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Since our forced departure from TransferWise.com, we started looking for alternatives, so our wonderful members wouldn’t have to wait 3-5 business days to send or receive a wire. And we have good news! We will no longer look for TransferWise alternatives, as we’ve found the perfect solution, and that is a SWIFT GPI enabled company bank account.
After testing for a few days, we’ve noticed that:
Bank to bank wires can travel as fast as two hours. On average, one full day. (In the past, it took 3-5 business days)
TransferWise to bank payments average around 8-9 hours. (Previous wait time was 1-3 business days)
Note: Your bank (and all banks along the way of the wire) have to be in the same system (SWIFT GPI) in order for the funds to arrive (or be sent out) within hours to a day. This is why not all users may be lucky enough when waiting for payment. On the positive side, SWIFT GPI is rolling out everywhere and it currently covers over 1000 bank branches, with more additions coming in every month. We still expect delays to lesser-developed countries because their banking systems are a few years behind.
What does that mean for you?
For us and most of our members, it’s business as usual. We will still be able to accept TransferWise payments and send out payouts the same way. However, the payments will go through our new bank branch. Naturally, we will no longer push or endorse TransferWise, so sellers and buyers will have to request it (if needed) in their checkout tickets.
Important: For the time being, we’re switching our main company account from Bank Millennium S.A. to Santander Bank. Please update our client info. Just an FYI, we plan to switch back to Bank Millennium once they join the SWIFT GPI network.
This rolled out last year but banks don’t want to adopt it fast because you know why? They made good money charging users for express wires (50 USD+). But they’re finally caving in. Bank wires are becoming more accepted worldwide. Heck, just three years ago many of our users had a fit when they were forced to pay via a wire. “Wire? How do I do that? Is this a scam?” Now, people almost never complain.
Banks noticed people are switching and they decided to make it easier. This is bad news (in the long run) for services like PayPal/TransferWise. Because once all banks join the network, what’s the benefit of using such services?
PayPal isn’t reliable AT ALL in that regard. I’ve had tons of cases where I presented clear and undisprovable proof while all the other party said (in the dispute chat) was “lol I was scam’d” and lost. I’ve started doing the same now during disputes, I literally write one sentence and win a bunch of disputes. I don’t bother providing any evidence what-so-ever anymore. They don’t read it, and if they do, they act on the info at random.
Also:
7-day payment holds.
21- day payment holds.
180 USD funds frozen holds.
Thousands of users online claim they weren’t able to even get their funds after 180 days.
I actually love it being phased out from SWAPD. Went from 30-40% usage in 2017, to just 10% today.
Potentially news for our fellow members from Pakistan. It seems Santander won’t let us wire USD to Pakistan. We don’t even see Pakistan in the list of countries when making USD wires.
So far, around 50% of incoming and outgoing wires take 7-8 hours. And our new bank works past 5 PM and even on the weekends! The bad news is that for some reason when we wire to TransferWise, it takes sometimes longer than a regular wire.
This new bank is wonderful. Most incoming wires reach us in less than 7-8 hours, quite often in three. TransferWise is still a hit or a miss, sometimes it takes 2 hours sometimes 24-48 hours. We believe it’s because TW has to manually approve each incoming/outgoing payment and they don’t always get there on time. Wires show up at any time of the day, even on the weekends. It’s actually hard to get used to it now, for example, just when I think it’s time to log off and leave my office, I get 3 notifications of incoming wires (at 10 PM).
We’re also in process of fixing our VAT problem (@coehn). This isn’t easy, we have another meeting on Tuesday. However, I am fairly sure that in January this problem will be over as we psychically cannot continue under our current tax bracket from the new year as we’ve crossed over 2.8m USD in sales volume, which is the limit for our current tax setup. We’re actually getting the same certification as Escrow.com (we’re actually using them as a template).
Update: While our new bank is awesome and we have wires that sometimes reach us in 10-15 min, there are some drawbacks. We just found out we are not able to issue wires (online) to countries like Albania, Niger, Nigeria, Kenya, and Pakistan. We would have to visit the bank branch every time, which we do not plan on doing since we have many transactions tied to those countries. This will complicate things for everyone and make payments (incoming/outgoing) slower for the listed countries.
