I wanted to advertise Wise (TransferWise), but I could not make a transfer…

TransferWise renamed Wise

You may not have heard the name Wise when it comes to cheap international money transfers, as TransferWise recently changed its name to Wise and even changed its website address.

Wise is not a new company, it is a well-established English company with the cheapest international transfers.

I have been using PaySend for a long time and with pleasure for cheap international transfers, for example, see one of the latest articles “International PaySend transfers - real customer feedback (2.5 years of experience, dozens of transactions)”.

I do not have any attachment to this or that company for international transfers, the most important thing is reliability and minimal commissions, so I also considered Wise (TransferWise), I did a comparison of the cost of a transfer and it turned out that Wise is even slightly more profitable than PaySend, for at least the first free payment, see “TransferWise overview: international transfers and multi-currency debit card”.

And although Wise is more profitable, I have not made a single international payment through this company. Nevertheless, I received my £50 bonus and successfully withdrawn it to my Thai account (by the way, £50 is only THB 2,228.15).

How to use Wise (TransferWise) to receive and send money transfers

In order to withdraw the bonus, I had to:

• scan both sides of my Thai driver's license
• take my photo with a driver's license in hand
• inform my mailing address

Let me remind you that to send international payments via PaySend, you just need to know the recipient's card number – and that's all you need (or the recipient's bank and account number, if you are sending to bank details). You do not need to report anything about yourself – as such, there is just no “verification”.

In Wise, you don't just need to be verified – you need to send your ID with every (!) transfer. I don't understand what is the point – after all, everyone will still send the same file, once photographed or scanned document. But this is the European Union – it should be so there…

Well, since I still passed the verification, I decided to write instructions on how to make money transfers through Wise.

And… I failed – I could not make the transfer…

It was like this – I filled out all the forms, re-sent the Thai driver's license scanned from both sides and received a reply - “Verification problem - Sorry, we can't accept the document you sent us”.

Once again, the same document, the same file, scanned (and not photographed) by which I have already withdrawn money – they cannot accept… How so?

I wrote to the support service with this question – they answered me, more on that below.

In parallel with this, I canceled the transfer and started a new one (you never know what a glitch). At this stage, it turned out that now I no longer have a discount on the first transfer, and taking into account the commissions, the international money transfer has become more expensive than through PaySend…

The support service answered me a day later:

Sorry, we couldn't read the details on your ID.

To verify you, we need to read what's printed on your ID.

When you take a photo of your ID, please make sure we can see:

• The whole document — everything on it should be readable.
• Both sides of the document, if you're sending us a driver's license or a national ID card.

You can upload a new photo by clicking the button below.

They cannot read my document. Here is my document, I closed the numbers, but I sent them without erasures. For the first time, this same document, this same file, they were able to read…

In general, I failed with Wise…

And I'm clearly not alone. For comparison, I decided to calculate how many transfers were made according to my recommendations in PaySend and in Wise (TransferWise).

In PaySend, I can calculate the number of transfers according to my recommendation only approximately, the fact is that I receive my bonus only for the second transfer. If someone made one transfer, then I will never know about it – such statistics are not shown by the user. So, the second or subsequent (up to the twelfth and only within one year) transfers according to my recommendation in PaySend were made 787. Also, I do not receive bonuses for internal (within one country) transfers and they are not displayed in my statistics in any way. In reality (according to the very minimum estimates), more than a thousand international PaySend transfers were made on my recommendation (in reality, most likely, the figure is in the region of 2-3 thousand). I myself have made dozens of international transfers in PaySend.

Moving on to the Wise statistics (TransferWise) – I already said that I received a bonus, so it is not zero.

Here is a list, it is a little incomplete (there are below users who registered, but did not make any transfer). So, on my recommendation, six international transfers were made to Wise (TransferWise) (four of which qualify for a bonus).

In general, the difference is two or three orders of magnitude… And this despite the fact that Wise has a lower commission (at least for the first international money transfer).

In general, it is not always a matter of price. In terms of complex indicators of quality (value for money, convenience), PaySend outperforms Wise in international money transfers.

PaySend promo code for the first transfer without commission: 0d8425

Wise (TransferWise) promo code

I didn't do well with Wise (TransferWise), but you might be better, so if you want to make an international money transfer without commission, then use this link: https://wise.com/invite/u/alexeym193 - it contains Wise (TransferWise) promo code. You can send a commission-free transfer to Wise in the amount of up to 500 GBP (British pounds – the rate is slightly more expensive than the US dollar).

By the way, if in Wise (TransferWise) you send money to yourself, then verification for these transfers is not required – if you transfer your own funds from one country to another, then in Wise there are not such strict rules for such transfers.