Can you help with currency conversion question?

Hi all, I have just sold a property in Poland and the purchaser’s mortgage lender could only release their funds to a Polish bank account. I therefore opened a bank account in Poland and the entirity of the proceeds have been deposited there. My polish bank account is a multi-currency account, and I have the possibility of converting the PLN funds into either EUR or CHF. I need to move a small portion of these funds to my Swiss bank account and the rest will need to be transferred to Australia where I am purchasing another property. I don’t know what the most cost effective way of moving these funds is? I have a Wise account which I use regularly for international transfers - should I send PLN there and convert through Wise? Or should I conver to CHF withing the Polish account and transfer CHF directly to my Swiss account? I have no option of buying AUD within my Polish bank account.
Any suggestions you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Definitely not.

Maybe.

Or maybe you pay Revolut premium for one year and deposit and convert to AUD in few thousand tranches, but be ready to provide documents explaining the source of funds.

In any case it would be prudent to have an Australian bank account to receive AUD funds. And even get informed about Australian depositors’ protection program.

Thank you for your suggestions. Is Revolut any different to Wise? Are their rates/ fees better? From what I’ve read online, I thought Wise had the best rates. I’ve just had a look at sending a 30K + amount through them and it seems that I would pay about 230CHF for the transfer. It seems quite high to me. This is for the PLN to CHF transfer. The payment in AUD will need to go straight to the real estate agent’s trust account. I do not have the possibility of opening a bank account in Australia unfortunately.

Ok, that makes it easy.

What about PLN to AUD?

I’ve just set up a Revolut account, it seems their fees are much cheaper. Thank you for the suggestion.

I will need to look into this. I sent up a AUD currency account with Revolut. Should I transfer the PLN there, convert within Revolut and sent to Australia from there? Is there a limit as to how much you can send through Revolut? I can prove the origin of the funds so should not have any issues on that front.

At least contact support upfront to do any required KYC, this would avoid having the funds be frozen.

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I was just looking into this. I think I have to set up a Premium account to be able to transfer a larger amount. Which still works out cheaper than what Wise was going to charge.

Wait. With a basic Revolut account I have once paid an extra 1% fee to send funds in a currency different from CHF and EUR to a (third party) bank account. You might check fees at this step.

I have emailed Revolut. With a premium account they state that there is a saving of 20% on international transfers but I cannot see what the fees actually are anywhere. Currency conversion is free.

By my experience, the fees for international transfert are really cheap for Revolut, but you have some fees on the recipent end that are charged by the other banks, and you don’t have any view on that. I suggest that you do a small/medium amount first, so you will have a clear view.

If it is from your AUD Revolut account to your AUD bank account, it might (to be verified) not even been classified as international transfert.

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Have you checked what would Wise charge you to transfer money from PLN to AUD directly?

I just checked on Wise and I see 0.63% fees for 100,000 PLN. For higher amounts it’s lower.

It’s important to always compare the final amount you will receive on various platforms.

Wise always give you mid market rate and then charge fees.

Someone else might give you lower fees but give the buy rate.

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I transferred a small amount last night (just 20PLN) to my Revolut PLN account. When I converted the amount to CHF today with Revolut, the conversion rate was 0.21971. I received 4.39CHF, no other fees. Wise would have offered a slightly better conversion rate of 0.2202 but their fee was going to be 6.89PLN and I would have received 2.89CHF. So Revolut wins here. However, I think Wise might be the better option for larger amounts. When I entered a hypothetical 450K PLN amount into Wise, their fee was 0.63% or 2823.15PLN to convert to AUD at 0.3860 rate. Revolut offered nearly the same conversion rate (0.38605) but their fee was 1714.87 AUD (approximately 700AUD higher). Their app states that Premium account holders receive a 20% discount on fees, which would equal to 342.97AUD. Even in this scenario the option is more expensive particularly when you factor in the 10.99CHF per month charge for a Premium account (which you have to hold for a year).

The only caveat is that Wise does not offer a PL IBAN only a UK one, and I wonder if my bank in PL would charge a fee for the transfer to Wise. A friend said he did not think so, if it was a SEPA transfer. I will transfer a small amount and see.

So, Wise wins for me! Unless someone can see something that I am missing?

Just to update you all, as I’ve had a reply from Revolut. This is what they said:

“For international payments in the local currency of the recipient, you will be charged a variable fee (0.15%) from the transfer value, subject to the minimum (0.75 CHF) and maximum fees (300 CHF). Discount is applied after the transfer fee amount and not app on weekends. Amount is always taken out in the base currency” (which for me is CHF).