Brett’s Blog

Well, that time has come around again, and we’re currently celebrating our second birthday here at CurrencyFair! It seems an appropriate time to have a quick word about how we’ve done so far.

Since launching in May 2010 we have seen the equivalent of over €125 million exchanged and transferred via the site, saving our customers around €4 million in the process (compared to typical bank exchange rates and transfer fees)! These days we are seeing averages of around €600,000 exchanged daily, and we’re growing at over 10% every month. This is great news for our customers, since growth means more people exchanging on the site, which in turn means better and better exchange rates and even bigger savings.

Why are we growing so fast? We recently surveyed a few hundred of our customers, and received some really great feedback that has us convinced we’re on the right track. 86% of people said they would be ‘Very Disappointed’ if CurrencyFair was no longer available, and an...

There is no doubt that social media is changing the way we do business. Frustrated customers, sick of dealing with unresponsive customer service desks, are now able to air their concerns over Twitter, Facebook, even YouTube and the like, potentially reaching thousands or even millions of people, and companies are being forced to take note.

There’s another side to this new power though, and that’s the ability consumers now have to reward the companies they like with a positive review. Whether it’s a Google +1, a Facebook like, a positive tweet, or a forum post, it’s easy now to let people know when you’ve had a good experience or like a product. This is not just a nice way of saying thank you – it can actually make the product cheaper!

I think everyone understands that marketing and advertising is a necessary expense for most businesses, and therefore forms a part of the cost of any product. If your positive review is able to help that business acquire customers more...

  Imagine that your local supermarket started advertising its products, in newspapers, and on the shelves, at the wholesale prices, only hitting customers for the higher marked-up cost when they arrived at the checkout. Nobody would put up with that kind of nonsense! In fact, if they dared try it, somebody, maybe the local Consumers’ Association, would shut them down. You just don’t get away with that kind of thing these days, right?

Believe it or not, something similar to this is done by many of the online foreign exchange brokers, and nobody bats an eyelid. Consumer protection doesn’t seem to apply in the area of foreign exchange and money transfers, as I pointed out in a previous post about the commonly used ‘0% Commission’ deception. The other ploy used by many...

The original idea for CurrencyFair was driven by my own personal frustrations, as an expat, with sending money internationally. The internet had come along and upset middle-men in pretty much every industry I could think of, depressing margins and generally resulting in better value for the consumer all round. Why then, did it cost me at least 3% of my money simply to exchange it into another currency and send it overseas, a process that cost the bank very little? We set up CurrencyFair largely because we knew that the peer-to-peer idea could work in this industry as it had in others. In fact, it seemed inevitable that the ridiculous margins being charged simply couldn’t last.

It’s now just over a year since we went live (Happy Birthday to us!), and we now have a better idea about why people like using us. Saving money is key, of course, but as it turns out, that’s not the whole story. We also get a lot of good feedback directly on our customer service, and we see some good...

It was great to chat to so many people at the Working Abroad Expos in Dublin, Cork and Belfast over the last couple of weeks. These events have been held regularly for several years now, and provide resources for those considering a move abroad to Australia, New Zealand or Canada.

People generally turn up to find out about visas and jobs, but we thought it would be worthwhile to set up a stand and let people know that there is money to be saved by thinking about their currency exchange as well. We used the simple example of a one year trip working overseas, and showed that the savings on typical transfers during that year could add up to €830 – enough for the flight home!

I would love to be able to say that the event was full of adventurous types excited about the...

The market for foreign exchange and international money transfers is big. Really big. Not only do you have corporations paying overseas invoices or receiving foreign payments, but you also have, for example, expats (both working and retired), people making foreign investments, or buying or selling property overseas, and international students, most of whom have a need at some stage or another to send money to foreign bank accounts.

Until recently, if you were one of these people, you only really had two options: use your bank directly, or use a specialist currency broker, which is not a bank, but a company that focuses solely on foreign exchange and money transfers.

Even though things are gradually changing, the vast majority of people still use their bank. I’m guessing that the main reason for this is that people either don’t realise that there are better alternatives out there, or that if they do realise, then they’re not aware of quite how big the savings can be...

Last week I received a flyer from An Post (the Irish Post Office, if you’re not from these parts), telling me that “An Post sells Sterling and Dollars COMMISSION FREE”. Well, who doesn’t these days? It seems to be the standard line everywhere; banks, bureau de change at the airport, and also most of the online brokers specialising in foreign bank transfers. What does it actually mean? Not a lot really, and in fact I believe that its use is often deliberately misleading.

When you change money with your bank, or at the airport, or almost anywhere else for that matter, it is reasonable to assume that the person selling you the foreign currency is taking some sort of a cut. After all, they’re providing you with a service. This cut, unless you know better, you would probably assume is called “Commission”. So when you see, (and I quote again from the offending An Post flyer), “for a limited period you can buy your Sterling and Dollars COMMISSION FREE!”, you would be well within...

I can't say we were pushed into this, because having a blog on the site is something that we'd planned to do even prior to our launch in late April 2010. Still, a lot of our customers and friends have told us recently that, to paraphrase one of the more polite suggestions, "it's high time we got off of our asses and started to tell our story a little better" – thanks JM!

So, welcome to "Currency Affairs". We plan to keep you updated with progress at CurrencyFair, of course, but perhaps more importantly (as 3 of us are ex-bankers) we will give you some much-needed insider info into the murky world of foreign exchange transfers. We'll tell you what the real charges are when sending money abroad, the ways in which many of the fx providers in the market go about concealing these fees, and how to avoid them.

It's been an incredibly busy 9 months since we went live, not to mention the years of preparation prior to that. We've had some great press so far; The Australian,...