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:

1. The countries you're sending from and to – Every currency and country is different. Converting your money can take a maximum of 2 working days, but it's very rare that it takes that long. How quick your transfer arrives depends partly on how quickly your recipient's bank can process your money.
2. How you pay – Some payment methods are quicker than others. For instance, card payments are normally instant, while bank transfers take longer. You'll see how long each payment method takes when you set up your transfer.
3. What time you pay for your transfer – We can only handle your money during normal banking hours. And things may take a little longer if the country you're sending to has a national holiday.
4. Security checks – We might need to see your ID before you send money. We call this process verification, and it helps us keep you and your money safe. Verifying your ID could add extra time to your transfer. To see whether you're verified, visit your personal verification page.

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.

The 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 over 40 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 5 currencies – USD, GBP, EUR, AUD and NZD (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.

In 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!