Yesterday, I read an unbelievable story in a newspaper: a man apparently traveled from Belgium to Madrid to meet his Venezuelan cousin to receive from him an envelope with 5260€ (around £4000) for a health surgery he needs back in Belgium. This 41-year-old chap says he was carrying an envelope full of notes that his cousin brought from Venezuela when three men pushed him in an underground station and "some time later", he realised he didn't have the money anymore (read here). :S
Whether the story is true or not, it will be up to the Spanish police to decide, but I believe we all agree that needing to travel to Spain to get £4000 in an envelope is neither a cheap (nor a safe) way of transferring money. What was he thinking?
Less than a year ago, somebody mentioned TransferWise to me and I would like to recommend this way to transfer money to this poor fellow too... but mainly to you, dear reader! I have been using it since then to simultaneously change currency and transfer money, and it ended up being a very cheap and efficient solution (invite here).
How does it work? Let's suppose I have 100€ that I want to change into pounds and transfer it to a friend, and there is another British father who wants to send some extra euros to his daughter who is on Erasmus in Paris. I have the 100€ he needs, he has the £76.71 I need. The website only acts as an intermediary between him and me... and many other people. They do the conversion rate at the day of the transfer and TransfeWise only gets a very fair and low fee (0.5%).
The money is transferred really fast although it actually depends on the user doing the transfer the other way around. I had used it myself and I can assure you I have never had any problem except when I was transferring USD, which is a slightly more complex process.
Let't both win! If you would like to try and have a free first money transfer, you have my invite here. For every three readers that sign up through my invite, I will have 50 pounds that I have decided I will use to buy some Bristol merchandise or products that I will raffle on the blog in the following months. It's a win-win!
INTERESTING LINKS
- Newspaper article (20minutos.es) on Belgian guy: http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/2352110/0/robo-madrid-metro/venezolano-enfermo-robado/consulado-venezolano-espana/
- TransferWise Website (with invite): https://transferwise.com/u/8f0cd
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