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  • Transfer USD to EUR (from US to EU). Cheaper Wise or direct bunq?

Hi there bunqers 🙌
I wonder if anyone tried both the below options to transfer USD to EUR from a US bank account to bunq.

Option 1

  • Transfer USD from US bank to bunq USD account (using Swift)
  • Convert and transfer amount from bunq USD account to EUR bunq account

Option 2

  • Transfer USD from US bank account to Wise USD account (Fees from Wise)
  • Convert in Wise and transfer from Wise to bunq EUR account (Fees from Wise)

Both ways have costs, one for the Swift (1) and the other embedded in Wise's services (2).
It might depend also from the amount transferred. I realize option 2 via Wise is probably the fastest.

I tried to browse around in the FAQ and different article but I did not manage to get info.

Thank you 🙏 for letting me know if you have tested and what is the comparison
Have a great day 🌈
GG

    @Gianguig#242105 I have done many calculations regarding this (transfer from USA to bunq with currency exchange) like you described after the introduction of the Local currency accounts. Considering all costs for both sender and receiver, Wise is cheaper by a significant amount almost regardless of how much money you want to transfer.

    If we make an example with 1000 USD, then if you go with Wise the fees are easy. The sender pays 1000 USD via ACH bank transfer to Wise (normally ACH transfers are free or very cheap), they will shave off 6.40 USD and convert the rest at the real market rate, netting you a total of 942.53 EUR on your bunq account. There are no fees for receiving, because it'll just be a regular SEPA transfer for you.

    But if we go the SWIFT route, well first we don't know how much money the US bank is gonna take, but it's probably a lot more than for the ACH transfer. But even if we don't consider these costs at all and just assume the US bank will transfer the 1000 USD for free, then you will have to pay 10 Euros to receive the transfer on the Local currency account to bunq. Next up, you will want to exchange this to the Euro bunq account, which means 0.5% network fees and an unknown exchange rate (but let's pretend it's the same as at Wise, which would be the best-case). That is another 5 USD going out of the window. So after everything, you now end up with 933.86 EUR, without accounting for sender fees.

    By the way there's no reason to do the Wise payment in two steps. Just let the payer use Wise directly to send you Euro to your bunq account. By having more steps in there it just gets more expensive. It it probably still cheaper to use Wise even if you split it up like this, but I haven't calculated for this case.

      @Jakob-Y#242135
      Thank you @Jakob-Y 🙏,
      Very detailed information, I really appreciate it 👍

      I had been using for this type of operations Option 2 until we got the USD bunq account and then I started looking into it.
      Your math makes perfect sense ✅ , for this scenario Wise is definitely the best (option 2).
      Also my experience with Wise in the past had been very good and the speed of execution is way better compared to SWIFT transfers.
      The payer is basically myself and having the conversion from USD to EUR done from the US bank is way more expensive (very bad exchange rate and additional charges) than having Wise doing it.
      Have a great evening 🌈
      GG

        2 months later

        @New-Aquamarine-Reindeer-2212223619#256267
        Hi there,
        this is a community of users.
        If you need to ask anything please do, but do not just attach a question to a complete un related topic. It is confusing, does not help you to get any feedback and provides confusion to the other people interested in the tread.

        This said, no one here have access to your account data and the reasons why it was locked.
        Please contact bunq support. this is how: https://together.bunq.com/d/32181-how-do-i-contact-support
        Regards
        GG

          a year later

          I'm really a newbie with international transfers, but how would you judge

          Option 3

          • Transfer USD from US bank to bunq USD account (using ACH)
          • Convert and transfer amount from bunq USD account to EUR bunq account

          not sure if that makes much of a difference - maybe ACH transfer wasn't an option 14 months ago?

            I gave this a go earlier today, and so far, I can observe that the USD amount that arrived into my bunq USD account is the exact same amount that was sent ($5000)
            The XR was 0.90785, which is slightly below the 0.912850 that Wise is stating.
            However, if there are no other fees that I haven't seen yet on the bunq side, the 28.53 USD fee that Wise would take is slightly higher than the XR different (0.912850-0.90785)*5000 = exactly 25.

            Not sure if I'm doing the math right here, though.

              13 days later

              @New-Mandarin-Seal-525568210#280939

              Hey im about the receive a USD payment. Have you discovered any other fees since you posted this comment?

                @Pieter-Azure-Puma-1949271135#281609 All fees can be found here.

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