One of the hardest things about moving abroad is switching currencies. If you’ve spent most of your life earning money in one currency, what do you do when you no longer earn or want money in that currency? Or worse, what do you do when you earn money in one currency, but have bills and expenses in another? Enter Transferwise.

Having discovered this fantastic company just a few months ago, I’m kicking myself for the years months I spent losing money on fees using PayPal. It’s easy to exchange currencies and send money to yourself, you can send money to family or friends, or you can pay people for money you owe.

Transferwise was founded by two Estonian guys who were living in the UK. They got fed up with the high conversion fees for transferring money, and Transferwise was born. This is one of the best ways to transfer money and exchange currencies online that’s out there.

Transferwise offers some of the lowest currency conversion fees on the internet. This is because Transferwise charges a very small fee, and gives you the accurate, current exchange rate at that moment in time. For example, if the current exchange rate is 1 GBP = $1.38 USD, they will lock in that exchange rate from the moment you start the transfer. That way, if the exchange rate between currencies fluctuates, you’re guaranteed the exchange rate that you started on.

PayPal not only charges a fee (in my experience, always much more than Transferwise), but also gives you only the exchange rate that includes their currency conversion fee. So the exchange rate is always worse, as they pocket the money from it. If the current exchange rate if 1 GBP = $1.38 USD, they convert the money at 1 GBP = $1.33 USD in these examples.

So you’ll lose money on the exchange rate, and they’ll pocket the difference. In these examples of £200 transfers, I would have lost $8 by transferring money on PayPal!! And the fee would have been £0.42 more to get less money!

Transferwise is also really easy to set up, and I’ve never had locks or holds placed on my accounts or funds that are transferred. Unlike PayPal, which once blocked me moving my own money for over a week and when I called to sort it out, they said that there was literally no reason why the transfer had been flagged.

Transferwise also makes it really easy to transfer money to yourself. Unlike PayPal, where I have 2 separate accounts with 2 separate email addresses. One of the accounts is set up to a US bank account, and one is set up to a UK bank account. Transferwise allows me to have just one account, and send money to “myself” as the recipient.

I transfer money to myself from pounds (GBP) in the UK to dollars (USD) in the US every month. I still have a US credit card, which I pay in dollars, as well as student loan payments (yay…), which need to be paid in dollars. So at least once every month, I transfer pounds to dollars for myself to pay my expenses.

Money transfers are straightforward to organize: you log on, choose your currencies and amounts, and then choose how you’ll transfer the money. I always choose a bank transfer, which doesn’t have any extra fees—but you can also use debit cards, credit cards, or other options to send the money.

Once I set up the transfer, I go to my personal bank account in the UK and send a payment to Transferwise’s bank account for the specific amount. Once Transferwise has received the payment from me, the Transferwise bank account will send the money to my personal bank account in the US.

I’ve transferred up to £800 // $1000 on Transferwise before, and it would generally take about a week (5-7 days) to clear. For smaller transactions, it’s much quicker to transfer: generally two working days (or less).

If you need to transfer money online and convert currencies, Transferwise is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to do so. I cannot recommend this enough if you send money in different currencies regularly!

Need to send money abroad?! Sign up here to join Transferwise and start sending!

What do you use for currency conversions and transferring money online?