TransferWise or best way to receive money from Europe
I’m expecting to receive a fairly large amount of Euro from France (~100K Euros) and wondering what’s the best way to get the money while avoiding fees and trouble. The money will come over as a wire transfer of some kind (ie: I will not be getting stack of bills or a check). Banks exchange rate for incoming wire transfer are pretty opaque and I’m thinking of opening a TransferWise borderless account which lets you hold Euros for free and only charge fees when you until you need to exchange. Their fees are said to be pretty low. I may be using the Euros when traveling but it would take many years for me to spend that many Euros so I’ll probably want to convert some to US$ at some points. Anyone used TransferWise before ? Or has a better idea?
Irrelevant to the question, but make sure you consider tax implications. Some countries have all kinds of rules if you receive or send large amounts.
I did a SWIFT transfer from a UK bank. It’s kinda annoying because you need to call your US bank and ask your SWIFT credentials. Was good enough for me.
How much fees and did you compare the exchange rate you got vs the public exchange rate?
Don't do a swift transaction. You can get railed on the exchange rate and you'll have no say or any idea what the rate is ahead of time. Maybe this guy got lucky but dont risk it.
I am using TransferWise to send money from Canada biweekly. This works out well so far, but the biggest that I sent was around 7k CAD. Rates are good. Not sure about taxes though, you should definitely try to ask them or better proper accountant about the taxation. Update: there will be a local transfer to your account in a destination country.
Use crypto. A perfect use case. Usdt or Tusd.
How would that work? The money is coming from some kind of escrow account in Euros. They are going to ask me where to send it. eg: an IBAN or SWIFT number. I doubt they are going to be happy with a wallet ID. Let’s assume I have my own account in Euros (eg the TransferWise account) I can get them to transfer the Euros there. Then I would buy some crypto with those Euros and then sell it back in USD to my main bank? That seems like 2 conversions, so twice as many potential fees. What did I gain there?
Ideally they'd just transfer you the crypto. There are crypto escrow services.
I use TransferWise every month to send money to the States. It's hands down the best way. It has the best rates by far (SWIFT will kill you with their rates and bank transfer cost).
You can always open an account and try to transfer .their transfer fee may look higher than others but the give you a very good exchange rate vs other banks. So larger transactions you will come out ahead.i have paid around .7 percent I fees overall if I transfer money from us to India(> 10000 USD)