Is TransferMate Safe?

Company size:

Founded in 2010, TransferMate is part of the financial services conglomerate, TaxBack Group, where co-founders Terry Clune and Sinead Fitzmaurice saw a need in the market for an easy, simple and cost-effective solution for businesses to both transfer and receive money internationally. With previous experience in providing global tax recovery and global payroll solutions, they knew all too well the major challenges companies encountered when making cross-border payments. Often with significant delays, high costs and administrative difficulties. And so, TransferMate began developing partnerships with banks and regulators to secure licenses and regulatory approval around the world.

Instead of using intermediary banks to make transfers, TransferMate has established its own set of accounts around the world, with the intent to allow businesses or private individuals to make local transfers, avoiding long delays and excessive payment fees. TransferMate’s unique offering has attracted major strategic investments from leading banks including ING and Allied Irish Bank, who have cumulatively invested €51 million (AIB $30 million – 2017, ING $21 million – 2018).

Now in its eleventh year, TransferMate is still headquartered out of its inaugural office in Kilkenny, Ireland and is estimated to have 300+ employees in 15 offices around the world. Interestingly, TransferMate has stripped back its presence in Europe (closing offices in France, Germany & Netherlands) and has instead built out offices in the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Given the influence of the SEPA network for European transfers, we can understand reducing the number of physical offices in Europe. Although it does go against the grain in this sector, particularly in the B2B space, where firms usually opt to have a local sales office with local language capabilities, in order to better aid new corporate customer acquisition.

Though private transfers are possible, it’s clear that TransferMate’s global payments solutions are aimed at businesses. Mass Pay, for example, allows up to 10,000 payments at a time, so it’s not just SMEs TransferMate is targeting either. In an indication of the firm’s growth, TransferMate & Wells Fargo partnered to launch Global Invoice Connect in 2019, a product designed to improve the account receivables process for Wells Fargo business customers. That’s TransferMate technology underpinning a product of Wells Fargo, not the other way round!

Regulated By:

Authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland to provide Payment Services in EEA countries.

Registered MSB with the US Department of Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Registered MSB with FINTRAC in Canada.

Registered with Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre.

Registered with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment as a Financial Service Provider.

Registered with the JFSC (Jersey), the ARIF (Switzerland), the Custom and Excise Department of Hong Kong and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Recently added: FCA as eMoney provider, similar to other currency brokerages.

Awards:

Some of the most recent and relevant awards that Transfermate has won are:

• Deloitte FinTech Company of the Year (2019)
• Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award
• Deloitte Best Managed Company Award and the Deloitte Gold Standard Award (2019)
• HSBC European Business Award, International Payroll Payments Supplier of the Year (2017)

Conclusion:

TransferMate is a business-oriented FX technology company that aims to streamline both outbound international transfers and accounts receivable. It works with a huge number of regulators around the world and, in Wells Fargo, partners with one of the biggest banks in the US. It has received investment from two major banks in ING and Allied Irish Bank and its customers have trusted TransferMate with more than €40 billion in transactions. To our measure, it’s certainly a credible firm with a solid reputation – and by saying that we mean that TransferMate is safe to use.

TransferMate Customer Reviews

Research:

TransferMate has a respectable 4.3 / 5 score on Trustpilot, based on a limited sample of 243 reviews. By operating in the B2B space, it’s not uncommon to have little to no reviews but it does make it more difficult to make a recommendation based on client experience. Other providers with a strong B2B offering such as Moneycorp & Currencies Direct have thousands of client reviews, though it has to be said they also place a strong emphasis on private clients as well.

Conclusion:

TransferMate is, on the whole, liked by its existing clients. 88% of reviews rate the service as either ‘great’ or ‘excellent’. For the majority of customers, transfers go through smoothly and reliably. This is particularly important for business clients who are likely to have suppliers on the other end that require paying on time.

Judging by the negative reviews though, there are some very valid complaints. One user required urgent assistance in order to process tuition fees in Germany for their German Visa but did not receive a response from customer support for a week. Another user complained of a 6 week process in order to get a wire reversed (international tuition fees for their daughter which were due to be sent back as she was unable to attain a visa). Through our take on the situation, the negative reviews suggest TransferMate prioritises corporate customers as it’s mainly private customers who are leaving negative reviews and experiencing slow customer service.

With payment solutions specifically targeted at Universities and the education sector this is perhaps something TranferMate will look to address. As well as the impressive institutions TransferMate works with (including University of Cambridge and Trinity College London) TransferMate will need to provide a smooth service to the families paying these tuition fees too. There are also several complaints to be found online which relate to regulatory requirements from money transfer companies, however this is fairly common across the industry.

The only other issue we have with TransferMate’s client reviews is that the number of online reviews we have discovered is quite low. As stated, this is not uncommon for a B2B service but there just isn’t enough for us to get comfortable in order to provide a recommendation based on existing customer experience. The percentage of complaints TransferMate has received is higher than competitors like Currencies Direct and XE but then again this could be influenced by the smaller sample of reviews.  Particularly given that customers who have a poor experience are more likely to leave a review

TransferMate Exchange Rate & Fees

Fees: 

The most prominent fee at Transfermate is the £10/€10 fee for international transfers made by individuals. Again, this suggests to us TransferMate is mainly seeking to acquire corporate customers.

 Exchange Rates:

In what is quite a common approach across the industry, TransferMate does not reveal the FX spreads it applies to the exchange rate the customer achieves. It simply states on the TransferMate website “TransferMate guarantees more competitive exchange rates and fees than the bank”. The greater the amount a client transfers, the better the exchange rate they will achieve, as a rule of thumb in this industry but it is difficult to know whether the exact margins that will be used for your deal with TransferMate.

 Limits:

There is no maximum transfer limit at Transfermate – only a minimum of €1,000.

 Conclusion:

Individuals, particularly those with smaller remittance requirements won’t be able to use TransferMate. Otherwise, we don’t have enough information to know whether TransferMate are competitive compared to prominent UK money transfer services and brokers.

TransferMate Offices & Global Reach

Research:

• Dedicated Dealer: Little suggested on the TransferMate website but LinkedIn and customer reviews indicate account managers for large business clients.
• Offices: 15, in UK, Ireland (x2), Poland, Bulgaria (x2), North America (x2), Canada, Australia (x2), New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai.
• Ways to approach: Online, phone, email
• Translations: English, German, French, Spanish with different pages for UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium.
• Accepts clients: Global
• Currencies Handled: 134
• Client reviews: 4.3 (Trustpilot) out of 243 reviews

Conclusion:

TransferMate handles pretty much every major and exotic currency that is traded, with the exception of restricted currencies. This, along with its large collection of worldwide offices, tells us that TransferMate is serious when it comes to having a global reach. Whilst handling 134 currencies is no longer anything special, it can’t practically get much better than that.

Additional Functionalities

TransferMate somewhat lacks functionality for private users but has a vast array of corporate solutions. .

API

TransferMate has a very strong API, allowing customers to request sandbox access and begin preparations to integrate TransferMate with Sage, QuickBooks and a vast number of other applications. . This feature has a dedicated account manager, tokenized security and clear documentation. Banks, dedicated payment providers and B2B businesses can all integrate with the TransferMate API. API endpoints include; onboarding, payments, receivables and global digital bank accounts.

Receivables

TransferMate enables an improved receivables process by bypassing the traditional banking system and using its own network of local bank accounts around the world. Customers can  make local transfers to these accounts, avoiding costly transfers and unnecessary delays. TransferMate’s receivables solution easily connects with ERP and accounting software to automate the process, reduce debtor days and improve cash flow.

Mass Pay

TransferMate’s award winning mass payment platform enables mass payments to over 160 countries worldwide in 134 currencies. Highly impressive and certainly comparable to banks, TransferGo for example allows for just 50 payments at a time.

Global Accounts

Not yet live, Global Accounts will allow TransferMate customers to hold, pay and receive in multiple currencies while reducing the time it takes to transfer money internationally. With 30 currencies planned to be in the offering, this could quickly top the multicurrency account solutions already on the market provided by WorldFirst & Wise, if indeed each account is held locally in the country it represents.

Given TransferMate’s tech capabilities,  it’s no surprise their solutions are targeted at Universities receiving international tuition fees, global payroll companies and other financial institutions.

Transfermate also offers hedging options for business customers. Flexible forwards are possible, agreeing a rate for a certain period of time and allowing multiple drawdowns. And as one would expect, rate alerts can be set-up, notifying customers when a target rate is achieved (whether this is high or lower than the current spot rate).

Conclusion:

Whilst functionality is impressive for use by businesses and financial institutions (perhaps boosted by the €21m ING and €30m AIB investment), ultimately Transferate lacks in usability for private individuals. For example, there is no app to allow individuals to make transfers on the move. The solution is totally aimed at corporates with complex integrations who will almost certainly be managing their payments and receivables out of the office. Either through theTransferMate online platform or via separate software working over the TransferMate API.

One thing we particularly like is the number of cost saving calculators that can be found on the TransferMate site. In an industry which is seeing reduced influence from pushy sales representatives and instead allowing the technical solutions to do the talking, the cost calculators from TranferMate speak for themselves. Whether it’s a university looking to see how much they could save by giving their students an easier way to pay, businesses seeking ways to streamline their accounts receivable (payments received through both card payments and bank transfer) or businesses investigating how they can reduce the fees on their own international transfers, TransferMate has a calculator for it.