Our comparison tool compares the cost and speed of sending an international transfer with Wise, compared to other similar providers. It shows you the transfer fee, exchange rate, exchange rate markup and the received amount on the specified currency route. For routes where speed is also available, it shows you the estimated time it should take for your transfer to arrive.

We base our comparisons on data we’ve taken from the providers’ websites, on specific dates and times. Because we don’t collect or update data in real time, the information you see on the comparison table may differ from the information you see on the providers’ website or when initiating a payment as a customer.

Because we cannot ensure to the minute accuracy of the data on the comparison table, we recommend to always confirm your transfer details before committing to the transaction to ensure the conditions of the payment are suitable for you.

Some providers don’t make their speed, fees and exchange rate publicly available. In those cases, we use their service for bank-to-bank transfers - just as if we were customers - right until the point of paying. We do this multiple times, and we enter different amounts of money.

In case you want to know more, we’ve explained what all the different bits of our comparison table mean - and how we work them out below.

How we choose which providers to feature on our comparison table

We want to provide the most relevant and helpful comparisons to users so we look at the largest banks and non-bank providers in each country in which we operate in terms of online search volume, number of customers and market share. To optimise user experience on our money transfer pages, we then show the top 5 most-searched for providers in each country in comparison tables on our homepage and other landing pages. At the bottom of each table we provide a link to the full list of providers we collect data for.

We only include a provider on our comparison table if the relevant data on rates and fees is available to us. Since we’re not a price comparison website, we don’t receive any commission for featuring providers on our comparison tables, so our ability to show a comparison is dependent on the availability of the relevant data for these providers.

A fuller comparison table in which we show more than the top 5 most-searched for providers in each country is accessible at https://boost-dividend.live/gb/compare/%3C/a%3E.%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3EPlease keep in mind that the information shown in our comparison table is for marketing purposes only and we encourage you to do your own research.

The transfer speed

‘Transfer speed’ is the estimated time given by the provider for how long the transfer should take to reach the recipient. The estimated delivery time may be different from actual delivery time, due to verification, bank holidays or other reasons impacting delivery time.

For Wise, the estimated delivery time is calculated in real time based on the time we think it will take to complete your payment, from setting up the transfer, to the moment it is actually delivered to the recipient. Wise takes local payout partners' confirmation of delivery times as the source of truth when offering transfer delivery estimates. This already includes local bank holidays that might impact the actual speed of your transfer.

For other providers, the estimated delivery time is collected from public sources and takes into account the cut-off time (usually a set timestamp to ensure the estimated delivery speed), if specified by the provider, and known bank holidays in countries relevant to the currencies transacted with. If the provider does not provide an estimation of transfer speed in their public sources, we are unable to provide an estimation and it will be marked as ‘Unavailable’ on the comparison tool.

The transfer fee

The ‘transfer fee’ is simply how much the provider says it costs to use their service online. We only compare costs for online transfers from bank to bank, unless specified otherwise. Telephone banking, paying from a branch or paying for a transfer via debit/credit card are usually more expensive.

Wise uses local banking systems in the countries we transact in to give you the lowest cost option to send money abroad. This means that we pay out to your recipient account locally.

Banks and other providers however often use the Swift network to carry out international transfers. This means that they use multiple intermediary banks in different countries to deliver your payment from the source to the target country. Each of these intermediary banks may charge fees to handle the payment, not known to the payer before the payment arrives. To prevent these additional charges, the payer can choose to cover all potential costs by paying an extra fee, also known as ‘OUR’ fees. To give you the closest estimate to total fees incurred, we collect and show total fees with the OUR option where available.

The exchange rate

The ‘exchange rate’ represents the estimated exchange rate for each provider. It isn’t the exact exchange rate we saw on the day we used that provider’s service. It wouldn’t be fair to providers to show these collected rates - simply because we don’t collect all of our data at exactly the same time. Instead, we estimate what each provider’s exchange rate would be right now. Here’s how we work out that estimate.

First, we work out the exchange rate markup on each provider’s exchange rate.

To do this, we record the exchange rate each provider is offering on their website. At the same time, we check the mid-market rate from Bloomberg. Then, we calculate the difference between those two figures. For instance, if a provider’s rate was 1.4, and the mid-market rate on Bloomberg was 1.6, we’d record a difference of 0.2 (12.5%). We call this difference the ‘markup’.

Then, we subtract each provider’s markup from the mid-market rate

When you see the comparison table - which might be on the same day for most providers, but could be later for others - we check the mid-market rate from Bloomberg again. Then, we estimate each provider’s exchange rate by subtracting their markup we previously recorded, from the latest mid-market rate. Using our last example, if the mid-market rate has moved to 2.0 when you see the table, we’d show that particular provider’s exchange rate as 1.75. That’s because we recorded their markup as 12.5%.

How we work out a comparison for exact amounts that we haven’t collected

When we collect data from providers, we do it using different “amounts”. So, pretending we’re a customer again, we might go through the transfer process with £100, £500 and £2000. What that means, is that for some providers, the amount(s) we entered when we used their service might not be the same as the one you’ve just seen in the comparison table.

The data is collected in specific thresholds and if the amount of transfer is in between these thresholds, we used the provider's rate applicable for the higher transfer threshold.

For example, if a provider has a threshold of 5,000 EUR and 10,000 EUR, and we want to calculate the total cost of sending 5,500 EUR, then we will use the exchange rate and fee for sending 10,000 EUR.

Generally, providers give better exchange rates and charge smaller fees for higher-value transfers, this approach helps to reduce the risk of inflating the cost of using the relevant provider, in fact it may show a better rate for the relevant providers than what they may actually be.

What all this means for you

This means that the ‘transfer fee’ and ‘rate’ you see in the comparison table might be slightly different to the ones each provider currently has on their website. In fact, the comparison table might show a better transfer fee and a better exchange rate for all the providers.