How to Send Money Internationally and Pay Bills Abroad for Just 1% (Seriously) (2024)

Last Updated: March 21, 2023

Sending and receiving foreign currency used to be my biggest headache. In this Wise review (formerly TransferWise), I’m going to show you exactly why it’s now a complexity of the past.

When I was working and traveling in Australia, paying bills and sending money back home was nearly impossible. My wages were going into a foreign account, but I couldn’tuse myforeign card to pay bills in the United States.

I couldn’t find a practicalway to transfer themoney between my accounts, or even to send money to my family and friends back home.

I tried transferring money from my foreign account to my US account via bank wire,but I was getting charged $35 every single time.

I tried using PayPal with multiple accounts hooked up to different cards in different countries—which was clunky at best—and I still had to deal with their criminal exchange rate.

And Western Unionnot only took days but they charged something like $50-$100.

Like many expats and long-term travelers, I was on the other side of the world with no way to send, receive or transfer money at a reasonable rate. The banks had me locked out.It should have been so easy, but it wasn’t.

Instead, I watched the banks take hundreds of dollars in fees while I worked my ass off to afford my travels.

I first heard about Wise last year and I now use it to send money to friends, to pay bills abroad, and even to accept payments from my international clients.I send and receive money all over the world, to and from any account, in any currency, at the official conversion rate, for a flat fee of about 1%.

It’s almost revolutionary. And in this Wise review, I’m going to tell you why this is the best way to send money abroad, bar none.

TRY WISE

Wise was launched in 2011as TransferWise, and has been backed by Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal, board of Facebook, aninvestor in Airbnb and Stripe) and Richard Branson (Virgin Airlines, Virgin Records, Virgin everything).

It’s made by two Estonian fellas: Kristo Käärmannone, financial consultant, and Taavet Hinrikus, the first ever employee at Skype.They’ve got some serious street cred,and with $117 million in funding, they’ve got the money behind them to make Wise a household name.

It’s my hopethat, by using Wise, you’ll be able to spend less at the bank and more on your travels.

Traditionally, sending money has involved a middleman—the bank. You give the money to them, they convert it, take their commission, then send itto the recipient.

But with Wise you exchange currency with other customers.

This is the cool part: Wise operates like a peer-to-peer service.Rather than exchanging money with the bank, you exchange money with a peer—someone else who also wants to use Wise to send money overseas. It cuts out all the fees (and it’s totally secure).

As an example, let’s say I want to send $200 to a friend in Germany. In Germany, a guynamed Markus is sending €200 to a friend in the States. Essentially, we’re making the same transaction, but backward and in reserve. Instead of actually converting our cash, we just swap money.

Pretty neat, huh?Technically, your money never even crosses a border, whichis why they don’t have to charge you for the conversion.

TRY WISE

The problem with a lot of money transfer services is that they only do one thing—they transfer money. Wise, however, is surprisingly versatile. Here are a few examples of how I’ve usedthem in the past:

1. Transferring Money Between Accounts – SinceI have bank accounts in multiple countries, I use Wise to transfer money between them. All I have to do is enter the bank details of each one and Wise initiates the transfer at the real conversion rate, only charging a minimal fee.
2. Paying Bills Abroad – Wise makes it easy to pay bills from overseas, no matter which country you’re in. Just enter the business info and their bank information/IBAN number and they take care of the rest.
3. Sending Money to Friends – Last year when I was in Bangkok, my friend Ben lost his bank card. Since he didn’t have any money on him, he logged online and sent me €400 with Wise. He paid €4 in fees, and I received the exact amount in my bank account in US dollars (within 24 hours and at the official exchange rate). I then withdrew Thai baht at the ATM and Ben could finallyafford his dinner once again (though I obviously lent him enough to pay for dinner and a few beers in the meantime).
4. Invoicing Freelance Clients– As a blogger, Ido business with clients all over the world. I’ve found international wire transfers to be one of three things: costly, confusing, or unreliable. With Wise, I can send a simple money request to a client, who then initiates a standard bank transfer to Wise.

Because Wise has a bank account in each country, it’s technicallya local transfer for the client and a local transfer for me, sothey chargejust 1%. The best part is that my clients don’t even have to sign up for an account, and neither one of us has to pay large fees! It’s all very simple.

For years, PayPal has been the big player when it comes to sending and receiving money online.Since a lot of peoplehave a PayPal account these days, it’s the go-to option because it’s just plain easy. But is convenience worth paying 6.9%?

Not only do they charge about 3.9% to send money, but they charge you an extra 3% on top of their already criminalexchange rate. Once you have the money in your account, they force you to convert the currencywith them. It’s locked in your PayPal account and you can’t withdraw it unless youuse their conversion rates.

Sneaky buggers.

I’ll be honest, I used to be a big fan of PayPal, but I’ve come to despise them. For a long time they’ve been the only option, and even today I’m forced to use them a lot to run my business—they’re a necessary evil. I was really excited to findWise because it means I can phasePayPal out of my life.

The other difficulty with PayPal is that, if you want to transfer money between your own banks, you have to sign up for multiple accounts.Since you’re only permittedto have one PayPal account per country, you have to log in and out multiple times, and you’re still stuck paying the excessive exchange rate.

With Wise, you pay about 1% per transfer. So if I send $1,000, the fee is about $10.With Paypal, it would cost $69.Using aninternational bank transfer, sending $1,000 could cost up to$100 in fees.It’s kind of a no-brainer.

That was my first question, too. I’m so used to getting cheated by banks that I couldn’t understand why a company would charge reasonable fees. It’s the peer-to-peer functionality that makes Wise cheap (not to mentionit’sreally clever).Rather than having to constantly convert currency, Wise is matching up users from around the world, and it’s totally secure.

TRY IT NOW

Realistically you don’t see anything that happens behind the scenes. I’m not searching for a guy namedMarkus to make an exchange with. Wise has a huge pot of money to draw from in each country, soyou don’t have to worry about waiting for someone else to make a transfer, too. The platform is set up to operate like a traditional money transfer service—just enter the recipientand the amount, andpress send.

And here’ssomething else: in most majorcurrencies, Wise allows you to send money using your credit card as the funding source. And all they charge is 1%!

Thatdefinitely beats PayPal’s 6.9% and the bank’s hefty cut.

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