Best Currency Brokers Compared & Reviewed (2024)

• Richard Berry
• January 2, 2024

In our guide, we review some of the best currency brokers and explain how to get the best price, execute transactions properly and prepare for sending or receiving large amounts of money to or from abroad. Currency brokers can save you money when converting and transferring large amounts of money abroad for property purchases or business because they offer better exchange rates than banks and advice on when to convert currency.

Best Currency Brokers Compared & Reviewed

❓ Methodology: We have chosen what we think are the best currency brokers based on:

• 20 years in the currency brokerage industry
• Interviews with the currency broker CEOs and senior management
• Over 17,000 votes in our annual awards
• Analysis and testing of the platforms and pricing

You can use our comparison of what we think are the best currency brokers to compare how many currencies they offer, the minimum and maximum transfer, what type of transfers they offer, how much currency they transfer annually, how many customers they have and when they were founded.

⚠️ FCA Regulation

All currency brokers that operate in the UK must be regulated by the FCA. The FCA is the Financial Conduct Authority and is responsible for ensuring that UK currency brokers are properly capitalised, treat customers fairly and have sufficient compliance systems in place. We only feature currency brokres that are regulated by the FCA, where your funds are protected by the FSCS.

How To Choose A Currency Broker

As well as a currency brokers giving you much better exchange rates, here, we highlight ten reasons why you should use a currency broker compared to your bank and how to choose the best one.

1. Better exchange rates on large transfers: You’ll get a better exchange rate with a currency broker than your bank.
2. Risk management: Banks generally don’t offer forward contracts to lock in an exchange rate.
3. Personal Service: A currency broker will offer phone support from an account manager to hold your hand through the process.
4. Advice: You can call up a currency broker almost any time to ask for advice and progress reports.
5. Timing: With a currency broker, you have more control over the timing of a transaction.
6. Price: You can use limit orders and stop-loss orders to get a better price with a currency broker.
7. Hedging: Currency brokers offer a variety of ways to protect your foreign exchange exposure with hedging.
8. Options: Some currency brokers offer OTC FX options for buying and selling currency.
9. Receiving foreign currency: If you receive a foreign currency into a UK bank, they will generally convert it automatically, giving you no control over costs and pricing.
10. Transparency: Currency brokers can give you a fixed percentage mark-up on your conversions.

Of course, there are sometimes occasions when a currency broker is not better than your bank. Here are a few reasons why a bank may be more appropriate than a currency broker.

• Small transactions: Sometimes currency brokers will only convert £1,000 upwards, you are better off using a money transfer app for those.
• Convenience: You’ll need to open an account with a currency broker, but you will already have one with your bank.
• Pricing: It will be more expensive to send money through your bank, but if it is just a one-off small amount, the price may not matter, versus the time it takes to open a currency broker account.
• FSCS protection: Currency brokers are not covered by the FSCS (Financial Services Compensation Scheme), so your money is safer at the bank as they have enhanced protection on customer balances.

Best Overall Currency Broker 2023

In our 2023 awards Currencies, Direct won “best currency broker”. They scored very highly in our customer survey, with very high scores in customer satisfaction and pricing. Currencies Direct is also a well-established provider founded in 1996 and has 22 offices around the world.

Best Currency Broker For Exchange Rates

Key Currency consistently offers the best exchange rates in our quote comparison tool. As they are a slightly smaller currency broker, with lower costs and personal service, they are able to offer bank-beating exchange rates for larger currency transfers.

Currency brokers offer better exchange rates than banks because they buy and sell currency on their client’s behalf closer to the live interbank rate. Fees for converting currency are built into the exchange rate and can be worked out as a percentage from the mid-market. For example, if the GBP EUR exchange rate is 1.20000, a high street bank may let clients sell GBPEUR 4% below the mid-market at 1.1520 and let them buy it at 4% above the exchange rate at 1.248. However, a currency broker may offer rates 0.3% from the mid-market, which is exchange rates selling at 1.1964 and buying at 1.2036.

A currency broker will buy and sell currency through banks, however, as they exclusively deal in currency transfers and executive significant volume, they can negotiate better rates for themselves and their clients than if they were an individual conducting a single transaction.

Best Currency Broker For Range Of Currencies

OFX offer over 55 different currencies for large money transfer.

This is another point where currency brokers differ. Some currency brokers can only send money to major destinations, whilst others offer a more comprehensive service and you can send currency to almost anywhere.

It’s important to note that the more obscure the currency or destination, the higher costs and the length of time the currency transfer takes will be.

Major currency routes like euros to Europe of Dollars to American will be cheaper and quicker than sending large amounts of funds to India or China, for example. The banking networks are different and there are additional anti-money laundering rules for different regions.

Best Currency Broker For Customer Service

In our 2023 awards Currencies, Direct received the best feedback from their clients for customer service. Over 85% would recommend them to a friend, which was 10% higher than the next currency broker recommendation scores.

Currency brokers offer account executives to help with the actual conversion, the process of sending funds abroad and advice on market timing. One of the major concerns clients have when transferring money abroad is the safety of their funds and that they will arrive at the destination. Unlike banks like NatWest or money transfer companies like TransferWise, which almost entirely operate online and have no point of contact to discuss transactions with, personal account executives are available to discuss all aspects of a transaction. Account executives can also help explain the best time to buy and sell a currency, if a currency forward may be appropriate, and how to get the best exchange rate when sending large amounts of currency abroad.

Best Currency Broker For Forward Contracts

Global Reach Partners and TorFX will let you do a currency forward contract up to two years into the future. The majority of other currency brokers offer currency forwards up to one year. If you are using currency forwards as part of your overall currency hedging strategy, Global Reach would be the better choice because they also offer currency options.

Currency brokers can lock in the current exchange rate for transactions that do not need to be done for some time in the future. Most currency brokers offer currency forwards up to a year in advance, but some specialists offer forwards for two to three years. A good example of the use of a currency forward contract is buying a holiday home abroad. If a couple knows they will need to buy EUR 500,000 in six months time and do not want to risk the exchange rate moving against them, they can buy the euros at today’s exchange rate but not have to pay for them until the currency forward settles after six months.

Most Established Currency Broker

Currencies Direct is the most established currency broker we feature having been founded in 1996.

Established currency brokers offers are a little more expensive than start-ups because new providers come to market to undercut the established companies. As such, overall prices are driven down, which is good for the consumer. However, currency brokers that charge so little that they do not make any profit present more of a risk than established currency brokers who operate on health margins and are well capitalised. When choosing a currency broker based on how well established they are, you may find that you pay a premium for security versus opportunistic fintech start-ups. Start-ups also tend to either be heavily focussed on technology, which makes the process very quick and cheap, but offers little personal service. Or, a new currency broker may focus only on personal service with commission-based salespeople. However, personal service comes at a cost, as commission-driven currency brokers may not be the cheapest option.

Best Currency Brokers For Large & Small Transfers

Currencies Direct and TorFX with both let you send as little as £100 abroad. However, it is important to note that if you will only be doing small money transfers you will be better off with a money transfer app. Currency brokers speicalise in transfers above £10,000 so for small deals there may be a fee, some will treat small transfers as a loss leader for larger conversions.

Currency brokers do not have a maximum amount you can send, although the maximum you can convert in one go will depend on the liquidity of the currency pair.

This article contains affiliate links which may earn us some form of income if you go on to open an account. However, if you would rather visit the currency brokers via a non-affiliate link, you can view them directly here:

• Key Currency
• OFX
• Global Reach
• TorFX
• Currencies Direct