²ÝÁñÉçÇø

Hi Steve, for what purpose - transferring funds from Aus bank into a PH bank account?

I had issues with Remitly, but forget what they were, been a couple years.

I use World Remit when I want to transfer for her to do a cash pickup, like at M L'Huiliier. Not great rates.

Wise works fine for transferring to a bank account, decent rates. They were slow however the last time I used them to transfer cash to buy our used Navara pickup, but it was over a holiday.  You can send large amounts if you give them direct access to your account, which is nice, although I haven't done that..

My bank (Wells Fargo) is hands down the fastest and most reliable for me, using their Express Send service, it's in the bank in an hour or two max. One miss in 10 years.. and it was at BPI's end. Comparable rate to Wise. So that's what I use most of the time. Interestingly it's the only US bank that provides that service AFAIK.

I know that doesn't help your situation but maybe one of your Aussie banks has a comparable service?

Cheers

I use Wise almost exclusively since switching from Remitly. No issues so far and they usually have one of the best exchange rates

Long story short PNW my bank of over 40 years can't send me an OTP now and countless hours on the phone and chatting on their chat internet service they continually blame my carrier in the Philippines and not their problem, this has been ongoing for near 6 months even though my other bank in Oz works theirs doesn't, I get calls from Oz all the time.

Initially I could log into my accounts online and check balances etc. and if I wanted to transfer funds to the Philippines they would send me a one time password for the transfer, worked for the last 7/8 years,,,,,,,,, now for some reason I can't even log into my accounts as now they want an OTP that I never receive.

Regardless I can't monitor my account balances without access. My westpac visa/debit card pays bills in Australia automatically and without knowing the balance?

Thing is they had a great exchange rate to the Philippines, about .1 to point 12% was the worst under the market rates and now won't work.

Set up a visa debit card with my other bank for the regular bills in Oz but their exchange rate sucks, around 2.5 pesos per dollar lower than Westpac and about to buy a new car and bad bank compared to Westac that I can't access  is near P150K difference on a simple transfer.

I have set up an account with Remitly and about to look at Wise but seems they all have limits on transfers, A lot more searching and I will get my needs, sorted.

Thanks for the input.

Cheers, Steve.

@bigpearl

WISE will give you a USA and EU checking account for direct deposit etc. Not sure if that is important to you or available as an Australian account.

I found remitly to be great for smaller transfers around $1K USD. I sent about $3K to a dentist's bank account, first time that high, and was immediately investigated on remitly for KYC or AML. That resulted in a delay but remitly promised no more investigations in the future. After that I never had occasion to transfer that amount but for large amounts I just plan to continue with SWIFT wire transfer using my bank. The KYC song and dance was a real pain and cost me many long distance calls to remitly on Google fi. Again, Australia may not be as strict at the US for KYC and AML (suspicion of money laundering).

So for me I consider remitly to be great for day to day bill.paying and other smaller personal transfers to GCASH, MAYA, palawanan/Lhuillier/LBC etc. transfers, to Filipinos, for example, to workers.

Wise, I have only used occasionally, also to transfer smaller amounts. At one time I considered having my pensions deposited there but decided against it due to reports of other expats having their accounts closed for no known reason. Usually that is due to the KYC AML BS. I know of no service that is immune to their algorithms monitoring "suspicious activity".

But you may hear glowing reports of successful use of WISE by USA and other expats,  even for larger transfers on a regular basis. I don't trust either of them with larger amounts of money that they earn interest on during the duration of their KYC AML investigations.

@bigpearl Hi Steve, I’ve only used Wise, and so far have been pretty happy with it. It’s linked to my OZ account - international payments, and transfers, are fast and very cheap. You can hold various currencies.

And it’s AU$10 to get an ATM card that’s associated with Visa - it seems to work everywhere. Nice to have access to another account that’s easy to use.

Cheers.