Show HN: 99% cheaper international business transfers – fixed fee, real rate (atlantic.money)
Hello Hackers! One year ago we changed international transfers for consumers with only a fixed fee and made them on average 10x cheaper than Wise. Now we are thrilled to announce that we start “Atlantic Money for Business” to offer transfers up to £/€1m for a fixed £/€3 fee and at the current exchange rate. And while Revolut and Wise have recently raised their prices for business transfers by up to 50%, we enable savings of several thousand on every transfer. What are you waiting for?
76 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadBank transfers being reversible is the reason for the difficulty buying crypto at least years ago, maybe it is easier now.
FX services in my experience have a lot of staff and ask a lot of questions even for established accounts. Also the banks ask a lot of questions (although that is to the benefit of the FX service reducing the likelihood of fraud hitting the FX)
If their thought process on this is actually “security through obscurity”, then I would not go anywhere near this as it tells me immediately that they don’t give a single solitary fuck about proper security guidelines.
Further, we are profitable on every transfer with Atlantic Money. Our whole infrastructure is built on a different concept, which is why Wise and Co. also cannot offer transfers for the same price without losing it all.
To give you a proof of our work: We transferred £160m ($200m) in our first year for private users, 16x what Wise sent back then.
A business app on a phone doesn't make much sense because in office you have a computer with a large monitor and a proper keyboard which is more convenient to use than a smartphone's tiny screen.
There are lot of people who don't have a laptop, but they probably are not the ones who is going to transfer "up to $1M" internationally.
Also, using a smartphone is not secure (no 2FA).
(I have a company in Sweden and sometimes do some work for a US company. They pay me / my company in US dollars, currently through Wise.)
- Have to download app - wise lets me use a website too, and generally I want to do business banking from my laptop, not my phone
- No actual price comparisons and 99% seems unlikely. Wise also gives me the 'google exchange rate'. If you are actually cheaper, then I would show comparisons for €100, €1000, €10000, not just 'a million euro'.
- Make it clearer that you're available in the EU - I nearly closed the site thinking it was only for UK as it defaulted to GBP.
- Have a 'wall of text' version in the header - the landing page is light on details, and I don't assume I'll find more information on "News", "Blog" or "Help" - maybe a "Features" or "Offerings" header page where you go into a lot more detail (countries you're available in, currencies you offer, documents needed to sign up, full table of all fees (not the marketing version), timelines for opening an account, timelines for making transfers, etc etc)
But anyway I don't think you can sign up for Revolut without a proper bank account and residence in one of eligible countries while Wise can charge even a debit card. Limits and slightly higher fees apply and they require ID verification but it works. I had to do it while unbanked.
You're suspicious but it had the opposite effect? Sounds like you're trying to deliver a talking point and got confused half way thru.
It took me two weeks to get back into the app after switching phones. There's no way to contact support except by logging into the app or by Facebook. Then on Facebook they have an automated system that will close your ticket after 24 hours of you not replying.
I'm on a 12 hour time difference so that happened around four times before I got it solved. I ended up shouting in caps at that them, and I'm not a caps kinda guy. As soon as I got back in I withdrew all funds and closed the account.
Since I've been telling this story I've heard several more horror stories. The worst was a friend who gets paid through Revolut, so it triggered an automated finance checking system and instantly locked his account until he could prove he paid tax. Then the system wouldn't let him upload the docs for several days, support was just as helpful as they were with me. He had no money for five days.
Anyway, why would they do that? He wasn't doing anything illegal, they could have asked him to provide the docs with a week's grace and all would have been well.
And say no more about the Wise comparison: https://atlantic.money/wise
Which one exactly?
Compare for yourself: https://atlantic.money/wise
edit I just noticed it says "global" on the page, so I guess it's possible to send to any country?
Not sure why no one mentions OFX when doing these comparisons. Their rates are good and I don't recall pay any fees on top of them. When I looked into this year ago seemed much cheaper than Wise.
The flat fee makes it advantageous starting at about $500-600, compared to Wise. So, not for small transfers but nice for businesses paying internationally.
Am I correct?
The website doesn't include anything to reassure me that the service is as reliable (or more reliable) than Wise. There's no social proof. I found the news article with your first annual report and that's quite compelling.
- Add average transfer times so I can see what most people are experiencing when using the service
- Add social proof: positive reviews would be very helpful
- Add real time information about volume
- Shout about your reliability: Wise has reputation that does the work for them, you don't
- Mobile app only is a little concerning too for business usage: I use Wise for business and personal, business on the website, personal on my phone (I can't articulate why but using Wise for business on my phone "feels" wrong)
https://support.atlantic.money/en/support/solutions/articles...
Please note that our web app is in the making. So soon this won't be an issue anymore.
To prevent our users to "get caught up in some KYC nightmare" we – in contrast to Wise and Revolut – only allow your transfer after we checked and approved your documents. This minimises the risk of holding your money.
Cheers
50% cheaper is something that I'd look into. 99% cheaper feels like this is going to one or more of: a scam, a fly-by-night operation [unable to afford good customer service, etc], hidden exchange fees [giving me a terrible rate and telling me that's not the case], a planned bait-and-switch, and/or an unsustainable business that will evaporate after I switch to them.
Price and fees matter. But driving them down too low and leading with that as your pitch makes your best potential customers skeptical (and hurts your own ability to build a sustainable business).
Further, we are profitable with Atlantic Money on every transfer. Our whole infrastructure is built on a different concept, which is why Wise and Co. also cannot offer transfers for the same price without losing it all.
To give you a proof of our work: We transferred £160m ($200m) in our first year for private users, 16x what Wise sent back then.
* Huh, that is quite a bit cheaper and I don't love wise
* Is it available for US customers? I can't quite tell
* Eugh, I don't want to download an app. I'm working on my laptop right now, not my phone. I do 99% of my Wise payments on my laptop
Then reactions reading the HN comments:
* People noting that 50% cheaper is good but 99% cheaper a concern that it won't last. And the transfer fees I pay to wise are nothing compared to the headache if there was a payment issue. I agree with both of those, I'm convinced to stick with wise until I'm sure that this would be both cheaper and equally credible and low-risk / low-hassle
On a separate note - congrats on the launch, and I hope it does great!
One time, however, my bank blocked a payment claiming it was cryptocurrency, and I had a rather interesting chat with their customer support, with the agent(s) getting quite visibly frustrated about the situation. Apparently it happens a lot.
For the curious: In the UK, Atlantic use the British branch of Estonian bank LHV Pank (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHV_Pank), and you get a dedicated account number and sort code to send the money to (i.e. no need to fiddle with reference numbers)
I can't change my old profile name, but I have added some context in my "About".