Need to Send Money to a Foreign Bank Account? Try TransferWise

I’m currently planning a trip to Malaysia this summer. One of the primary purposes of this trip is to spend a couple of days on a durian farm where I’ll just gorge myself on durian. I’m excited. (I’ve also got flights booked on Qatar’s and Etihad’s A380s in first class, so those reviews will eventually appear on this blog).

But to confirm my stay at the durian farm, I needed to transfer money to the durian farm’s bank account. It’s just a guy and his family running this place, so they don’t have any infrastructure to take credit cards or do online payments.

At first, I was at a bit of a loss about how to accomplish this. I initially thought of wiring money, but wiring money is generally pretty pricy, much less wiring money internationally. I use a credit union for my primary banking purposes, and they charge $35 for an international wire. I looked into money transfer services like Western Union, but they too were not cheap.

And then I came across TransferWise (warning: that’s my referral link). TransferWise is a relatively new company that gets around some of the traditional fees associated with sending money across borders by making it so that no money actually crosses borders. If you want to send money from bank account A in the US to bank account B in Malaysia (as was my case), rather than directly sending money from bank account A to bank account B, they find other people who want to transfer money in the opposite direction (i.e. from Malaysia to the US) and just transfer the money within each country individually to settle everyone up. Pretty ingenious, if you ask me.

Because the money doesn’t actually cross borders, they can offer much lower rates, and I was able to send my money at the prevailing exchange rates for a fee of only $3. Pretty good if you ask me! The fact that you get the actual exchange rate is a big deal, as many money transfer services advertise low fees but gouge you on the exchange rate.

Anyway, if you find yourself needing to move money across borders, you might want to consider TransferWise. If you sign up with my link, you get your first transfer for free (up to $750).