We’re off to France next month, and as usual we’ll watch the £-€ rate wobble around for a while, wonder when to buy the Euros, then decide that actually by far the best thing to do is use our fee-free credit card (as recommended by the awesomeness that is Martin Lewis), and use whoever’s giving the best rate a week before we go for purchasing some useable cash.
International money exchange – image courtesy of Shutterstock
But we’ve just been looking into the possibilities of No.1 son going to Uni in Germany. Which naturally will mean regular top-ups of funds across borders.
And international exchange rates are not something I have ever really grasped (to be honest, I try really hard, but economics is a bit of a mystery to me. I keep promising myself that I will fix this. Soon…). What i DO understand is that some people get WAY better rates than others. And if you’re nto careful, you can simply throw money away, just by not being a savvy exchanger.
So I was really interested when I saw Currency Fair, created purely for ordinary people (that’s you and me) and businesses should have access to the same great exchange rates for international currency transfers normally reserved for banks and market professionals dealing in millions.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty darned fine thing to me.
Three of the founders are ex-pats, so know the system form the inside as a user, and three are ex-bankers (normally that would be ba-a-a-d, but now they’re on ‘our’ side, I find that a Good Thing) so between them they’ve got the knowledge, the experience, and the network to come up with a better system. So that’s exactly what they did with CurrencyFair.
It’s for anyone that needs to exchange currency and send it to a bank account overseas, whether it’s their own account or that of a third party. Perfect for expats, businesses, and overseas property owners, to name just a few. Due to the peer-to-peer model CurrencyFair adopts, they offer cheaper exchange rates than a typical bank – usually no more than 0.5% from the interbank rate, and can often be even better (and the transfer fees with CurrencyFair are also far less than with a bank).
Also – what’s NOT to love about a company that can fit a magnificent unicorn into a blog post full of consumer advice on Money Transfer Offers?
