Using Wise for International Payments

We want to keep our rates low for our international guests and pass the savings onto you instead of forking over tons in unnecessary bank fees!

Traditionally we’ve relied on PayPal and bank transfers, but they each carry massive fees. PayPal charges you 2.5 to 5% to convert currency (on top of the 4.9% international service fee they charge us)!  Banks also tend to have pretty poor conversion rates, on top of outgoing and incoming wire fees. So what to do?

Years ago we signed up with Wise, a London-based company that specializes in currency conversion transfers at market rates with a very small service fee. With stringent privacy protections and an easy user interface (including a phone app), we are big fans of TransferWise!

TransferWise manages to avoid pricey conversion fees by having accounts in countries all over the globe. For example, if you live in Australia, you can transfer AUD to them (which will go to their Australian account), and they use the real exchange rate to then transfer that amount to us in USD from their American account. Brilliant! (You can watch their one-minute video below for more explanation.)

It may take a few minutes to set up, but if you look at your overall savings, it’s the quickest money you’ll ever save. For example, when paying for a $3500 USD trip with AUD, you would pay $140 extra in PayPal fees (2.5% conversion fee) or just $24.50 with TransferWise’s 0.7% bank transfer fee.

Because we already have a Wise account, we have a link for you to sign up with which will make your first £500 (or your equivalent) transfer FREE: https://wise.com/invite/u/bradg8

If you have another preferred method that saves you money, please let us know. Otherwise, we fully support TransferWise in order to save you currency conversion fees from your bank, PayPal, and other vendors!