CurrencyFair is a reliable money transfer service for international bank transfers (8.6/10). CurrencyFair offers a wide range of user-friendly services and features (8/10), as well as reasonably priced fees and exchange rates (8.4/10), despite not being the most well-known money transfer service. It also has a high level of security and brand reputation (8.8/10). All of this adds up to CurrencyFair being a highly regarded service in the eyes of its users (9.1/10).
What Monito Likes About CurrencyFair
- Excellent exchange rates on Monito’s comparison engine.
- Users can choose their desired transfer speed and cost.
- Clean, easy-to-understand web and mobile app interface.
- Outstanding customer satisfaction rankings.
- For businesses, CurrencyFair comes integrated with Xero.
What Monito Dislikes About CurrencyFair
- Only 22 currencies are currently supported;
- Bank and debit card payments are the only fund-in methods.
Can I Trust CurrencyFair?
CurrencyFair is a reliable money transfer service and a duly licensed financial services provider with about 60,000 active customers. In addition to being governed and authorized by the Central Bank of Ireland, CurrencyFair is also required to protect client funds and uphold the highest standards of systems and procedures by the European Communities (Payment Services) Regulations of 2009. This includes preventing financial crime, maintaining a certain amount of capital and liquidity, and appointing key personnel who have been personally approved and vetted.
Client funds are held in segregated accounts in accordance with regulations, which are kept completely apart from CurrencyFair’s own business accounts. This implies that in the event of financial difficulties for the business, your money is secure.
Is CurrencyFair Safe?
Indeed, CurrencyFair is a secure and reliable platform for foreign exchange solutions. With its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, and offices there and in Australia, CurrencyFair is a sizable business with a global reach. On the employer review website Glassdoor, employees rate the business with a 5-star rating and frequently mention CurrencyFair as a great place to work.
Over €8 billion has been exchanged through CurrencyFair by hundreds of thousands of customers. On Trustpilot, they have thousands of 5-star ratings and few complaints. The business has over €5 million in net assets and has raised about €20 million from investors, making it financially sound.
CurrencyFair’s Service Quality
Although there are not many pay-in options and receiving currencies available, opening and managing an account, get in touch with customer service, and funding a transfer with CurrencyFair is all very convenient.
What Is CurrencyFair?
An innovative method of sending money across borders is used by CurrencyFair, an international money transfer service. You actually exchange with other CurrencyFair customers rather than a bank or money transfer service when exchanging your currency.
You can select the exchange rate you want thanks to this fully automated and transparent peer-to-peer method. You will both receive that exchange rate if another user of CurrencyFair is looking to exchange in the opposite direction and accepts it. The mid-market exchange rate, or the point where the buying and selling prices of the two currencies meet, is the exchange rate that more than 10% of users of the CurrencyFair MarketPlace obtain.
You can also decide to convert your money right away at the best market rate if you’d rather not wait for another customer to accept your rate. Regardless, CurrencyFair offers fantastic exchange rates that are typically just 0.35 percent worse than the mid-market rate.
With recent expansion into Asia, CurrencyFair now offers the ability to send money from and to more than 150 countries in 20 different currencies. Since the business has local accounts in almost all of the supported currencies, sending money to them should be free. They work with people who can speak English, German, and French among other languages.
After exchanging your currency on the CurrencyFair MarketPlace, a small flat fee, typically around €3, will need to be paid in order to transfer your funds to the bank account of your choice. After the money is transferred into CurrencyFair, it takes one to two working days to receive it. For some currencies, this process might take longer.
Except on weekends and bank holidays, you can exchange and transfer your money at any time, from any location, using the CurrencyFair website or mobile app, which is available for iOS and Android. Additionally, CurrencyFair is integrated with some regional interbank and bill payment services, such as PayNow in Singapore and BPAY in Australia.
Customers can also save, download, and print their currency balances and statements from CurrencyFair as a CSV or PDF, which can be useful for those who like to carefully monitor their spending.
CurrencyFair For Businesses
Additionally, CurrencyFair offers services for business money transfers. Businesses can use CurrencyFair, for instance, for international payroll, international payments, and money receiving. The integration of CurrencyFair with Xero, a top accounting program that enables SMEs and small businesses to manage multicurrency transactions, reconcile payments, and group related transactions together, is noteworthy in this regard.
Our reviewers were highly impressed by the user-friendliness and quick loading times of CurrencyFair’s money transfer platform. Although there were several regulatory steps involved in the signup process, everything went smoothly, and there were helpful tooltips and eye-catching illustrations all throughout. Similar to receiving money, sending it was easy thanks to detailed instructions and a smooth user interface. We found the option to choose the transfer time and fees to be particularly useful, and it helped to distinguish CurrencyFair from many of its rivals.
CurrencyFair Mobile App Review
Both iOS and Android mobile devices can use CurrencyFair’s mobile apps. You can easily exchange and transfer money using the CurrencyFair app from any location at any time (except on weekends and bank holidays). You can set up deposits into your CurrencyFair account using the money transfer app, and the app will give you the details you need to make your transfer through your online banking service or at your neighborhood bank branch. Then, you can exchange money in 20 different currencies and transfer it to the bank account of your choice using the CurrencyFair app.
CurrencyFair’s Fees & Exchange Rates
CurrencyFair is occasionally the cheapest money transfer service for bank transfers, despite having fairly competitive pricing on Monito’s comparison engine. The following table breaks down the costs involved in sending money abroad:
For each transfer from your CurrencyFair account to a bank account, a small fixed fee, typically €3, is assessed by the company. If you have funds in several different currencies on your CurrencyFair account, you can pick the most advantageous one to use to pay the fees. Additionally, they could demand a commission of 0.10 to 0.60 percent of the value exchanged.
CurrencyFair’s Exchange Rates
You have the option to select your own exchange rate thanks to the CurrencyFair peer-to-peer marketplace. This indicates that there is a chance you will receive a better exchange rate than the current mid-market rate.
Naturally, you can only get your preferred rate if a different CurrencyFair user agrees to exchange with you at it. As an alternative, you can exchange right away at the most competitive rate. You will typically pay an exchange rate margin that is roughly 0.35% less than the mid-market exchange rate.
Other Fees
In most instances, CurrencyFair’s accounts are held locally in the country of the currency you are exchanging from or exchanging to. This means there should be no fees to transfer money into or out of your CurrencyFair account using a local bank transfer.
However, if you are sending from or to UAE dirham, Canadian dollar, New Zealand dollar, US dollar, South African rand, or sending to Israeli new shekel (ILS), the transfer in or out of CurrencyFair will be made with an international bank transfer. You will pay additional fees to the banks involved. Depending on the amount, it is generally still worthwhile to use CurrencyFair, since the better exchange rates make up for the additional fees.
CurrencyFair Reviews
CurrencyFair has largely excellent customer reviews on Trustpilot. Here’s a summary of what reviewers have to say:
Positive CurrencyFair Reviews
- Exchange rates are excellent, and transfer fees are much lower than with banks;
- Sending money is a quick and easy process;
- Transfers arrive quickly in the recipient’s account;
- The customer service is very helpful and friendly.
Negative CurrencyFair Reviews
- Opening an account requires a certain amount of personal information (as with all other companies, this is due to regulations). However, electronic verification is speeding up this process;
- Some people found the signup process confusing or unclear;
- In a few exceptional cases, transfers were delayed or blocked.
How CurrencyFair Works
Set up your transaction
Tell us the amount and currency you will transfer in to be exchanged – see accepted currencies.
Add recipient details
Fill in the banks details for new recipients or select your recipient.
Choose your deposit method
Tell us how you will transfer money to your CurrencyFair account.
Transfer in money to your account
Once you transfer money to your account, we will exchange it at rates up to 8x cheaper than the banks and transfer it out to your recipient without delay.