MEL & JOHN

Hi all, I have used Smart Currency for many years to transfer into our Sabadell account.
Upon the sale of our house 😢in Spain we now need to transfer the other way. € to £.
Smart Currency would have the funds placed into their account in Germany and we have agreed that, when/if the rate is favourable for us, it will be converted into £'s and deposited into our UK account.
Bit twitchy about this even though S Currency have never let us down.
Anybody else carried out this type of transaction with them and did all proceed to plan?
Thank you very much

Mark604

Hold on a minute, are you saying that this currency company would have your money in their "account" for some unspecified length of time until it's felt the exchange rate is good enough..
Not sure why you didn't keep the money in your account and then when you feel the exchange rates are good enough, transfer it to them to then transfer.
Am I missing something?

spainrico

Surely Euro to pounds is in your favour now?

MEL & JOHN

Thank you both.

Yes, the rate is in our favour and, in view of that, we may transfer from Smart Currency into our GB account straight away.
The reason we are looking to use S C is because there are no bank charges for the transfer and change of € to £ and no limits on the amounts you can transfer out.

stevesainty

Please, before you make a decision, find out how many GBP you will get with SC and immediately check with Wise, formally Transferwise. The GBP in your hand is king, forget about rates and charges. Wise is totally transparent and you will see the bottom line.

spainrico

https://wise.com/gb/compare/?sourceC...endAmount=1000

MEL & JOHN

Thank you Steve for your response and the link

spainrico

Close!

Pulaski

Is "Smart Currency" a bank? Not "seems to be a bank", not offers "bank services", is it actually a bank? If it isn't then it is likely that your money, while in their hands, is probably not covered by deposit insurance. So if Smart Currency goes t!ts-up while they have your money, you could suffer a significant loss, so just be careful. There are other FX broker-remitters that use pretty words to (IMO) mislead people, talking about segregated accounts and regulation, but that is miseading, and just seeking to distract customers from the fact that they are not a bank, and that the customer money they hold is not insured. So while both "segregation of funds" and "regulation" are good things to have, they are not a substitute for deposit insurance, and deposit insurance is the exclusive preserve of banks in the UK and in most other western countries, including the entire EU. There are very few other businesses other than banks that are covered by deposit insurance - but building societies in the UK are one rare example of another business type that is covered.

I knew of someone, some years ago, who had a small villa in Spain, and after he retired he sold his home in the UK and put the proceeds temporarily with a financial services business that was not covered by deposit insurance. He also sold his villa in Spain, and put the proceeds of that sale in the same account. His plan was to use the proceeds of both sales to buy a larger villa in Spain where he and his wife would, presumably, live out their retirement. .... But before he could close on the purchase of another villa, the business holding all his money collapsed. It was six years before he saw a penny of that money come back! , and although he eventually got about 90% of the money back, the final installment took about 20 years to arrive, and I don't even know if he was still alive by then.

bolton wanderer

A lot of these fee free conversions take their money from the exchange rate. Do make a few comparisons, Wise are pretty good for this type of transaction.

To be fair Wise are also not a bank.

MEL & JOHN

Plastic and Bolton W, thank you very much. I think I need to have a re think 🤔

spainrico

Just use Wise - I have for 3 years plus without problems....they are not FSCS regulated but do have another regulation scheme.

VEDShappy

Just one example
https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/new...ation-victims/

bobd22

Looking online at both Wise and Smart Currency they both seem to have much the same protection? As do most of the major currency transfer companies. Banks obviously have better protection but generally higher charges and lower exchange rates. Moving a large amount of currency either before or after a property sale is always a worrying time. All one can do is research costs rates level of protection and make ones own mind up. I have used a few different ones I have used currencyfair for quite some time now similar exchange rates to Wise and low fixed fee to transfer. The exchange conversion chart added earlier will be of some help. Certainly at the moment the exchange rate has gone in favour of exchanging euro to £ for OP. However not favourable for transferring the other way thanks to Mr Kwarten.

UKMS

For large amounts I tend to push it through Wise or Revolut in chunks thereby avoiding any potential issues however small the risk might be. I wouldn’t be happy pushing a property proceeds through all in one hit.