Seeking a good, viable alternative to Wise

Robert Rietvelt wrote:



.... is it possible for non-EU residents to open a EU bankaccount (in a EU country)? Or am I missing something here?

Baran Keki wrote:


There are no bank/service charges in SEPA countries if you have an EU IBAN, and it doesn't cost you an arm and a leg to transfer sums into a non-EU country. I feel sorry for you if you've lost hundreds, if not thousands of EUR over the years through Paypal.
Wise is doing good worldwide, they're pulling out of Turkey thanks to mismanagement and f*cked up economy here.
Once again, I implore our dear colleagues to suggest similar money transfer services like Wise that they personally use.
Thank you.

Jean Dimitriadis wrote:

@Baran, I can't find an official statement about Wise pulling out from Turkey. Did you receive an email about this?

Baran Keki wrote:
If all else fails, I'll have to consider moving to somewhere like South Africa or Uruguay... So come on people, help me out here!
*There is nothing wrong with S. Africa or Uruguay btw.

Robert Rietvelt wrote:



.... is it possible for non-EU residents to open a EU bankaccount (in a EU country)? Or am I missing something here?

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida wrote:



I do wonder however what happens with all those foreigner companies that claim being located in the UK or in the USA?

[Edited at 2023-06-28 14:36 GMT]

Robert Rietvelt wrote:



.... is it possible for non-EU residents to open a EU bankaccount (in a EU country)? Or am I missing something here?

Baran Keki wrote:

Thanks for your comments. Though I'd appreciate it if you would refrain from engaging in discussions about Paypal (thankfully it doesn't work in Turkey) in this particular thread.
What I'm looking for is a payment solution that will:
* give me a legit EU bank account (IBAN, Swift, the lot) into which my clients will send money without any deductions. For example, 20 EUR sent from France will be received in that account as 20 EUR, not as 19.10 EUR, if that makes sense? And I want to be able to receive money from individuals and companies alike (for instance, AFAIK, Payoneer doesn't allow you to receive money from people using their own personal bank accounts, it has to be a corporate account, which is no good for me, as I have individual LSPs paying me).
* I want the same for USD, GBP, AUD and CAD as well.
* I don't want to pay a king's ransom to transfer monies into my bank account in Turkey. With Wise, the transfer of 2000 EUR from my Wise EUR account into my own bank account (EUR account, not Turkish money account) in Turkey would cost me 7 or 8 EUR at most. I suspect I'll have to pay 50 to 60 EUR for the same transfer using Payoneer, and I don't want that. And also with Wise you get your money from EU to a non-EU country within 3 or 4 hours, with Payoneer it takes days.
I hope I've made what I have in mind clear. I implore our South American, African and Asian colleagues to join this discussion, and help me out. Are you all using Paypal or Wise? Don't you use anything other than them? Or are you all using international bank transfer for sums as little as 30 EUR (and pay 12 or 15 EUR in bank charges)?
I'd also like to hear people's experiences with Payoneer. I haven't actually transferred huge sums of EUR using Payoneer, my experience is limited to USD payments only, but I remember paying unconscionable amounts of money in fees (and I know for a fact that they take a small 'cut' for each SEPA bank transfer for EUR).
I hear good things about Currencyfair, and I'd like to know if anyone has used it the way I describe here. I'm also curious about Transfergo.
Please note that I'm interested in EUR to EUR, USD to USD transfers, I don't much care about FX rates and such. The main thing is the cheapness of transfer fees, and reliability of course.
Your input and experiences will be greatly appreciated.

Yasutomo Kanazawa wrote:

As to your question, I use Paypal and bank transfer.
Since Paypal is not an option in Turkey, I will not go further regarding Paypal.

One of my clients started using Wise a few months ago, but basically it's same as bank transfer, except that I get an email
notification from Wise informing me that my client has made a payment through Wise and the money shall be in your bank account by such and such a date (the notification comes a day or two before the money reaches my account).

The only thing I can share is about Payoneer.
I once worked with a Danish agency where this agency makes payment to by Payonner only to LSPs living ouside the EU (I don't know why they refuse to make payment via bank transfer to people outside EU and the option of bank transfer is only available to LSPs within the EU).

Anyway, the amount to be paid was 120 Euros, and Payoneer deducted 10 Euros for handling charges, and when 110 Euros reached my bank, my bank deducted 1500 JPY (in today's conversion rate, 1 Euro =150 JPY, so 10 Euros). I felt like I was ripped off. Don't you have this feeling that you are being ripped off when handling charges are deducted more than once from the original sender? On the otherhand, I don't feel ripped off by Paypal, since they only charge you a certain amount of handling charges according to the money received, and in case of Japan, if you transfer the funds of over 50,000 JPY in your Paypal account to your bank account, the transfer fee is free. I'm not saying that Paypal is the best, but receiving small payments such as 20 Euros or so by bank transfer would be quite a mess because the bank automatically deducts 10 Euros regardless of the amount received, whereas Paypal would deduct maybe 2 or 3 Euros despite the fact that the conversion rate they offer is miserable.

If Payoneer worked like Paypal where handling charges are deducted once, even if they deducted 20 Euros total and I can get 100 Euros, I feel way better than getting 10 Euros deducted by Payoneer and another 10 Euros by my bank.