Comment by virgilp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by virgilp | Hacker News Reader

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Do you know many other banks that let you withdraw abroad for less? I mean, in Romania there are technically banks that give you zero-cost withdrawals abroad... but only because they figured they could shift that cost into the exchange rate and most people wouldn't notice (although it's far worse, now they charge you for online & offline payments too, not just ATM withdrawals!)

Transferwise for instance (which was praised here) apparently charges you 1.25% to _add_ money to your account (USD). Oh, and ATM withdrawals over 200GBP? 2% - just like Revolut: https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/pricing

Revolut is not suitable as primary bank, IMO (it's not even clear whether they fully function as a bank vs just "financial institution"). But as a card provider for vacation/travel abroad, it's pretty awesome. Many banks will have fees like "1.5EUR + 1%" which sounds less until you realize that most of the time you withdraw less than 100EUR, nevermind the fact that many ATMs won't even give you more than 200E in one transaction.

[edit] For completeness sake... Citibank offered that here. CitiGold is awesome, unfortunately they don't have a presence here anymore - you can still get the offer with offshore banking, but you have to keep large sums of money with them and they charge you through your nose for investing with Citi (something in excess of 1% yearly if I remember correctly - as a percentage of "assets under management")

> Transferwise for instance (which was praised here) apparently charges you 1.25% to _add_ money to your account (USD)

That's if you're using a US debit card. They seem to charge a fixed fee of $5.34 to top up any amount of USD via wire transfer.

> That's if you're using a US debit card

A USD debit card. Revolut also claims to charge US cards too (an undisclosed amount) but amazingly enough they charge me nothing for topup from my USD card (issued by Romanian bank)

The transferwise wire transfer fee is on top of SWIFT fees and whatever other fees your bank will charge you for USD. That's pure profit for them, there's no cost that justifies the fee.

> Do you know many other banks that let you withdraw abroad for less?

Abroad? Mostly a slight markup on the default exchange rate, which is hard to pin down, but certainly less than 2%.

But my problem is mostly this applies on any withdrawal. Not only abroad.

Like I said, Revolut is not suitable as your only bank. But it can be awfully convenient as a second card.

WRT "certainly less than 2%" - you might be surprised, do double-check. Not all banks do, but many do here. It's most obvious here at Raiffeisen, where you can have EUR or USD cards (_with_ ATM fees) - or RON cards with no ATM fees (but if you think about checking the currency conversion rate, you're in for a nasty surprise). And again, bad currency conversion is far worse than 2% ATM fee, because it applies on all your purchases, whereas nowadays in many countries you don't actually need to withdraw money... not in excess of 200E/month, anyway.

Most European banks add 2% for currency conversion (in addition to non-market rates). Most Canadian banks add 2.5%. https://www.greedyrates.ca/blog/best-foreign-currency-exchan...

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