In fact in my whole life (I'm 65 so about 50 years of having bank accounts) I have never paid transaction fees for ordinary transactions (in the UK and Norway).
I wonder if you could just fudge it with Photoshop (Gimp)? Could you get in trouble for forging a cheque to yourself?
You can add non-WF banking destinations once you are logged in. They put up a disclaimer to expect registering the account as a recipient to take up to 3 business days.
Articles on the Internet from May of this year claim that there are no fees, even outside the WF ecosystem. However, they refuse to publish fees as they vary by account.
I do wish you luck, and I hope that it was just a matter of that link being hard to find (they definitely try to funnel you to wire instructions.)
If the above doesn't sound correct to a reader here, then either you've never lived outside of the US or, please tell me how to transfer money via banks and not get fleeced.
Additionally, my parents wanted to send me some money from another country and the cheapest fee they could find was $10.5 (Wise) most other options were from $30 to $100. This was for transferring roughly $2000.
I can agree that for a simple in country tx I've not had to pay living in Germany, that is largely because of smaller banks challenging and whittling down fees.
You mean that a transfer from your Greek bank account to another Greek bank account would cost you 3 EUR?
What happens if you get a bank account in another EU / SEPA country (e.g. via n26) and use it instead of a Greek bank account? Would there be any downside? Would a Greek company paying you a salary refuse to transfer the money there rather than a Greek bank account?
Yep! Sad.
> What happens if you get a bank account in another EU / SEPA country (e.g. via n26) and use it instead of a Greek bank account? Would there be any downside? Would a Greek company paying you a salary refuse to transfer the money there rather than a Greek bank account?
No, transferring money to N26/Revolut is free (well, minus whatever fee the Greek bank will charge, which I think will be 3 EUR), but receiving money from N26 gets a 3 EUR fee again...
If the payee has a Greek bank account I suppose? But then it means that if both payer and payee have a n26 bank account and use it in Greece, they don't have to pay this fee anymore, right? So why would they use Greek banks?
I just don't see how this 3 EUR fee still exists given the current competition.
Indeed! I think Greek banks are just running on inertia now, they'll soon have to abolish these fees. One thing keeping people from switching was ATM usage (N26 only lets you withdraw for free up to some amount). This was especially since until a few years ago we were pretty much cash-only, but now that we're basically card-only, there's much less incentive to use an ATM.
No, the bank still charges the 3 EUR for the incoming transfer, sadly.
I think cheques still exist because there is no system in Interac for associating a destination account reference with an Interac transfer. In Australia cheques have been replaced by BPay (owned by the banks) and PostBillPay (owned by the Post Office) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPAY. In fact, I've never had to use a cheque as an adult except for e.g. buying a car/house. Interbank transfers and instant payments (Osko) have been free for ages, at least 20 years. https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2020/mar/two-ye...
It shows how arthritic banking is in the West that payment systems like AliPay haven't been allowed.
I got a free Tangerine account for free unlimited debit transactions. As a bonus I can withdraw cash with no fees at Scotiabank ATMs in addition to my normal bank. They also give you a VISA debit card that can be useful as a backup card for important online services (as long as you keep some money in it).
I also got a free (prepaid) Stack Mastercard. They give you a virtual credit card number you can use online plus a physical card. The main benefit though is 0% (or near 0%) foreign exchange fees. Most online services bill in USD and my normal bank charges around 2% extra in fees for the foreign currency conversion.
Then I reduced my normal bank account to the bare minimum $4 per month plan. So instead of squeezing an extra $12 per year from me, my bank gets $132 less per year now. However, that shows you why it works. Even if 9% of their customers do what I did they still make more money and I'd bet a ton that barely anyone reevaluates their banking because of a $1 per month increase in prices.
You have, just not in a way that’s obvious to you.