Frontierpay Money Transfer Review

In 2019, Ebury, an award-winning fintech company based in London, acquired payroll specialist Frontierpay as part of its expanded technology investment programme. Frontierpay’s ability to distribute reliable payroll payments across 180 countries enhanced Ebury’s global trade and transaction banking platform.

In addition to product development, Ebury also benefited from Frontierpay’s presence in Singapore. The acquisition extended Ebury’s geographic and regulatory footprint in the Asia-Pacific region alongside its office already held in Australia.

This Frontierpay review is for reference purposes only. For current providers offering international payroll and bulk payments, see Moneycorp and TransferMate – both capable of providing a single batch upload for thousands of payments, accessible via their treasury platform or API.

Company Information and Credibility

Company size:  

Frontierpay, a UK currency broker, was created in 2009 and has since stayed a relatively small size at an estimated under 50 employees. With only two offices, Frontierpay is still a smaller player in the money transfer market. However, Frontierpay is using their size to their advantage, by delivering very personal and bespoke support to customers to ensure their needs are met. They are more focused on having fewer (often payroll) clients because of their high minimum transfer, yet high-value transfers so each transfer can be met perfectly.

In 2019 Frontierpay were acquired by Ebury, a foreign exchange juggernaut which sells software solutions to other FX brokerages and indeed the wider financial services industry and typically operates less in the B2C area of payments. 2021 Oct 10 update – Frontierpay was rebranded as ebury. This review will continue to exist for informational purposes.

Regulated By: 

Frontierpay is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority under the 2017 Payment Service Regulations. The company is also registered as a Money Services Business with HMRC regarding money laundering.

Awards:

Frontierpay has recently become more recognised for its services, particularly for its payroll capabilities, and have thus received several awards. Frontierpay display the following awards on its website:

• The Rewards 2017 International Payments Provider Away – Highly Commended
• The Global Payroll Awards 2018 – Winner of International Payments supplier of the Year
• The Global Payroll Awards 2019 – Highly Commended

Conclusion: 

Frontierpay is a secure, reliable and well-regulated UK company. Its awards show its recent recognition for good service, and the small size of the team has helped ensure that the service they provide across all clients is consistent. With ten years’ experience, they have enough of a track record to have proved themselves.

Client Feedback

Research:

Trustpilot has 289 reviews on Frontierpay, rated at 4.9 / 5. This is a reasonable amount of reviews to get a consensus on customer experiences when using Frontierpay.

Conclusion:

Almost all customers seem to have had a good experience with Frontierpay regarding the reviews. The majority of the feedback is positive, stating that the service was professional, the support workers are extremely helpful and that the transfer was cheap and on-time. The negative reviews were generally concerned with the length of time it took to open an account. However, Frontierpay responded to this suggesting it’s their commitment to FCA and HMRC regulation that they must securely identify its customers.

Ultimately though, 289 reviews from a single review site is not enough to be completely relied upon.

Exchange Rate & Fees

Fees:

Frontierpay offer money transfers for zero fees. This is predominantly because it is intended for large value transfers, meaning its profits come from the  small spread that it takes when exchanging one currency to another.

Exchange Rates:

The exchange rate margin is not explicit nor is it fixed, meaning, you don’t really know what the spread will be until they give you a quote. This means that every time you wish to transfer, you will need to check to see if it’s a competitive quote.

Limits:

No maximum – Frontierpay is concerned more with the business of high-value transfers than with smaller, more frequent transfers.

Conclusion:

It takes 1 day for a transfer to go through, which they describe this as having a very high 99.97% on-time payment success rate.

Global Reach & Service

Research:

• Dedicated Dealer: Yes
• Offices: United Kingdom and Singapore
• Ways to approach: Phone or email
• Translations: English
• Accepts clients: Worldwide with some exceptions
• Currencies Handled: 140+
• Client reviews: 4.9 / 5 on Trustpilot with 289 reviews

Conclusion:

In 2018, Frontierpay facilitated $1 billion in transactions for its clients, across 140 currencies and 180 destination countries. Whilst Frontierpay is a small company with only two offices, they have shown they are up to the global challenge.

Additional Functionalities

There are many types of transfer to carry out with Frontierpay. These include Spot, Optional Dated Forward, Rate Watch, Fixed Forward, Market Orders, Daily Comments.

Frontierpay also offers a variety of other solutions for both individuals and businesses, such as employee payments and treasury management. In fact mass payments and in particular payroll payments is where Frotierpay has really made a name for itself, delivering payroll into over 180 countries. These fit in very nicely with the forex service, meaning that you can likely build a relationship with the same support worker along the various services to keep things nice and personal.

Conclusion:

Frontierpay offer a strong selection of forex tools, payroll and treasury management, as well as offering the potential for very high-volume payments. Whilst Frontierpay cannot be claimed to be a cheap remittance company (due to opaque/varying margins), they seem to be a flexible provider that serves businesses and individuals looking to deal with complex or substantial amounts of money or assets.