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Comment by aleksandrm | Hacker News Reader

Agreed, $25M is nothing and they should be slapped with a much higher penalty. PayPal is the scummiest company on Earth. A buyer opened a dispute with them, and PayPal robbed me of $2500, tried fighting them for 2 years but eventually gave up.

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PayPal has some serious issues with regards to what you say, but I used it last summer to transfer money from USA to Europe for my daughter and the fee was a fraction of what the bank wanted. Banks can be pretty scummy in their own way.

Have you ever tried TransferWise? With customers and family around the world, I'm thinking of switching to them to handle transfers instead of Paypal/Stripe. They seem to have the most honest fees around.

Disclaimer: not affiliated with them. Just genuinely curious.

About TransferWise. I checked their site based on your recommendation. However, something bothers me.

There's a form on the Top-right corner. "You send," "You Receive." I tried checking how much would be received in dollars if I sent $1000. However, the form wouldn't let me. It doesn't allow comparison between the same currency.

It felt shady to me.

I've sent this message to them already. But wow! They do support a lot of countries - far more than Stripe. I'm surprised I've never heard of them before.

> It doesn't allow comparison between the same currency.

Their use case is transferring funds between currencies, why would you want to do that?

The site says "transfer money abroad". If for some reason they only want the more difficult kind of transfer, it would help to make that clear.

I'm confused by you asking why when the answer is both obvious and explicitly stated in parent comments. Sending someone money in a different country, but they happen to use the same currency.

Since transfers are bank account to bank account, this would mean somebody abroad (say in Europe) would have USD denominated bank account? As far as I know TransferWise does require your recipient to have a bank account in the location where they want to receive the money, meaning usually transfers between accounts denominated in different currencies.

If its within EU there is of course no point in using TransferWise as EUR-EUR transactions are practically free.

It wasn't clear to me which is why I asked. I agree for that case the headline is a bit misleading though.

In the EU it's nearly always free to transfer funds between the same currency, even between different countries. Banks still get people with the exchange rates or high fees to make transfers between currencies. TransferWise is a UK company, so that being their primary market, they took off from European workers in the UK wanting to send money home.

Just for comparisons sake, my use case is transferring money between Ireland (EUR) and the UK (GBP) and vice versa. Compared to my bank they have both better exchange rates, lower fees, and are quicker.

Heh, I said the same thing - their explanations and their site needs a bit of rework. As it is, they look shady :-)

Bump for TransferWise. They're a treat to work with!

I have used TransferWise for both USD and SEK/EUR transfers to INR. Works perfectly, their time estimates are spot on (usually I receive it on the day or one day early) and the exchange fees are very competitive (and I've probably compared most other forms of transfers - including Bitcoin/Localcoin).

I use them. It's been great so far.

I've used Xoom in the past as to send money to family in the UK, it's always been fast and easy.

However they charge $4.99 up to $2999, with TransferWise there's no fee and slightly better rates (0.6346 vs. 0.6262). I'm going to try them out next time, thanks for the tip!

How does it work? I wanted to use them once, but it was the first time I heard about them and their site doesn't explain anything.

If anything, it looks shady - "outsmart your bank, use us, we do it super cheap, promise!" but no explanation of how it actually works...

From their website (step 3 of how it works)

TransferWise converts your money at the mid-market rate and matches you with people sending in the other direction. That's why it costs so little.

My understanding - after you've given the money you want to transfer to TransferWise, they find someone in your destination country who wishes to transfer money to the country where you are (kind of like a swap). This way, they cut off the banks and their fees and charge you a lower fee.

That's how I understood it, but then I thought "what if there's no one in that country?" Do they use their own funds or does the recipient wait several weeks.

I imagine it's the former, but at the time I just used SWIFT - rather expensive, but guaranteed to work everywhere.

It works by them having $90m in VC funding from people like Richard Branson and Peter Thiel which they then use to subsidise the super cheap transfers with the aim of growing big.

It works well, you initiate a bank account transfer from one country (denominated in say USD) and in a few days your recipient receives it as a deposit in their bank account in their local currency. In between TransferWise keeps you updated with status via e-mail and on the website.

I always compare with my normal bank when I'm forced to use paypal and so far they have always been slightly higher than the bank. I live in Sweden though.

My wife uses Nordea and they go out on a limb for her every time she needs something (and she lives in the US with me, so hardly can go into the bank for things).

Curiously for use abroad ICA banken (affiliated with the grocery store of the same name) turns out to be really beneficial, free withdrawals anywhere in the world and completely aligned with remote customer service (as they don't in fact have any branches that they can ask you to visit..).

Nordea and Handelsbanken is probably the best big banks when it comes to service.

I've heard good and bad things about both of them. I've been looking for a better international alternative, though.

Simple bank looks absolutely amazing (https://www.simple.com/), but sadly they are US-only. Does anyone know a similar bank to Simple that is friendlier to international travelers/EU citizens?

I can't pretend to know, but she always seems happy with their service.

>PayPal is the scummiest company on Earth.

Maybe second. Nestle still wins worst place with their infant formula scandal.

And the exact same thing could've happened with credit cards.

You have a lot more rights to fight them when fighting a bank. With PayPal you probably agreed to third party arbitration.

Scummiest for sellers. They are quite a good deal for buyers.

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