Revolut vs Wise (TransferWise)?

The question still remains, which one is better. By better do we mean cheaper, faster, or reliable? Having personal experiences with both, we can break down the calculations, so you don’t have to.

Rate and Fees

For example, let’s look at transferring $10,000 AUD to USD. At the time of examining, Revolut shows $6758.11 USD. One thing to note is that transferring money is a 2 step process with Revolut. The exchange does not have any fee on weekdays, while they do charge 1% on weekends. To transfer the funds to a US account it costs $5.39 USD. So the end user will receive $6752.72 USD.

Now let’s look at Wise. Wise’s process to transfer is rather straight forward. To send the same $10,000 AUD to US, the end user will receive a total of $6693.95 USD. I’m actually appalled by the difference. The total fees charged is 48.39 AUD.

As you can see, Revolut is significantly cheaper and offers a better rate. You can argue that Wise might be better on the weekends. However, even with the 1% fee, Revolut still comes on top.

Let’s look at another quick example to send money from the USA to Germany.

We can see the same results here favoring Revolut.

How do they make money?

Revolut uses the mid-market rate and profits off the difference. Wise on the other hand, charges a sizeable fee.

Who is faster?

For the same transaction above, Wise 2 business days, whereas Revolut quoted same day. It’s pretty clear that for this transaction Revolut was much quicker.

What are the differences?

While there are numerous differences between the two, not many of them will concern most people. Here are the only thing that will matter to you:

Wise has lock in rates for 36 hours, whereas Revolut uses market rate. This means you can lock in a set rate with Wise and you are able to cancel the transfer if you changed your mind. This is key to mitigate interest rate risk.

The other notable difference is how many countries both these companies operate in or how many currencies they allow you on their portal.

Revolut: AUD, BGN, CAD, CHF, CZK, DKK, EUR, GBP, HKD, HRK, HUF, JPY, NOK, PLN, RON, SEK, USD, ZAR

Wise: AUD, BGN, BRL, CAD, CHF, CZK, DKK, EUR, GBP, HRK, HUF, JPY, MYR*, NOK, NZD, PLN, RON, SEK, SGD, TRY and USD. In addition, they allow you to convert to 52 currencies and send money to 70 countries.

Summary

As you can see from our comparison, Revolut performed much better than Wise when it came to money transferring. The amount you save is significant that it should be a no brainer.