• Bunq ignoring international rules on SWIFT payments

SWIFT transactions, which are widely used around the world follow a certain protocol. When doing a transaction, a very important option is to choose who pays the bank-fees for these transactions. The choices are Shared, Our and Beneficiary, coming down to: Both parties pay their own bank fee, the sending party pays all fees or the receiving party pays all fees. This is common for banks all over the world, except in BUNQ, where apparently to this day, if you receive a SWIFT payment with the "OUR" option, the sending party pays fees for two banks and you, as a receiver, will receive a 5 euro invoice out of nowhere.
I read on this forum that this is the case since 2018 according to https://together.bunq.com/d/6157-swift-payment-cost and a few other threads. Why BUNQ? Why do you do this, if you pretend to be so transparent about your fees? What is the reason to claim those transaction fees twice. It is not a small transaction fee either.

    7 months later

    I am facing these charges as well.. My employer sends me my salary from their US bank account, in EUR, marked with "OUR" and I'm getting invoiced 5 euro by bunq. This to me sounds like against SWIFT policies. Furthermore, Wise, Rabobank and ING will not change when payments are marked with "OUR". I understand it needs manual processing, but I can imagine there are some clever programmers who can automate this ;)

    This "bunq policy" will make their accounts instantly 90 euro's more expensive per year (12 salary payments, 6 expense reports). It would be great if bunq can waive fees for "OUR" payments, as other banks do. This policy really feels like bunq is waaaay behind traditional banks, something I'm not expecting from a fintech bank touting being better than traditional banks.

      @Marcel-Daxy#294506 Is there any particular reason you‘re getting paid in EUR via SWIFT? Why not in US$ using local USD account details? Should be cheaper for both sides.

      SWIFT is always slow and expensive, that‘s why the modern „fintech“ services with local account details for many currencies popped up. bunq/wise both offer that option for some currencies like USD.

      bunq simply charges extra for the SWIFT service, nothing wrong with that in particular since there are better option for most cases anyways. Most „fintech banks“ in the SEPA area don‘t allow SWIFT payments at all due to the cost and hassle involved.

      …just curious. If there‘s a particular reason for using SWIFT, then probably other, classic banks might be cheaper in that case indeed.

        @master#294509 I'm on a NL contract and get paid in EUR. The origin is a US big bank as my employer is from the US. The way I see it, SEPA is great for EU banks but if you need get money deposited from elsewhere you're bound to SWIFT. Unfortunately Bunq has this crazy policy that you'd get charged EUR 5 for each inbound transfer due to "manual processing requirements". This seems B$ to me as the account number is there, BIC/SWIFT code and all is done automatically. There is no fees from other banks as the payment is marked "OUR" so it can be done all automatically.

        It seems to me fintech's are focused on automation (Great!!) with the least cost (SEPA) and use lesser used payment systems (SWIFT) to generate extra income.

        Unfortunately I'm not able to use Wise as this will generate a Belgium based account and for salary (and tax) purposes it needs to be a NL based account. I love the bunq features, but by not waiving inbound SWIFT fees for "OUR" payments they completely out price themselves. Note, I'm really only talking about "OUR" payments where the sender pays all fees. For the others "BEN" and "SHA" (I believe) it makes sense to charge the recipient for additional handling.

          @Marcel-Daxy#294526 OK that's a very specific problem then for you. But while bunq has many problems, I'm pretty sure that the fee for incoming SWIFT payments is not one of them - I personally would discourage people from using SWIFT, too!
          But yes, if you really need that very specific thing, then you probably should get another account somewhere else for that purpose if 5EUR per transaction is too much here. Like I said, other fintechs don't process SWIFT payments at all - with bunq you at least have the option if you need to receive money via SWIFT, but for regular payments it might not be the best things to use indeed.

          Just to be clear: From what I see this a s fee from bunq to discourage the use in my opinion, and has nothing to do with OUR/SHA/BEN SWIFT options themselves. It's just that bunq wants to charge for the service, which is in general fine. If you don't agree, you can choose other banks for that, so no harm done.
          I'd still suggest that you work out other payment options with your employer, but I can see that a "big US bank" might only want to do the things they do in their old ways with SWIFT anyways, so.... yeah, you may want to have a bank account with a "big european old school bank" on the receiving end to minimise problems ;-)

          Anyways, just my 2cent on that - just my opinion that I personally would not blame bunq here but the "big old US bank". Mileage may vary of course from your point of view.

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