[pkavanagh]

Hi and thanks for your interest! We use the interbank rate from global exchanges. Both being from fintech, we are aware that it is easy to mislead (and to be misled) in money transfer and its a reason why we built this product in the first place.

We have worked hard not to have any middle-men that mark up rates in our liquidity provision, and are quite certain that our rates are fair and extremely competitive.

I do think that the takeaway from your comment is that we could build out a part of our page that allows a customer to dig deeper to validate this themselves. We understand the sentiment as there is still a lot of mistrust given the opaque nature of the market, and we need customers to believe that we are truly 3 GBP to succeed.

Our core thesis in building this product is that we will win with a fixed fee on larger transactions, given the variable fee nature of the current industry incumbents(either transparently disclosed, or embedded in the FX spread).

[Youden]

Overall your product looks good but aside from a more detailed page, I really think the wording here needs to be changed.

It's verifiably false that you use the same rate shown on Google so you should remove that entirely. If I can't trust you to honestly describe your service, how can I trust you with large sums of money? I wouldn't be surprised if that caused you legal issues too.

As for "the live rate", I think it just needs to be reworded such that there's no mention of a single rate. Something like "we give you the same price the big banks use".

Overall I think your service looks good but based on how that section is worded right now, I'd actively discourage friends and family from using it, if asked. If you updated it to be more honest, I think you'd have a service I'm happy to recommend.

[panarky]

Fees for international money transfer across currencies are always opaque and borderline deceptive.

If this is truly fixed cost, it would definitely be the first, but it's right to be skeptical.

The only reliable way to discover the actual cost is to do a round trip.

Convert a million X to Y, then convert whatever Y you get back to X, and the difference between that and the original million, divided by two, is the real cost.

Naturally this website won't show you that, because you can only convert from pounds but not back to pounds.

[hutzlibu]

"I do think that the takeaway from your comment is that we could build out a part of our page that allows a customer to dig deeper to validate this themselves."

Or you could remove or change this statement, if it is indeed misleading. (But I have not checked this personally).

"We always convert your money at the live rate: the rate on Google."

Trust is important and the right wording does matter a lot.

So if people read this on your website and then check for themself on google and see it is wrong - well sure, expect people to not trust your service.

My first question (with only reading your text here) would be: why and how are you cheaper than the competition?

Right now my takeaway would be: because there are possible dark patterns and hidden fees like suboptimal conversion rates included.

[adhoc_slime]

I absolutely agree with you, unless their whole strategy hinges on the fact their prices match google (which their prices literally don't), just change the damned copy on the site.

I think this is actually a good shakeup for Money Transfer, they don't even need to rely on putting Googles name in their marketing to sell the product as so many new startups seem to want to do as an appeal to authority or try to present more stability in their marketing.

[wdaareg]

We appreciate the critical feedback - keep it coming. It's good to talk about these topics in the open. We'll be sure to work on this to make sure there is clarity around this part of our offering.

[amluto]

> We use the interbank rate from global exchanges.

What, exactly, is that?

Do you mean the rate your provider charges you for the transaction in question? (Do you do your internal FX transactions as one upstream transaction per client transaction or do you group them? That will affect the rate.).

Do your rates have a spread? (Your website makes it sound like you only convert one way, so it’s easy to pretend spreads don’t exist.)

Do you actually believe that the best pricing comes from an interbank rate on a global exchange? That’s an interesting theory.

For what it’s worth, for major currency transactions under normal circumstances, the actual market spreads are tiny and not worth worrying about. Certainly for any transaction of reasonable size for a service like this, they are likely to be in the noise. But FX is not free, and if you let people move $100k at a time, it matters.

[kasey_junk]

What global exchanges? FX is all OTC.

[wdaareg]

Check out CBOE FX (https://fx.cboe.com/) and EBS (https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/market-tech-and-data-servic...). Settlement and trading of FX may often be OTC, but that doesn't mean there aren't exchanges or aggregated marketplaces.

[kasey_junk]

Ok. So what you really mean is that you (or your liquidity partners) participate in multi dealer platforms so you have a large number of trade desks to work with. But even adding the big players together like Integral, CME & CBOE gets you to what less than 1% of the daily fx liquidity?

That’s fairly far off of the expectation you set by saying you offer “the interbank rate”. Which is a pure marketing fiction.

For context the FX desk at JP Morgan by itself provides about the same volume as any of those aggregate platforms.

[later] fwiw I don’t think how you get to your rates particularly matters so long as they are competitive and your service seems like a valuable addition to the mix of consumer options. I get hung up on this because the fx market is notoriously opaque because the major players want it to be and I think leading people to believe there is some sort of benchmark rate adds to that morass.

[dotancohen]

Hi pkavanagh. What countries do you support? I live in Israel, can I send and receive money from Europe? Turkey? The US?

I really don't want to sign up to the newsletter, this is basic information that in my opinion should be freely shared on the web site.

[wdaareg]

Hi dotancohen, we currently support sending GBP from the UK into the following currencies: EUR, USD, AUD, CAD, CZK, DKK, NOK, PLN, SEK. Looking forward to supporting EUR outbound in the near future, and then we'll go from there.

[dotancohen]

So the sender must be in the UK. Are there geographic restrictions on the receiver as well?

[tecc501]

Hi Pkavanagh and thanks for replying to comments in this thread - 3 GDP fee on up to 1M transfer - are you able to disclose more of the business model here?

[wdaareg]

The business model is that our costs are fixed at much lower than 3GDP, and so we can offer that price profitably.