billy_a

I will be moving to the USA next month, I currently have Revolut with an account in USD.

Is it worth opening a wise account which has low transfer fees and use wise instead of revolut?

Also, can my salary be paid into my wise account?

Expatrian

I see Wise recommended a lot here and elsewhere. It may not be the best choice for large transfers, but otherwise it seems well regarded. Each currency account has the credentials you need to transact in the country of the currency. The US account will have a routing number and account number - so you can use it like any other US bank account, sans writing checks or depositing cash.

billy_a

Thanks, what would you say is good for large transfers. Is Wise ok for transfers of around £1k-10k? I dont think I will be doing anything bigger than 10k transfers for now.

Expatrian

From what I’ve seen that range should be fine. Larger sums might get frozen temporarily for verification (anti-fraud, etc.). That may also be the case with other fintech providers though. The Wise multi country debit card is a really nice feature.

tht

I would also open a “real” bank account with a bank with a local branch, you may needs checks, certified checks and other services an “online” bank may not support. I think most now support ACH and wires but also check that and also if you will get fee free ATM withdrawal with your “online” bank. If you are leaving balances also make sure your account is FDIC insured.

Jack_Russells4ever

I have used Wise for transfer in the $1000- 5000 USD range with absolutely no problem several times in the past 5 years. I recommend them highly. If you open a US bank account I would urge you to consider using a smaller local bank or credit union instead of a mega bank like Bank of America/Wells Fargo or Chase. Local banks and credit unions can usually handle anything a mega bank can handle and usually have better customer service and lower fees.

Pulaski

Just one word of caution, Wise is not a bank, in any country, so any money in a Wise account is not protected by FDIC (US) or the Deposit Protection Board (UK). This may not be of concern to you, especially if you don't keep significant account balances and/or just use Wise primarily for transactions, but it is at least something to be aware of. Also note, that Wise counters (IMO "dodges" or "deflects" would be more accurate) this question with an explanation that customer money is segregated, which I certainly agree is a good thing, but it is not the same as deposit insurance.
I have an account with a small local bank for my business, and the staff are very friendly and helpful, however IMO they are at least 20 years behind the times in technology - their web site is pretty basic, and they don't have recent technological developments, nor what I would consider a full range of services, oh, and I pay them more in fees than I do to the impersonal mega-bank that I also have an account with, but the staff at the small local bank are very friendly! (Did I say that already? )

billy_a

Thanks for the replied. I only intend to use the online bank (Wise or Revolut) just for the short term (2-3 weeks max) until I get my SSN and able to open an account with a local bank.

Wise and Revolut are both giving similar exchange. I may stick to my Revolut for now rather than open a new account with Wise. Unless someone has had bad experience with Revolut? I intend to only keep up to $5k max in Revolut and then switch to the local bank.

Glasgow Girl

The only impact to transferring larger sums are that transactions in excess of $10,000 are reported to the IRS and it may take a little longer to match the transfer with funds going the other way (which is how these exchange banks work). But you are only talking a few hours to a day or so. So long as funds in excess of $10,000 are legal then there are no issues whatsoever with the transaction being reported to the IRS. People make way too much out of that and worry unnecessarily. On the other hand, transferring multiple amounts under the $10,000 limit in a short period of time is far more likely to raise eyebrows.

Pulaski

Wise has pre-funded accounts in each currency in which it operates, and so transfers are not primarily dependent on matching transfer requests going in opposite directions.
This! Just don't worry about it, don't even think about it. Given the amount of USD, and numbers of wires/ transfers that flow into and out of the US every day, your transfers are not going to create so much as a ripple in the pond. However .....
.... If there is one thing you can be absolutely certain of, trying to make your transfers look less suspicious by trying in any way to manipulate the amounts or dates or pattern, or anything else you can think of, is the one way that you are most likely to draw attention to your transfers.

Glasgow Girl

Could be, but either way my experience is that large transfers always take longer, and the larger the transfer the longer it takes. My worst case scenario has been two days, but more usually one day longer than what is normal for small amounts. I was one of the first to transfer from the UK to the US using Transferwise (as it was back then) and helped them fix some bugs in their system before transfers fully worked

Pulaski

OK, for larger transfers that makes sense, though I suspect, but cannot prove that the primary fix to cover a large transfer, where there are not sufficient funds in the destination currency account to cover the transfer, is for Wise to make their own funding wire transfer, between Wise's own accounts, to cover the shortfall, which would explain the two day delay.

durham_lad

This week I decided to move $2,600 to our UK bank bank account. I have previously set up my Wise USD account in my US bank to make it easy to do bank to bank transfers. To avoid a wire charge of $4 I picked an ACH transfer (free) to move the $2,600 from my US bank to my Wise account. The money arrived today and I got an alert from my Wise app that money had been deposited. From the app I then initiated the transfer to my UK HSBC account and the transfer took 7 SECONDS. I showed my wife as she had not seen this in action before, and within a couple of seconds of the 7 seconds after the transfer was complete I got an alert from my my UK HSBC app telling me that £2,135.44 has just been deposited. Including fees that is an exchange rate of 1.218 which is pretty darn good.

PetrifiedExPat

I have managed a few large transfers using Wise, in particular JPY->USD, was very smooth and rate was great. Bank of America did freeze my accounts when the deposit was made, once I verbally clarified the source and intent to pay IRS and MA state, they unfroze same day.

EDIT: large = ~1e6 USD and ~6e5 USD

Expatrian

Good to know!