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Comment by thesimon | Hacker News Reader

Quite impressed with the valuation.

Transferwise Borderless seems to have a better business model with sane prices and not "everything free".

And Revolut still uses their e-money license instead of their proper Lithuanian banking license. Quite surprising.

Transferwise has real human phone support, which so far was great for my business account. +1 for prices - I am paying Transferwise fees with pleasure, knowing all those money are returning back to me via great services.

I haven't used Borderless, but Transferwise in general has been fantastic. I looked at Revolut, but have been too happy with Transferwise to even truly consider it

Yep, Transferwise Borderless is quite great. They also offer things that Revolut doesn't such as U.S. bank account, plus Revolut just feels bloated and complex with hidden fees.

I also like the fact that if I have lets say $100 in various currencies (10 different currencies) and try to pay for something valued $95 in some other currency, Revolut will not make the purchase but Transferwise will autoconvert between the currencies and make the purchase. Revolut only autoconverts if one currency has $95 equivalent.

Not sure what hidden fees are you referring to? As far as I can tell, all the fees are explained on their website and in the app.

On the website it just says things like "No fee ATM withdrawals up to €200 per month", but what about after 200€??

I found a help section that is vague too saying "We can provide an estimate of the potential fees...", so not very transparent. Transferwise you can see/calculate on the frontpage what the fee will be.

> On the website it just says things like "No fee ATM withdrawals up to €200 per month", but what about after 200€??

TransferWise debit card's landing page [1] doesn't have the ATM fee either. Their pricing page [2] does.

I was able to find Revolut's pricing page [3], which includes the ATM fee, with a simple search.

[1] https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/card

[2] https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/pricing

[3] https://www.revolut.com/legal/fees

2% of all withdrawals?! WTF is this insanity. I thought it might be interesting for a bit, but never mind.

Are they preying on people that live in countries without a working banking system?

Do you know many other banks that let you withdraw abroad for less? I mean, in Romania there are technically banks that give you zero-cost withdrawals abroad... but only because they figured they could shift that cost into the exchange rate and most people wouldn't notice (although it's far worse, now they charge you for online & offline payments too, not just ATM withdrawals!)

Transferwise for instance (which was praised here) apparently charges you 1.25% to _add_ money to your account (USD). Oh, and ATM withdrawals over 200GBP? 2% - just like Revolut: https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/pricing

Revolut is not suitable as primary bank, IMO (it's not even clear whether they fully function as a bank vs just "financial institution"). But as a card provider for vacation/travel abroad, it's pretty awesome. Many banks will have fees like "1.5EUR + 1%" which sounds less until you realize that most of the time you withdraw less than 100EUR, nevermind the fact that many ATMs won't even give you more than 200E in one transaction.

[edit] For completeness sake... Citibank offered that here. CitiGold is awesome, unfortunately they don't have a presence here anymore - you can still get the offer with offshore banking, but you have to keep large sums of money with them and they charge you through your nose for investing with Citi (something in excess of 1% yearly if I remember correctly - as a percentage of "assets under management")

> Transferwise for instance (which was praised here) apparently charges you 1.25% to _add_ money to your account (USD)

That's if you're using a US debit card. They seem to charge a fixed fee of $5.34 to top up any amount of USD via wire transfer.

> That's if you're using a US debit card

A USD debit card. Revolut also claims to charge US cards too (an undisclosed amount) but amazingly enough they charge me nothing for topup from my USD card (issued by Romanian bank)

The transferwise wire transfer fee is on top of SWIFT fees and whatever other fees your bank will charge you for USD. That's pure profit for them, there's no cost that justifies the fee.

> Do you know many other banks that let you withdraw abroad for less?

Abroad? Mostly a slight markup on the default exchange rate, which is hard to pin down, but certainly less than 2%.

But my problem is mostly this applies on any withdrawal. Not only abroad.

Like I said, Revolut is not suitable as your only bank. But it can be awfully convenient as a second card.

WRT "certainly less than 2%" - you might be surprised, do double-check. Not all banks do, but many do here. It's most obvious here at Raiffeisen, where you can have EUR or USD cards (_with_ ATM fees) - or RON cards with no ATM fees (but if you think about checking the currency conversion rate, you're in for a nasty surprise). And again, bad currency conversion is far worse than 2% ATM fee, because it applies on all your purchases, whereas nowadays in many countries you don't actually need to withdraw money... not in excess of 200E/month, anyway.

Most European banks add 2% for currency conversion (in addition to non-market rates). Most Canadian banks add 2.5%. https://www.greedyrates.ca/blog/best-foreign-currency-exchan...

I cannot tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but here in the US almost ever ATM that isn't at YOUR bank will charge a $2-$5 fee for withdrawal and then the bank will hit you with another $2-$5 fee. So depending on your bank, if you want $20, it could cost you $10.

OR (story time) if you are like me, and you end up needing cash in rural Oklahoma to pay an upcoming cash-only toll, and you pull off at the ONLY gas station between you and the toll, you could get hit with a $20 fee to pull out $20 (because its a freaking casino).

That said, there are many online-only banks that are part of ATM groups that have 100k free atms at various places all over. I use them.

And when traveling abroad, oddly enough the best cash card I've ever had is a CapitalOne debit card. I only use it when traveling, but no FX fees, and no ATM fees. So in the UK, most of the major banks and grocery chains have free ATMs, so I get free access to my money even abroad.

I’m not being sarcastic. The two countries I have experience with are the Netherlands and Japan, and the cost is 0 and the equivalent of $1.5, regardless of the amount withdrawn, respectively.

In the Netherlands I think I pay a $3 monthly fee for the privilege of having an account, but Japan is free.

In Australia and New Zealand other-bank ATM withdrawal fees are $2. International withdrawals depend on where you are but 3% or $5 (whichever is larger) is common. This is additional to whatever forex rate they give you.

It's only recently that newer banks are removing these fees.

However, accounts are generally free.

An interesting thing when I was in the US with a non US visa card was most of the ATMs didn't charge any fee. Something to do with international legal agreements. It might be worth you trying to use a non US card, perhaps transferwise or revolut.

> I only use it when traveling, but no FX fees, and no ATM fees.

Do they reimburse your ATM fees if you were to use a third-party ATM in the US, or just not charge you an additional fee to withdraw at third-party ATMs?

I actually have never tested that theory out. I probably have $30 on it currently (haven't gone out of country in a few months, so haven't needed to fill it), I'll try to pull money out at the next ATM I come across and reply here.

I just searched up the webpage [1], but there's nothing on it suggesting that Capital One would reimburse your fee.

I'm not based in the US, but I've heard that Schwab and SoFi are the popular ones that would do that.

[1] https://www.capitalone.com/bank/debit-card/

Chase Sapphire reimburses me third-party ATM fees.

At least in the UK most people use contactless. I only use revolut with ATMs when I am travelling. And in this case 2% after 200 euros seems a normal cost of travelling, certainly less than my bank card.

If you’re in the US, First Republic rebates you all the atm fees and supports high ATM withdrawal limits ($K) per transaction/per day if you have high balances (both of these features worldwide BTW). Some countries (cough USA) don’t have machines with limits that high but places like Germany, Dubai, Japan do

I don't really care about the ATM fees, that was just an example. On Transferwise landing page it does list the fees if you scroll down a bit.

Thank for /legal/fees link didn't think to look there. Imo that should be linked to the pricing page.

TransferWise has a robust "no bovine manure" approach. I've used different kinds of services from them over four years, and they have been consistently excellent. I make sure to tell so whenever I talk to them, and politely make a note to not lose sight of the valuable things that customers are happy about (transparency, competent human support).

And I like it that they charge a decent price. I have a general allergy to "gratis services", especially in finance-related things.

I actually moved from TransferWise to Revolut, because Revolut has somewhat better FX rates (TransferWise rates are also good).

I've been using Revolut to transfer money between countries because of its near-perfect exchange rate on weekdays, but I fear the day my account would suddenly be locked for weeks because I hit some secret anti-money laundering limit, or because I'm suddenly seen as a customer who is just making them lose money.

I had that happen recently. Fortunately I was not in a rush. I had to complain on social media after the situation hadn't been resolved in a couple of weeks, then magically I got some proper support.

I wouldn’t say it’s “everything free”. If you purchase outside of FOREX hours you pay 2% on top of every tx. People tend to spend more when they have free time, i.e. on weekends, where the 2% fee applies.

My guess is that Revolut is doing just great in terms of revenue.

There's less reporting requirements for e-money IIRC.

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