Why Use Wise for International Bank Transfers

Posted by AlexDobson on June 29, 2022

Bank transfers for international payments can be expensive with the conversion rates but equally PayPal fees have also become extortionate. So what is the alternative?

We have been using Wise over the last few months and we cannot speak highly enough of it. From both our and the clients standpoint, it has made international payments a lot smoother. For us payments are received a lot quicker as bank transfers can take a day or two to come through, conversely Wise takes a couple minutes to be received. For the client's they pay less of a fee based on currency exchange and the fees faced by PayPal. 

So let's compare apples with apples. If you are looking to transfer €100 to Pound Sterling then the Wise fee would be €0.93 (€0.47 Variable Fee & €0.46 Fixed Fee). This is a much smaller fee than if you did the same fee through PayPal whereby the fee would be £5.32. The fees broken down for PayPal would be:

Fixed fee - £0.30

Variable fee - £2.51 

Cross-border fee - £0.43 

Exchange rate mark-up - £2.08 

So as you can see you can save a fair bit of money using Wise over PayPal for International transfers and this is why we always advocate using their service over PayPal. On a personal note, I have been so impressed with Wise that I actually have a Wise card for when I go abroad.

You can see the price differences yourself between Wise and PayPal fees yourself!