October 17, 2023
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Payments to bank account are classic of classics - no matter if they are inside Europe or worldwide. It is safe, cheap and by far the most popular payment method on our network. So, let's take a look why a smart user is using good old bank accounts instead of PayPal.
International payments to bank accounts are usually more expensive (higher international bank fees) and slower (bank can ask us questions like who and why we are sending to) compared to local bank payments. Reason is that the money may be going through several banks (correspondence banks) and each one can deduct a fee. Also the bank may apply currency conversion too which usually costs 1-3%.
However, payment to bank account is very popular payment method in our network, because when it is possible we are using Wise to eliminate all international fees and with the best in market currency conversion. It means that we are sending you directly your local currency to your local bank, paying a very little fee upfront and nothing more. For example to send 1000 EUR into Indonesia, in IDR currency, costs approximately 7.5 EUR, less than 1% and these type of payments can take only couple of minutes instead of days! To illustrate how much a difference it is:
To make it even better, means instant payments and no currency conversion at all, you can open your own Wise account - it is a free account in multiple currencies. We are using them, we can recommend them, but the final choice is obviously yours.
The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a payment-integration initiative of the European Union for simplification of bank transfers denominated in euro. As of July 2015, SEPA consists of the 28 member states of the European Union, the four member states of the European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), Monaco and San Marino.
Simply it means that if you want to receive your money via SEPA, then you must have opened account in bank or EMI(Electronic Money Institution) which operates in EU. It is pretty easy if you live here, but this do not apply to all our users. Problems are that lot of banks or companies require that you have to have proof of address from EU or prove that you have some ties with EU.
Luckily, there are services which does not have strict rules, all can be opened remotely from your home and we have experiences with them - let's take a look on Wise or Payoneer . If you are from Europe, then you should also look at Revolut , N26 Bank or Monese . All these accounts are free, with little or no maintenance fees, so it is better to register to as much accounts as possible (you know just in case), because they can change their terms of service, add new features for older customers and most importantly it is easier to open account today than it will be tomorrow.
| Wise features | |
|---|---|
| Account type | Personal, Business |
| Receive currencies | EUR, USD, GBP, AUD, RUB, IDR and many more |
| Debit card | Yes |
| Unique IBAN | Yes |
| Prices | Offer from Wise is straightforward with small transparent fees - provides one of the cheapest currency exchange using mid-market rates. |
SEPA payments work great, they are pretty fast, with no or low fees, so if you do not have an account with your own IBAN we believe that is time for you to get one. Remember that today is the best day! However, some of services which we are talking about are not banks in the real mean of a word, they have other regulations than bank have and most importantly there is usually no 100,000€ guarantee/insurance in case of something goes wrong, so it is not recommended to keep in large amounts of money. The real banks with licenses and insurance are Revolut and N26 Bank .
If you want to get some feedback, recommendation or have questions about how we work with them, contact us. For more detailed queries would be better to contact directly their support.
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