Receiving SWIFT transfer in foreign currency (USD)

spacepluk

Hi there,
So I have a client that for several reasons is going to send transfers from the US in US dollars. The fees pdf for the business account states the same fees for receiving SWIFT transfer in both foreign currency and euros... but then I've read in several places in the forum that you can only receive euros so I'm confused about this.

Anybody has experience with this?
Help!

Tim

Hi 👋 Oscar Morante

You can only receive Euro's in your bunq account. If the transfer is exchanged by the sending bank before reaching bunq then it will come through fine. If the sending bank doesn't exchange it then it will bounce back.

I personally don't suggest to test this as intermediate banks may take their piece even though it will not reach your account. Opening a Transferwise account to receive the USD, exchange it yourself for a good currency rate and forward it with an instant payment euro sepa transfer to your bunq account is usually what we suggest.

spacepluk

Hi Tim, thanks for the quick answer! I'm glad I asked!

I suggest you update the pdf here (https://www.bunq.com/assets/media/legal/en/20200110_Fee_Information_Document_Business_EN.pdf) because if things work like this the "Receiving money" section is very misleading. This is also different (worse?) from every other bank I've used before where you can just give people your account number and you'll receive the money.

I have no way of knowing if my clients banks are going to do the exchange.
Does the TransferWise integration help in this case? Sorry if that's a stupid question I've never used TrasnferWise before.

Sander

Oscar Morante the terms used in that document are in line with the guidelines for that document, I don't believe bunq has any say in that. Other banks typically accept foreign currencies indeed, but bunq is only around for a couple of years now, and didn't implement this yet. Doesn't mean it will never be there. 🙂 For now bunq's focus in on Europe.

Oscar Morante Does the TransferWise integration help in this case? Sorry if that's a stupid question I've never used TrasnferWise before.

The integration you mention is only for sending money. To receive money you'd need to have an account at TransferWise, let the money go to the TransferWise account, convert it using TransferWise's service and then send the Euros to your bunq account. 🙂

Tim

Oscar Morante

I agree with you, please keep in mind I'm not an employee though but a voluntary community moderator.

The problem with the document above is that it's a standardized document as by the EU regulations. So bunq isn't allowed to change contexts even though this might actually make it less informative/misleading for the user.🧐

Jakob-Y

Oscar Morante While indeed I'd always recommend to use bunq's own pricing document instead of this standardized document, I can only find the heading "In foreign currency or from countries outside of SEPA in Euro (via Swift)" under the "Receiving money" section, nothing about receiving money in other currencies.

Only in the Glossary there is such a heading, but that has nothing to do with wether such features are available or not, it's just some explanations about the terms used (well, it's a glossary).

spacepluk

Thanks @Tim and Sander, I really appreciate your help whether you work for bunq or not :)

I personally don't mind using another service to receive non euro transfers, but I can see how other people might feel mislead by this and get angry.

I have zero knowledge about EU's banking regulations but I think it is a strange choice to use that document to advertise the fees. I also tried to find a similar document in my German and Spanish banks and I failed 🤷‍♂️

Tim

It's better to use bunq's own pricing document indeed: https://www.bunq.com/en/pricing sheet

You should be able to get the standardized fee's document from your other European banks too, but not all traditional banks are up-to-date with this stuff..

spacepluk

Well, I wanted to check the fees to receive a payment in USD via swift so I did this:

bunq.com > Info > Pricing > Business > Fee Information Document

Then in the document it says "Receiving money ... In foreign currencies or ..." and prices on the right. I think it's reasonable to stop right there and assume that it just works.

Even if you know that the other document exists, you would have to do...

bunq.com > Legal > Pricing

...and then in that document you just get the same prices. There's no mention about the account being euro-only and that receiving payments in foreign currencies might result in a bounce that might incur fees elsewhere.

Big-B

Oscar Morante I agree. It's a bit misleading. TransferWise integration means for outgoing payment in other currencies than EUR. But to receive any incoming payment in other currencies than EUR is NOT possible. Unfortunately.