bunq Together

SWIFT payment cost

Haiko-Green-Quokka

Today I received a SWIFT payment from a Dutch IBAN account and also received a 5 Euro invoice from bunq to proces it.

Come on bunq, I pay 20 Euros a month for my family bank accounts and I'm happy to pay for it. Please don't start behaving like any other bank. Keep true to your own promises: 'geen fratsen, geen verborgen kosten'.

Tim

Petervdv 🏳️‍🌈 Haiko

It is stated in the fee document but it's strange a transfer from a Dutch IBAN is made in SWIFT instead of SEPA. It's possible to contact support about extra info in that case, maybe it needs some tweaking to make sure it prefers the SEPA payment over a SWIFT. Or even better, contact the sending party to do SEPA transfers.

Petervdv

I believe it is not within bunq pricing to charge money for recieving Swift payments. Maybe you should contact bunq private support (clink in your profile picture and click on private matters) to check this out.

Z4

The same happened to me today - I got sent a SWIFT payment from a Dutch IBAN account (NL97ABNC...) and also got the 5 euro invoice. The annoying part is that previously, this company sent payments using normal SEPA credit transfers. I did not expect them to use a SWIFT payment at all.

So in my case at least, I don't really blame bunq, but rather this company for unexpectedly sending the payment as a SWIFT payment instead of a normal payment.

Z4

Matthijs I’ve contacted the company that sent me money via SWIFT. They said: “bunq bank is not connected to SEPA and that’s why we had to use a PSD payment”. Of course that’s nonsense, especially since previously they did in fact send payments using a SEPA credit transfer!

Sander

Tim As far as I know these payment currently require more effort on bunq's side, even a manual part I believe, which would explain the higher costs. 🙂

Haiko-Green-Quokka

When the money is sent in Euro's and coming from an IBAN account why can't bunq accept the SEPA instead of the SWIFT? Think this is a setting / choice at bunq side. Think having to pay for non Euro transaction coming from non-SEPA is OK but in this case it just doesn't make sense and it seems like a business decision by bunq.

Ali

Haiko We are on the receiving end Haiko; nothing we can do about it. Trust me we would much prefer the normal SEPA route, for a lot of reasons, too...

You can contact the sending bank on not using SWIFT.

BTW: because SWIFT is such a cumbersome process all banks charge fees. The difference is that we, as always, are transparent about it and want to make you aware so you can actually act on it / stay in control.

Tuur

Ali I had the same experience.

And that you charge some money for a SWIFT payment I understand.

But what I don't understand is that when a SWIFT transfer is marked "OUR" by the sender for ALL costs related to the payment, you charge me as a bunqer and don't charge it to the sender (as all other banks do in case of payments marked "OUR")

Filipe-Pink-Cheetah

Ali No bank here in Portugal charges fees for receiving SWIFT transfers.

I understand that it costs money tough

Ali

Arthur Thanks for your remarks. We have no control over what the other side does, but I will ask a collegue to double check that our end of things are running as they should. Thanks!

Jeef

Ali Ali any update on this? I'm also at the receiving end of SWIFT payments marked as "OUR". Receiving those on Rabo or ING is free for me because the sender is paying the costs. When receiving through BUNQ I'm paying those costs because BUNQ doesn't seem to be honoring the "OUR" marking.

Roeshimi

Matthijs I bet they have misspelled "bunq" and that's why they did not find it in their search ;)

Z4

The sender decided to refund me the costs for receiving the SWIFT payment! They didn't share any further details with me, so I hope they realized their mistake and will use SEPA credit transfers in the future.

DaveFlash

Matthijs very good to hear, now If you could just ask them, for me, if they will use SEPA Instant Credit Tranfer next, then that would be even better for you if you get the money immediately ;-)

Jakob-Y

Javy Afaik it‘s not about „honoring“ this, it‘s just that Bunq processes Swift payments manually, which is not cheap. But if someone has more insight, that‘d be good :)

Jeef

Would be cool to get an update on this. Processed manually or automatically shouldn't matter, the paying party already payed to processing cost and BUNQ is not respecting field 71A.

See this link for details

Details:
When making a SWIFT international transfer, field 71A on the form provided by your bank asks who will pay for the processing fees. Here are your response options for this field, and explanations of what each option means:

OUR - the processing charges are expected to be paid before you initiate the transfer. This means the transfer amount is expected to be delivered in full to the destination account.

Tuur

Javy I got the answer from Support that bunq officially does not support SWIFT payments, but as a service to customers do accept them.

Therefore they charge € 5 or more.

I find this strange: either you support it or don’t support it.

The moment you start charging money for it, you support it (in my opinion).

To my question why bunq didn’t charge the € 5 to the sender in case of payments marked “OUR” I got the same reply again.

Kamal-Navy-Panda

Same thing happened to me twice, and most recently on Nov 5th, payment from a client via a bank in Spain that is connected to SEPA network, but instead, funds were sent via SWIFT.
It would be great if you give us the option to switch the ability to receive SWIFT off/on

JohnDo

Arthur it’s a labour intensive and old fashion way. So that is why bunq charges €5 so they still can provide this rare services to the few who needs it.

Jeef

John Do Swift is not legacy stuff John, it's still very widely used. Charging money for it is also fine. But respect the "OUR" marking like every other bank does.

I too prefer SEPA, but not every sending party supports it.

Tuur

John Do bunq should either support it or not.

But not this “half-zwanger” solution with “we don’t support it, we allow you to receive money through it, we charge you € 5 or more, but we don’t honor the payment instructions”