rates.
The most common trick to make you think that the service is cheap is to offer “free” or very low fees for international money transfers. However, if you happen to exchange the currency during your transfer, the rate is far from the one you can check at google. For example, if 1USD=0.79GBP, the company will convert your one dollar into only 0.5GBP.
How to choose best remittance service?
Research and compare
So with thousands of different offers, how to choose the best one? There are many places online where you can find in-depth analysis of the hidden costs and overall ratings and reviews.
For example, you can use Wirly.com which researches and tests the remittance companies, rates them based on different categories and offers you a tool to compare how much you will pay for the same transfer in different companies. Such calculator is quite convenient as you will see that there is even $20 difference between some services. They say that “it is estimated that
for every $100 sent, only $92 gets really to the recipient.” It shows that the money transfer market is exploited by some players. And why would you overpay?
Read reviews
Before making your first transfer, it’s also worth checking the customers reviews online. The most popular place to do this seem to be Google Reviews or TrustPilot. Look through the negative comments and check if the company won’t scam you. It’s not worth it to choose the cheapest option if the website and information about the platform seem suspicious. You don’t want to lose your money.
