Thanks Graham.
OK the UK bank balance adjusted to the transfer by about 15 mins ago, and 5 minutes ago the money was not in Wise and now it is.
So it’s looking like the delay is at the UK end - probably long enough for a manual check by UK bank that it was an existing payee used previously. The sum itself was not large enough to cause concern nor out of pattern.
For now I’m willing to assume the UK banking industry has put in some requirement that slows transfers to the likes of Wise down. My UK bank was one of the first to offer consumers Fastpay free of charge and has never been slow.
One to watch though.
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just transferred £10 to Revolut sterling wallet and it arrived in seconds…
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Just a query Graham - I know the concept of wallets because I have the same with Wise, but that’s not what I am normally doing. I want to conduct a transaction whereby my £s from my UK a/c are transferred straight to euros and put straight into my French bank a/c. Not quite the same as what you have just done if I understand correctly, because you have only transferred £s from one a/c to another.
I think the conventional wisdom is to transfer like to like, so sterling from UK to Sterling Wallet in Revolut (in my case) then do the conversion to Euro there which will also be as much instantaneous as it can be. I can keep Sterling in my Revolut wallet to use to transfer to my son’s Revolut account (bank of mum and dad style 
) or accumulate it to do a bigger conversion if the rate moves up without having to first open the UK bank app. Same meat, different gravy… just my preference.
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Just had time to move the GBP out of Wise to my French account (GBP to EUR). This side of the transaction initially said it would take till tomorrow then confirmed it had completed the whole thing in 7 seconds. The money is showing in the French account immediately.
So Business As Usual from Wise to Eurozone. The delays seem to be from a variety of UK banks now taking longer to pay Wise. (We can’t all be banking at the same bank 
).
I think Graham’s idea of maintaining a small balance in Wise might be worth considering.
Wise 8 times or more expensive now than it was so I will watch for now.
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This, and the massive decline in customer service which ended up with the last person I spoke to being incredibly rude to me, is the reason I eventually dumped them having been an early adopter myself. I don’t like Revolut as a business at all, but I’ve never had cause to complain, and with them things ‘just work’. I understand why Starling introduced a 0.4% exchange fee after a year or so of none, they’re one of the only profitable U.K. fintechs still and it’s reasonable enough they need to get their bottom line healthier in a responsible way, but if they hadn’t I’d ditch all the currency apps as they’re in a different league.
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@KarenLot - I think the reason for the erratic timings today was the systems failure I alluded to in my post earlier today.
I have two concerns:
- Wise are definitely getting much more expensive than they used to be
- System difficulties or failures leading many hours now seem to occur every few weeks, after years of 99% reliability
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Didn’t they float? Are they being pushed by a dominant bloc of shareholders for dividends?
Pleased to say just transferred from my UK a/c to French a/c via Wise and got the usual speedy service - 5 seconds.
I don’t like using any of these “non traditional banks” to hold my money in a “wallet” as I feel I don’t have the same security. So far as I’m concerned all I want is a forex transaction - straight in / straight out.
hmmmm that’s where the currency (of whatever denomination) in your Wise account is held…
Sorry Graham, not explaining myself properly. I have my pension in my UK a/c. When I want some of it on my French a/c I do a straight forex exchange. Sterling leaves my UK a/c, five seconds later euros are in my French a/c.
Only rarely have I used a “wallet” and I certainly wouldn’t transfer sterling into a Wise (or Revolut) wallet and hold it with them until such time as I need to make an exchange here in France. I do not trust them to hold my money. I’d rather leave the £s in the UK in my HSBC a/c.
The only time I have used a wallet is when I’ve wanted to reimburse my French gite guests their security deposit. It’s been easier for me to pay them through Wise than to try and set up a new payee with C/A. Even so, the euros do not stay with Wise. The euros go into their wallet and I immediately make the payment to my guest.
That is why I always am looking for the fastest transfer time - I don’t want any other service from them.
Did my usual 2-stage transfer UK to Fr last week.
It’s always been done, both legs, in about 10 seconds before.
This time it was 12 hours
I will give it 1 or 2 times more but with the new fees which are not nothing for what basically is a no-risk automated transaction, I am not prepared to wait 12 hours. If it doesn’t become instant again I will not be using Wise regularly.
I transferred £700 the other day from a UK bank account to the Revolut Sterling wallet on a recently upgraded FR IBAN account and it took just a few minutes to appear.
The Wise decision may be to move to Revolut 
No fee for the transaction, as usual.
One more anecdotal experience - I just transferred £20 as a test from my Nationwide BS Flex account to my Wise sterling balance, and it took about 20 seconds.
FWIW I used Apple Pay to authorise the payment - my Wise app offers me several ways to get the money across (manual bank transfer, auto bank transfer, debit card, credit card, and SWIFT payment) but I thought I’d give that one a go!
As an aside I transferred €200 Euros to my Euro Wise balance from my Nationwide account a few weeks ago and of course Nationwide charge me £5 (“foreign currency fee”) - not paying attention, I should of course have done the transfer in sterling and then converted to Euros with Wise…
I’m a long time user of (Transfer)Wise and have always found the transfer times to be acceptable. I was stunned when I saw one go through in seconds. I didn’t think that even could be done. My last one (Wise to Boursorama Banque, in euros, took somewhere between 4 and 8 hours. That works for me, I’m used to doing stuff well in advance.
We also switched to (Transfer)Wise many years ago and have had no problems at all.
We have the ‘business’ account, so our gites guests etc pay directly into it in whatever country and currency they are in, we do the exchange when the rate is good (having set alerts) and send it to our French bank as required - all in seconds.
We do also keep a modest sum in the account in different currencies, so we can use the debit card wherever we are without any exchange fees.
An OT question Geof, I hope you don’t mind and hopefully it will be of interest to others. Please feel free not to answer too. Do you declare those currency accounts when filing your tax return (I’m assuming they’re filed in France!)
I ask because ‘les impots’ quite specifically specify that there’s no need to declare Wise (and PayPal) accounts BUT I think they are referring to the previous generation money transfer accounts rather than Wises’ new accounts (which are more akin standard bank accounts) I always declare mine, as I don’t want to risk the fines that can be made for not declaring foreign bank accounts.
As I say, do please feel free to ignore the question. I only posted it openly (rather than by pm) because I thought others might be interested.
I’d be interest to see a reference to that claim.
Certainly, there is a reference to the likes of Paypal (I linked to it in my tax guide) pages 38 & 39
and
Maybe they’ve removed it now, maybe I saw it last year, I dunno, but I certainly recall seeing it.
I think I can still amend my online return no? If so, I’ll log in and have a look.
But I’m most certainly not inventing it!
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