Anyone who has ever made a [transfer money to Indonesia | foreign money transfer] outside of Europe knows how expensive, slow, intransparent, and costly that is. Luckily this has been different since this year. Transferwise has been around for quite a while, but since 2017 it has been supporting all major currencies where you can transfer in both directions and the exchange rate is really cheaper is as at your own bank. I had the service tested the last few years more often but only now I can fully recommend it.
Why is Transferwise better than any international transfer bank?
The transfer is much faster, most of the money is already on the next day in the account. The costs are many times cheaper, because you get the actual exchange rate. You already know the exchange rate when making the transfer, and you can see exactly how much money the recipient will enter into the account. The recipient as well as the client will receive an e-mail as soon as the money has been sent and when it has arrived on the account of the recipient. If there is an error in the transfer data, the client receives an e-mail and can change it for free or have the money transferred back to his account. In a regular foreign transfer in the case would be at least 70 euros lost.
The old and arduous way of international transfer
We receive several hundred foreign remittances from Europe per year in Indonesia. These come mainly from Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden. Our recommended banks like the N26, DKB and Comdirect have favorable terms to transfer abroad, but all German banks must, however, compulsorily use the Deutsche Bank as an intermediary bank in order to carry out the transfer. In addition to the transfer fees, this will incur costs of approximately € 25 per transfer. With the cheap online banks, one then comes to about 35 euros per foreign transfer. In addition, there is the exchange rate risk, as it takes a few days for the money to arrive. That means it may possibly arrive less money than you have transferred. At local banks such as Volksbanks and savings banks, the fees vary greatly from branch to branch. Some of our customers have paid up to 90 euros for a foreign transfer to Indonesia. Often this was not even possible online and you even had to drive to the bank branch. If a detail of the payee is wrongly debited to your bank and the Deutsche Bank (Mittelbank) the foreign transfer fees again and it takes some time until the money is back on your own account. We had a case with a typo in the transfer details which caused the money to disappear for 2 weeks and landed back at the sender after deducting 150 Euro bank charges. ‘Therefore we advise against the traditional bank transfer.’ N26-Bank was the first bank to integrate the service of Transferwise into their online banking
Ok, let’s summarize the benefits again
- Significantly faster than a normal bank
- Attractively priced
- Cost-transparent
- Possibility to correct wrong transfer data
- Specification of when the transfer is received by the recipient
- E-mail notification as soon as payment is received
I hope this article was helpful to you. If so, I would be glad if you shared it with your friends.
Cheers,
Chris
(Founder of Study-in-Bali.com)
