Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service (atlantic.money)
Good morning everyone! My co-founder and I recently moved to the UK after working at Robinhood for over 5 years. We were stunned at the fees it was costing us to move money across borders with existing fintech solutions, so we decided to start Atlantic Money - the world’s first fixed fee (with no FX markup) money transfer product. For £3 you can transfer up to £1M. Let us know if you have any questions!
221 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] threadThis is cheaper for GBP->EUR transactions over £800, but a lot slower (arrives "Friday" instead of within 5 hours. In practice I've found that Wise transfers are normally nearly instant). It's quite substantially cheaper for large transfers (e.g. about £2000 for transfering near their max) and possibly faster. I can't tell if you can lock in a rate like with Wise.
E.g if £/$ drops from 1.94 to 1.92 can someone aware of this before you convert £ to $ on your platform?
Sounds open to abuse!
If so, can I see it?
If the rate moves in the opposite direction I cancel the trade and retry in half an hour.
I don’t know enough about forex to determine whether that’s a reasonable premium, but it seems like a pretty good deal at its face
Oh - and it's £3.
If you are majorly adversely selecting their liquidity provider, they will just shut you off.
It’s not an exchange.
Their overall risk to an individual account is a few 100, and very few accounts will try to do this.
So you will tie up your 1MM for a day or more to earn a small few pounds? Surely you can do better with some other investment scheme.
Also, chances are instant delivery costs (much) more than 3 pounds.
I wouldn't like to be banned and lose access to my $1M (even temporary) but you do what you want with your millions.
Imagine if you buy apartments and rent them for thousands $. Haha, sounds open to abuse!
No need to actually move anything.
You know, I have a Capital One bank account that I opened because it advertised no foreign transaction fees.
And yet whenever I make a foreign transaction on the debit card, I pay 1% more in dollars than I get in FX. That 1% number is eerily consistent.
I still use it. 1% is a reasonable fee. But I'd be a lot happier if they admitted they were charging it. It takes a lot of effort to tell the difference between "ZERO foreign transaction fee! (but your prices are 1% higher than they should be)" and "ZERO foreign transaction fee! (but your prices are 8% higher than they should be)".
Most companies offering FX services will charge both.
Most consumers are not sophisticated enough to do the calculation to blend the fee into the quoted rate to get the true rate. Institutions will be.
The risk of a “no fee” pricing scheme (or why there are fees in the first place) is to avoid getting wiped out by lots of small transactions, where your per-transaction overhead dominates. OP clearly has automated enough that they are not worried about this. And given the amount of manual work still involved in FX (do not get me started on some of the process hell I saw running international payments globally over an “api” payment provider), there is also a lot of room to reduce total cost through automation.
But in summary, everyone is making money from the FX rate spread, and you are always getting charged more than the provider is paying for the currency. The question is just whether fee or spread dominates.
If you want cryptocurrency at each end, sure, and don't mind exposure to the rapidly fluctuating values, and pick a cryptocurrency that has low transaction fees.
Could you please elaborate a little bit more about your interbanking network, your connection to these etc.? How do you route from UK to Australia, e.g.? To EU?
Do you support instant payments on any of yours connections? If yes, which scheme(s) do you support?
We support the fastest possible domestic rails (GBP Faster Payments, EUR SEPA Inst, USD ACH Same Day, etc). Unfortunately most domestic rails aren't instant (like USD) - and we can't make them any faster - but for those that are (like EUR) we support instant transfers.
Our default delivery speed is two business days - this incurs no cost of capital to the business. But we know customers are sometimes transferring money urgently, so we offer an Express delivery. This is instant for EUR and as fast as the schemes support for other currencies. Express incurs a cost of capital equal to the currency forward rate, which is a true uncapped variable cost. So we have to pass that on to customers through a separate fee (0.05%), as it's something our signature fixed fee just can't cover. But it's always optional - and customers can always make a transfer regardless of size for just £3.
> × 1.199473 live rate
Turn the "live rate" into a link that shows where you get the live rate from.
When you say "working on your EU license" is this something that is an extra steo due to Brexit that would have been automatic before? (i.e. you would only need one license for UK and EU)
It's worth noting that the rates you see on the pages often have a bit of delay - I believe both Wise and Atlantic would end up having very similar underlying FX rates, since there's no markup on either.
However, with Wise, the more you send, the more you pay in fees - so there's a break-even where it starts to become more economical to use Atlantic.
Seems to me that the biggest risk to Wise and Atlantic is growing so large that the incumbents will change their pricing.
When trying to enter an established market to compete on price as your primary differentiator it's often better to keep your margins higher to start with than offer the steepest cut you think you can afford, and then drop your prices slowly as you build up volume and a war chest.
> Please note that you may only send funds to the country of the national currency. For example, you may only send US dollars to the United States
This seems fairly restrictive. I send USD to Colombia, for example, to pay my staff. The Colombian banks then convert that to COP on arrival. Is there any particular reason why this limitation is in place? Makes it significantly less useful than, say, Worldfirst.
Our outbound payments are all domestic bank transfers, so if your Colombian bank can receive a USD ACH payment by routing and account number it should work.
But I'm guessing your USD to Colombia is delivered by international SWIFT wire? The cost of a SWIFT wire is orders of magnitude higher than a domestic bank transfer, and we wouldn't be able to support that in our fixed fee.
I'm not sure how this is 'the world's first fixed fee money transfer product'? Wise guarantees a rate for 2h (which swings both ways so isn't really a markup IMO) - are you claiming to offer closer to spot pricing?
Maybe you should show that off with a different homepage example? Since Wise also defaults to £1000, and at that price point isn't very different to you (and tbh more compelling, given the speed).
Hopefully all the questions end up on an faq on their site (with links and credits). As a frequent money-mover, i enjoy disruptors in the market...but if basic questions have still to be asked, and answered, then its only thanks to naysayers that there is any chance of transparency and clarity.
"If what you say remains true....."? Escape clause in the tos and eula, much?
https://www.revolut.com/currencies
Good luck!
https://assets.revolut.com/legal/terms/International_Payment...
https://www.revolut.com/en-GB/legal/standard-fees/
> They also charge additional fixed fees just for the international payment.
This seems new. I have done international payments before and wasn't charged.
I have interests in three currencies, and revolut has been a godsend compared to Wise and direct bank transfer fees.
I guess, their service is cheaper if you are converting hundreds of thousands of dollars and more and can wait, but this would be few normal people.
Slightly better for bigger transfers if you don't get a Revolut subscription, that seems to be true.
£1000 to EUR
Atlantic: €1,195.77, Revolut: €1.198,50
£2000 to EUR
Atlantic: €2,395.14, Revolut: €2.391,02
Revolut transfers are instant and have no forex fees if you are on their paid plans which include other features as well. If you transfer up to 1000 GBP, it is free without a paid plan. How do you plan on competing with them?
https://www.revolut.com/legal/standard-fees ("A fee applies for international payments on our Standard and Plus plans")
https://assets.revolut.com/legal/terms/International_Payment...
If you're a die-hard Revolut user that subscribes for other reasons or do all your global banking with them, it's possible you'll end up with better overall economics with them. That segment of customers is fairly narrow and we're excited to offer everyone else a world-leading service.
Got it, this seems new and significant. I had transferred money to Germany before in January and it was free without a paid plan too.
This does add an edge to your product, if the person can wait. Best of luck with your product.
The atlantic.money option looks great for larger transfers, however - will definitely bookmark this for the future.
It looks like you're aiming for a USP of competitive fees but I think I'm not alone in being very happy to not get the absolutely cheapest rate compared to Wise/Revolut/Paypal/N26/PS/MG et al if you stay aligned with the above.
/ Someone who's fed up with the existing landscape
We're excited to bring a fresh perspective and better pricing to a landscape with a lot of providers doing approximately the same thing. We'd love for you to try out the app once it's available - if you decide to register on our site we'll be sure to keep you updated.
> We follow a "trusted devices" model, where you 2FA using your phone number for the first login on a device
It sounds like associating and verifying a phone number is required to sign up and use the service - is this something you're open to changing?
> I assure you there won't be a "refer your friends" badge blinking on the home page of the app
That's great! And TBH I wouldn't mind terribly as long as it can be permanently disabled after a first view.
> We hear from most people that iOS or Android are their preferred platforms, so we have to start there
Understandable. At the very least it would be a huge boon if we can expect to run the Android app without hickups on a fully degoogled Android device (e.g. GrapheneOS).
Will keep an eye on how things develop :)
>It sounds like associating and verifying a phone number is required to sign up and use the service - is this something you're open to changing?
Are you looking for something like Authy or Google Authenticator here?
Precisely! Both are implementations of TOTP[0] - it's a simple protocol which doesn't rely on any particular implementation.
The other common one with that same characteristic would be Fido U2F[1] (for hardware keys such as Yubikey and Google Titan). If/when you do implement it, make sure to support adding more than one token to facilitate users sorting out their own backups.
Both are open standards that are well-supported with both proprietary and open implementations across platforms.
If you have to initially only pick one of the two I'd go with TOTP.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_one-time_password
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_2nd_Factor
While many will raise concern with the UX of having to carry around hardware, in the fintech world I think it's a good tradeoff and raises the bar for the industry (I always shudder when I see "we use industry-standard protection"). :)
A lot of people, in the tens to hundreds of millions, not through choice of not wanting to use Google Play Services (or knowing what it is) cannot access Play Services on their locally purchased / locked device.
These people are largely outside North America / Western Europe, potential customers for whom a service such as that of OP may be very attractive.
But this is a lie - I checked. At time of writing, you claim 100k GBP is equal to 131390 USD, while Google claims it's 131620 USD, a difference of nearly $300!
Even saying "the live rate" is a lie. There is no one "live rate" (and therefore no "the" live rate). The price depends on your liquidity providers. IBKR shows "the live rate". Revolut shows "the live rate". Wise shows "the live rate". Google shows "the live rate". Despite all of them showing "the live rate", all of them have subtly different prices because all of them are part of slightly different markets.
Claiming otherwise is a lie. It'd be more honest to say "we pass on the prices from our partners without markup" or something like that.
You should also make clear which rate you're talking about. The market has a spread, how do you handle it? Do you give clients the mid-price or do you just pass through the bid/ask?
The "Learn more" next to the rate info doesn't actually tell me anything more as well. I'd expect it to show me a page with more detailed information about your liquidity and how you determine the price. The box I already saw at the top of the page isn't "more".
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is the avg. of the "live rate for buy" and the "live rate for sell"
This is what google shows
But every provider has a spread. As tiny as it might be
(Not to mention volatility, difference between exchanges, etc)
And if an average of prices on different exchanges, which exchanges are included in the average?
How do you know how Google is doing it?
https://www.google.com/googlefinance/disclaimer/
There is no such thing as a "live rate" or "market price"
In other assets, like equities, there often is a single central exchange. If you want to buy CURI for example, it's only listed on NASDAQ, so the price on NASDAQ is The One True Price as far as a normal person is concerned.
There's no such central exchange for currencies.
In fx it’s the law of whoever has the most information because there is no benchmark market at all. It’s why fx pricing is so hard to do right.
If you talk to 3rd party institutional FX providers, they'll immediately mark up rates because its how they make all of their money.
All currency exchanges track each other extremely closely, because it's extremely easy to arbitrage between them.
Forex is essentially the largest, most liquid market there is.
I'd agree with you if it were unavoidable but I don't think that's the case here. There's no need to make a statement that there's a single rate.
For example: "we give you the best price we can find on the international market, without markup". It still states the goal without raising the falsehood of a single price.
A financial company playing fast and loose with the law, and especially data protection law, does not bode well.
One to avoid methinks.
That escalated quickly.
Pfft
The company clearly had poor legal advice and/or didn't think things through, yet they want my money and personal data? At the very least, you should consider this error analogous to the Van Halen 'no Brown M&Ms rider', in that it flags sloppy practice elsewhere [1].
[1] https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9
Also, their About Us page suggests that they are staffed by people from relevant financial services companies. Plus they are backed by some VCs who would not take risks by handing money to a company if they thought the legal side wasn't up to par.
We don't know why there wasn't an annoying cookie popup. So assuming that the company in general plays "fast and loose" doesn't seem warranted.
Frequently satirised in Private Eye [1] as the 'Fundamentally Complicit Authority' :-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye
And I, like many, avoid business with any such companies who display a contempt for personal data.
If my ISP did such a thing, they would be very quickly reported to the Information Commissioner. Also, I think you will find the UK is beholden to the GDPR. It isn't simply an "EU cookie" law as you seam to imply.
What else would you expect? The amount of flack people get they post a Show HN is getting out of control.
GDPR is not a new or surprising thing, and the absolute basics should be known by any developers working with private data. It's frankly shocking if they didn't know while starting a company in the UK, and I don't know if it's worse if they didn't know or didn't care.
This is a business that it will be vital that they are following regulations, and if they're skipping this, why should I trust they're following the rest?
Wise does this properly which makes me trust them straight away.
Edit. Don’t want to come off too harsh, just saying the cookie approach doesn’t help me trust the company compared to the main competitor.
Is it possible to send money on the web - or is it iOS only?
Best of luck with the launch.
We're going to start with iOS, and then move to more platforms. Thank you for your kind words!