Our CA branch stopped opening completely on a Monday about 2 years ago. Previously they had been open Monday afternoon and a short opening on Saturday. When they dropped Monday, Saturday went to a day closing 4pm.
It may be that as part of that change they are now processing transactions on Saturday.
Am I making it more expensive for myself doing it in two transactions, I wonder? I suspect it was able to be fast as Wise probably has a big ‘float’ in the UK able to accept a Fastpay from my UK bank on a Saturday, and enough ‘float’ on its Belgian IBAN to be willing to pay it straight out again within the Eurozone if they could debit my holding in Wise (which was made up of the Fastpay paid to Wise as an established payee from my UK bank) immediately, even on a Saturday.
Yes, I’ve mentioned before I think that this is exactly how these new companies work, I assume whoever their Belgian account is with are connected to do instant SEPA transfers, not all accounts, and not all banks, are able to do instant transfers which is why you still can end up in the situation of sending a transfer early Friday afternoon and receiving it Tuesday, standard SEPA transfers often still can have human involvement at some point, be it actually sending the transfer or crediting to your account once it arrives. Even if Wise (or their Belgian payment partner) do instant transfers you can end up in a situation where different CA societies for example have different systems and some may not be actually connected to be able to receive them. It is an incredibly fragmented system still.
Wise came back to me with some feedback which they’re happy for me to share.
I also suggested that senders should be notified as soon as it is clear that the transfer will not takes seconds and they have said that they will incorporate this in a future update.
Here’s their feedback:
We’d typically update your activity page in the case that there are any signs of a delay. As you initially sent us GBP, we wouldn’t have updated this as long as we received the money within 1 working day. Even though it normally takes seconds, there are rare occasions where it can take a little longer. We’d have updated your tracker with a new estimate if it’d been past 1 working day, and we still hadn’t received your money. Once we receive your money and are processing it, we’ll also continue to update your activity tracker in the case that there are any further delays as well.
I agree that i used to get instant transfers and now it can take longer before it shows in french account ,the longest was two days but that was over a holiday weekend but it can be very frustrating especially if you need the funds to keep your french account in the black .
I had the same problem the other week… usually seconds but took 24 hours. I did phone and question - as I had another matter to discuss with them - and was told it can vary… but like you seconds to hours is a huge difference.
Ah I see - you use it slightly differently from me Brian. I (or others) transfer money into the sterling part of my Wise account, so it’s there when I want to exchange it - so when I said it took seconds the other day that was just the exchange to euros and transfer to our bank in France.
Understood, Geoff. Usually the transfer from UK bank to French bank via Wise takes seconds. I’m now suspecting that theYK bank is actually behind the delays so may well move over to using Wise for banking as well as transfers.
I think you’re right Brian. It sounds like something in UK banking has changed so Wise is not getting the money as quickly. And it sounds like Wise is not aware of quite how many people this is affecting, even though it’s not Wise’s fault. Their reply seemed functional and didn’t mention how many people this must be affecting. One to watch and keep sharing amongst ourselves I think.
Certain banks, HSBC is the most common one but there are others too, put the vast number of transactions to Wise and Revolut through enhanced security checks due to considerable amount of fraud going to them, be it cash of card/account theft or wider proceeds of crime. It’s not at all unusual to see posts on banking forums from people complaining their ‘faster payment’ has taken 12 hours or more, and that’s generally the reason. I can understand that if they’ve had considerable numbers of people trying to wash their dirty money using those two services specifically they might be a little more trigger happy when it comes to looking at transactions and doing more checks. But of course everything I’ve said may have nothing to do with this issue, only Wise will know.
Interesting Kirstea. A little part of me is wondering whether there’s a spinoff for traditional banks that this might make their customers less happy with fintechs…
That has been said, but it’s interesting that it’s, as far as I’ve seen, the two non-bank forex centred ones that have the issues, the fintechs that have banking licences and even the EMIs like Monese have far less issues, it’s Wise and Rev.
I can see that happening… however, would you not agree that this might only occur if the normal pattern of transactions is broken and there seems to be unusual activity on the account?
Like @Geof_Cox we either have our pension money sent in Sterling direct to Revolut (in our case) or to a UK bank (also in Sterling and then moved to Revolut in the same currency) so that the currency transfer can be done within the same entity which is a more simple affair all round and can occur with rapidity as it becomes basically an in-house paper transaction.
I’ve been a Transferwise customer for over 10 years and I’m 99% happy with the service. But transfer times do seem to have been a bit patchy over the last few months. Yesterday, however, a transfer from my Nationwide bank in the UK to my AXA Banque account in France took about 5 minutes.
Brian your note prompted me to do an instant transfer out of my UK account, to Wise.
Nothing has happened for 1 hour now. Normally the money is in Wise as soon as I boot up the app immediately after. The Wise app shows no balance and for the first time in forever, it wanted a password login. Normally it goes straight to the numeric code entry being requested. Also overall it’s running very very slowly.
I wonder if, whether due to server failure or maintenance, they’ve lost server(s) and are down to a skeleton service with new transactions being queued until there is capacity.
One more incidence of this after this one and I’ll be open to take on someone else. The transaction I’m doing absolutely must be done by Thursday hence me kicking it off when I saw your warning.
There are others (Chase in the UK, for example) offering bank FX rates or very near. 0.4% I’m very happy to pay to Wise but only if the service works as it has when needed.
Just checked Trustpilot and they are getting negative reviews.
Me too Karen, but for me it’s all about speed and if they can no longer guarantee that then I’m looking elsewhere.
For those of you using Revolut, can I just check please, bedrock, all I want is a service that moves money out of my UK bank account into my French bank account in seconds using my UK debit card to make the payment. Can Revolut do that?
