Don't Get Screwed Sending Your Dollars to Mexico. TransferWise Does It 4X Cheaper Josh Constine - Tech Crunch
go to original December 15, 2015

How to TransferWise (TransferWise)

Money transfers are a crooked racket. They’re designed to hide just how much cash they steal from immigrant workers sending funds to family back home. Western Union, Moneygram, even PayPal’s Xoom trumpet that they only charge around $5, but quietly pocket people’s money by setting their own unfair exchange rate.

TransferWise wants to put an end to all this bullsh*t. The hot financial tech startup has launched money transfers between the U.S. and Mexico with a flat 1.5% fee. The bank account transfers are upfront, transparent, and four times cheaper than the average cost to send money to Mexico.



If you gave TransferWise $100, the recipient in Mexico would get 1683 pesos after the real exchange rate and 1.5% fee. Give Western Union $100, and the recipient only gets 1622 pesos after the inflated exchange rate and fee. Typically Western Union charges 4.63%, PayPal Xoom charges 4.95%, and CitiBank absolutely gauges customers with a 12.4% fee.

These remittance services advertise a low flat fee of a few dollars but get away with robbery by baking a rip-off exchange rate into their websites’ transfer calculato. A tiny asterisk leads to a warning about the shady rate. “That money should be in families’ bank accounts over in Mexico” says Joe Cross, TransferWise’s General Manager for the U.S.



The 1.5% TransferWise beta will open to 10,000 users for bank account to bank account moves. TransferWise seeks to open the program and allow transfers via credit card, debit card, email addresses, or phone number in February.

U.S. to Mexico is the world’s largest international payments corridor, seeing $24.4 billion sent along the route in 2014. It’s a huge market for TransferWise that will prove whether its system scales. Simply by eliminating the brick-and-mortar offices, marketing, and some of the exploitative profits of its older competitors, TransferWise could disrupt a terrible burden on needy families.

Read the rest at Tech Crunch

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!