(P) Bye-Bye banks, welcome to the new world of money!

International currency exchange is still a serious issue forexpats living abroad because of high (hidden) fees and unfair exchange rates. New peer-to-peer money transfer model makes foreign exchange cheaper for everyone. TransferWise uses the mid-market exchange rate - without the hidden markup fees - making it up to 10 times cheaper to send money abroad compared to using a bank. Over £1 billion has been transferred across the globe so far using the TransferWise platform, saving customers more than £135 millions in hidden fees. TransferWise uses a new “peer-to-peer” system that pairs up people who are sending money in opposite directions - the company calls this ‘MemberMatching’. As an example, there are people sending money to the Eurozone, from the USA. And people in the Eurozone sending money to the USA. TransferWise is in between these people, effectively swapping their money. This peer-to-peer system cuts out the banks completely. Every customer on TransferWise pays in their own currency, with a local bank transfer or credit card. Neither does TransferWise have to actually make any international transfers, and it keeps each currency in its respective country. Since TransferWise does currency swapping rather than ‘buying’ and ‘selling’, people get their money converted at the real mid-market rate. That’s the rate you see on XE.com, Yahoo! Finance and even Google search. You can see how much it could save you with the calculator, below.

And even if this does sound complex, using TransferWise is straightforward too. There’s no need to get a quote, sign a contract or get approved as a client. You enter some details about yourself, the beneficiary and then pay. Here’s a quick overview of what you’d need to do:

You don’t need to memorize all that though - their support team can be reached via telephone, ‘live chat’ and email. Like other money transfer companies in this space, TransferWise is putting a lot of work into offering a secure transfer experience. They’re regulated by the FCA and HMRC in the UK, and the tech has been built by the same people who brought the world Skype. All this work seems to be paying off, too. TransferWise now has over 16,000 5 reviews on the independent review site, Trustpilot. Plus, they have backing from industry innovators, like the famed US venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz and Sir Richard Branson. Here is what their customers say: "I used to think that sending money internationally was just something you had to do with your bank. There were big fees, and there was a rate that never seemed to match what my ‘currency converter’ app said it should be. And it was slow - they didn’t seem to really care if the money even got there. For the first few months of expat life, I didn’t really think about it. That was just the way you do these things. But then I started thinking about how much I was losing every time, and it soon added up. There had to be a better way." "I was fortunate enough to discover TransferWise, and it was like a breath of fresh air. Suddenly I didn’t have fill in mountains of forms, and it saved all the bank details for future transactions. Now I could quickly pay with my card like I was buying something on Amazon. I’d just make a transfer, give them a couple of hours, and they would send me an email saying when to expect the money on my expat bank account. I got a great rate, they’d give a great rate, convert the money and send it out to me. Usually, it would be there the next day on my expat bank account."