How Wise helped me save money - Ed Freyfogle

This is the first article in the series of guest blog posts written by our users. Your feedback, dear users, is very valuable for us and we try to listen to your needs and suggestions. If you have any thoughts on Wise and would like to share them with us and our readers please get in touch and we'll make sure we publish your contributions.

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Hi, my name's Ed. I live and work in London, and am American and German, so dealing with multiple exchange rates and currencies is an unfortunate reality of my life. Since the launch of Wise I've used it several times. In total I've saved over £100, and the experience has always been very simple and straight forward.

There are several things I love about Wise. First up is obviously the low cost. It's just plain unbeatable. But a close second is the ease of use. Trying to do currency transfer via a UK bank is a huge pain. I'm not even sure it's possible online because my bank's website is a wall of pain (and I don't think my current bank is unique - all UK banks I've interacted with are just dreadful online, it's a real race to the bottom). The bad usability of traditional banks just makes their fees sting even more.

I'm not camping in front of St. Paul's or advocating revolution, but I do think the UK's banking system takes consumers for granted, much more so than other countries I've lived in. Consumers here in the UK would benefit significantly from radical innovation and disruption which is why I welcome the entry of players like Wise into the market. On a related note for the last few years I've been experimenting with Zopa, anyone looking for a way to actually change the system (or a much cheaper loan than a bank will offer) should check it out.

As for the future, I can not wait for more currencies, especially USD. Keep up the good work Wise, and keep it simple!

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Bio

I'm is one of the founders of property search engine Nestoria so by day I spend my time trying to make dead simple for people to find their next home. Other than that my 18 month old son, Gustav, takes charge of the rest of my schedule. If anyone's interested in my antics beyond the realm of currency exchange, best way to stay up to speed is to follow me on twitter.