Not just for sending money?
I’ve been a fan of TransferWise since I started using it over four years ago (we did an update about a year later). Since then I’ve used TransferWise to send money to accounts in the UK, Spain, Sweden, Singapore, and Canada. Each time it was easy, quick, and worked perfectly.
TransferWise works by maintaining local bank accounts in each country. That way, when you want to send money from Japan to the UK, you make a local bank transfer to TransferWise in Japan, then they make a local bank transfer to the target account in the UK. This makes it very fast and allows them to keep fees low. You also get a very good exchange rate.
For transfers under a million yen or so they are one of the best options, and certainly the easiest, as the website is very simple and clear. They also keep a record of everyone you send money to, so the second time is just a matter of clicking once. Sure beats spending an hour or two in your local bank refilling in forms over and over again…
New services
I got an email yesterday about a new service TransferWise is rolling out in Japan. It’s been available in other countries for a while, so I guess it took them a while to get approval here or something.
It’s actually pretty clever, and is related to their core business.
Basically they will provide you with a virtual bank account in the UK, the US, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Hungary, or the Eurozone. You can then receive local bank transfers within those countries as if you had a bank account.
I opened a UK one yesterday, and paid in enough yen to get me 20 pounds, and today I have an account number, sort code, and address for the TransferWise ‘bank’ in the UK.
You can also use your virtual account to send money domestically in the other country. I sent myself the 20 pounds to my existing NatWest account, and it arrived instantly. There was a fee of 60 pence which works out as 3%. This includes a minimum of 50 pence so will be less with larger transfers.
This probably won’t replace my existing UK bank account, but if I needed an account in the US, for example, it could be very useful indeed.
Even more exciting
More exciting than the virtual bank account is the next product in the pipeline: an international debit card that works in the same way, giving you free ATM withdrawals all over the world and cheap currency conversion using the card.
It’s not available in Japan yet, but seems to be on the way.
I’m particularly interested in this because Shinsei Bank no longer allows us to use our cashcards overseas, which is what I had been using in the past.
We’ll do another blog post when the card becomes available.
What do you think? Are you using TransferWise? Does the new virtual bank account service sound useful?
* This post contains affiliate links, but you can sign up for TransferWise without using them by searching for it online. If you do sign up with one of our links though we will receive a small commission towards out web hosting costs -every little bit helps and it won’t cost you any extra.
With the release of the multi-currency account in the past few days, Transferwise has a big advantage over one of his foreign competitor Revolut : The possibility to send money to a Japanese bank account. The fees are 300 yen whatever the amount you desire to send (Cap to 1 million). This is very great if you receive money from overseas and you want to give it back to your primary japanese bank account.
This feature is not yet available in Revolut Japan and it doesn’t seems to be in their roadmap yet due to regulations. I believe Transferwise offer this feature because it has partnership with a Japanese bank while Revolut doesn’t
I can’t wait the debit card. The last interview i could read was mentioning the debit card would be available end of 2020:
By the way thank you Ben Takana for the blog. This is my first post and it’s cause of your blog i started to be interested in finance here in Japan. Your explanation help me to know about IDECO, NISA etc… and i started this journey last year.
Continue that way. You help a lot of people in the same situation.
Thanks for the info on Revolut! And thanks for the kind words. They do mean a lot, as I am mainly doing this to try to help people and sometimes it feels like a lot of work for little reward 😉
Good luck on your journey!
I for sure appreciate it, and the support you have given me for setting up my IDECO and NISA
you could add an option/feature for premium members who pay a yearly fee , maybe include short podcasts on various financial topics for these premium members , and allows them to consult with you for short periods
Ha, ha, thanks! It’s not so much monetary reward (this is basically a hobby for me) but anyone doing things online gets a lot of complaints/criticism, so it’s nice to get positive comments sometimes too!
Interesting.Thaa as now for alerting me to this. Revolut just started accepting Japan residents with no waitlist too. I’ve opened a Revolut account but not done anything with it. Would be interested to compare and contrast TWise, Revolut and other virtual bank options. Look forward to hearing people’s thoughts and experiences, and will share mine when I have something to share.
Saw this too, and I’m looking forward to further developments. Definitely an interesting idea with the card.
Been a pretty heavy user of Transferwise the past couple of years. If they hadn’t switched their bank from MUFJ to GMO Aozora a few months ago, I’d be a little happier, since now I have the pleasure of paying the bank transfer fee. But otherwise, nothing to complain about.
I have not used Transferwise yet. I still have an account in the US I use to send money to my daughter.
I have investments in Canada, which as a US citizen, have become a nightmare due to US tax reporting requirements (which were introduced after I had opened the accounts). I want to close them, but the company will only send to a Canadian bank account or issue a check for the whole sum and mail to me (no thank you). I had intended to make a trip to Canada and pick up the check, but that hasn’t worked out this year for obvious reasons. (Yes, the accounts are still open.) I hope Transferwise is working on a Canadian account system, too.
What are the ID checks like?
It sounds like the sort of service that would cause sleepless nights for anti money laundering authorities.
Pretty normal.You have to provide your My Number (whose number? Heh) and they confirm your address by sending you a postcard.
I’ll be highly interested in this if they expand it to accept JPY so that I can have Japanese clients pay me there, then withdraw in USD on the American side. Appears that’s not an option, at least for now.
“For transfers under a million yen or so they are one of the best options”…
How about for transfers of several million yen?
Check out the comments in the previous two posts (linked at the beginning of this one). Basically Shinsei’s Goremit, a specialised service, or a regular bank transfer might be better.
Thanks for posting about this, Ben. This looks really interesting.
I recently opened a new Revolut account in Japan for similar reasons but the functionality is not great because you can only top up your JPY account using a debit card (which I don’t have) or credit card. If you use a credit card then there are restrictions on using the JPY that you have topped up.
Does anyone know how the JPY topping up works with TW?
Oh, it’s great. I’ve been a huge fan since I first got my account.
You can fund your account via bank transfer (lowest fee, takes a day for me from Shinsei) or debit card (higher fee, instant? -never tried this myself).
I got the email but didn’t have time to read it. Nice recap, thank you. I have Shinsei and they give some free domestic transactions, which save me a coffee when I move money back home with TW.
Yes, I have used Transferwise for a few years now and very satisfied. I’m looking forward to the new debit card. I get lots of good information from your blog; thank you.
This is a big game changer, as I’ll now be able to access my uk ISA from Japan without having an address in the UK. Big plus moving forward.
Thanks as always to Ben for info.
You mention “Shinsei Bank no longer allows us to use our cashcards overseas”.
Prestia (SMBC’s subsidiary) seems good here — they have a multicurrency debit card, allowing automatic use of your non-yen funds in Prestia from ATMs overseas. No conversion nor fees charged (at “most” banks overseas).
That might be an option. I’ve been using my UK cash card in the meantime, and just applied for one of those Sony Bank accounts. Blog post once everything is up and running 🙂
Actually, the multicurrency account has been there for users here for at least a month, I accidentally stumbled upon it the day after they enabled it, by just logging in and the multicurrency button had a highlight it.
Clicked it and didn’t get the apologetic message any more, just, ‘would you like to open accounts in these countries…’ YAY!
Immediately opened a US and EU account. Both work very well.
Use case for me is that I have my company’s stock options, ESPP, and RSU things going on, and often the transactions have a little bit leftover $ because the stock is valuable and can be only sold in lots of >=1… and the broker doesn’t allow us to hold cash.
So they send the leftovers over SWIFT here. $30 for sending, $x for some other fees, then local bank here takes 2000JPY… frustrating when you can’t say no for the broker to send you $50.
Now, I just use ACH number in the US to get that $50 with minimal fees and it stays there until I have ESPPs to sell.
One thing to note.
If I send a, let’s say, $7000 to myself in the normal transferwise manner, so that they use their local bank account here, the fees become to something like $70 or so?
I’ve set up my shinsei account in the TW now twice, one denominated in JPY, one in USD. You can do that.
If I send from my US account to my shinsei US account, it takes 3 days but the fees are $4.70. And I get to keep the USD in Shinsei waiting for better exchange rate.
TL: I can tell you that I get charged 6,400 yen or so each time I send 999,999 yen to the US, so I doubt that transfer would cost $70. Probably more like $45-50 if it’s proportional.
Yeah just rechecked, it’s 47.39USD for TW fees if you send 7000USD to JPY. My memory is probably from the larger transaction I checked.
But that’s still more than what a SWIFT transfer from my brokerage would be to my account in here. Hence I rather send just USD to get low fees.
I use TransferWise for payments to Japan (I am located in Europe). But they do require the EXACT name of the company in Katakana. One small difference (like a dot) and the whole payment is blocked at the money refunded. Often takes me 5 times (and 2 weeks) before I can finalize the payment. They have lower commissions, but when I count the extra time I have to put in, they are very expensive.
How does it work with sending money here? I have done this before through Revolut or direct bank transfer and the Japanese bank always blocks the transfer, calls me to verify what money and why I send it and depending on situation asked me for scanned documents before they let the payment arrive to my Japanese account. Is it same with transferwise?
Haven’t used TransferWise to send money to Japan (only from Japan) but Shinsei has been very good with receiving international payments. Not once have they asked about a transfer, blocked the transfer, or asked for supplementary documents.
I made a number of fairly large transfers from the UK in pounds into my Shinsei pound account.
At least for me for both Shinsei and Rakuten banks, if I’m receiving more than a million yen worth of foreign currency, they’ll hold the transfer until they’ve cleared that it’s my money. This is because if the anti-money laundering laws set by the government.
If you’re using TW so that you’ll be receiving yen instead of dollars for example, then TW uses a local transfer from their own Japanese account and this will hit your account without screening.
Shinsei’s GAICA card is its international debit card. Worked great just last year in Hawaii (and in previous years). Has “Pay Wave”, which is the payment system in most common use there.
I’ve seen the Gaica card, but it is separate from Shinsei, eh? I just want a cashcard that works abroad without having to mess around too much 🙂
You do have to apply for the GAICA card, but it is integrated with a Shinsei account and you can transfer funds to it online in an instant for ATM withdrawal or debit use outside of Japan. Very easy to use.