Unlike most banks, TransferWise uses the real exchange rate for sending money — just like the one used by Google or Reuters. Combine that with a low, upfront fee, and you get international transfers that are cheap, fair and transparent.
Get my free accountTell us who you’re sending to, and what currency they need. If you’re sending a lot of money, we might need to run a few identity checks.
Pay into TransferWise’s bank account in the country you’re sending from. You’ll see the fees upfront, and we’ll convert your money at the mid-market rate.
Next, TransferWise’s account in your recipient’s country pays the money straight into their account. Your money never crosses borders.
We always move your money as quickly as possible, and you’ll see how long we think your transfer will take before you confirm it.
When you actually finish setting up your transfer on TransferWise, your estimate might change. The reason for this is simple – the more information we have about your transfer, the more accurately we can tell you how long it'll take. It all depends on four things:
You can see the full breakdown of fees for your transfer route on our pricing page.
TransferWise only charges you a low service fee and uses the real, mid-market exchange rate for conversion. The fee is taken from the money that you send to us. The rest is converted and sent to your recipient.
More about pricingThe important thing to remember is that there is only one real exchange rate. Sometimes this is called the mid-market rate, interbank rate, and spot rate, amongst other things.
The real exchange rate is the midpoint between the buy and sell rates on the global currency markets and it constantly fluctuates. It's the rate you find on Reuters, Google, finance.yahoo.com, etc., and it’s the rate that TransferWise uses.
As we use a peer-to-peer system for many of our transfers, we simply take in rate data from these sites and apply it when converting your money. With some currencies, we offer a guaranteed rate.
You can see more information on our dedicated mid-market rate page.
Your borderless account is a bit like having local accounts all over the world.
It's a multi-currency account that lets you keep money in 28 currencies, and convert between them at the real exchange rate whenever you need.
That's cool to start with, but on top of that you also get your own personal account numbers and bank codes for 4 currencies – USD, GBP, EUR and AUD (with more on the way). For instance, you get a UK sort code and account number, which anyone in the UK can use to send you pounds. You'll get paid as if you live there, with zero fees.
Oh, and it's completely free to set up.
More about borderlessIn a word: yes!
With TransferWise, you get the real exchange rate (the one you see on Reuters, Google and Yahoo), and you pay a small fee. The service is fair, transparent, and costs far less than high street banks and other currency exchange services.
But I don't usually pay a transaction fee!
Unfortunately, this is what many have been led to believe.
But there's no such thing as a free transfer. Your nasty surprise is hiding away in an unfair exchange rate. Whether you've been told it or not, on average you're losing around 5% in fees.
The good news is, we built TransferWise specifically to free people from those fees.
Finally, transparency and fairness in finance. It's about time!