Would it be safe to use this if you're transferring a very large amount of money, for example to buy a house in a foreign country? Anyone have experiences (good or bad) with large transfers they'd like to share?
I have used it to pay a large foreign tax bill, so not quite a house. If the amount is GBP£30000 (might have changed now), you can arrange a longer pay-in time (normally it is 24 hours) and they will let you have the cash sit in your account for up to a week and then find the right rate.
+1 of OFX. I use TransferWise a lot for cross border treasury management, but used OFX when moving $large_sum USD->EUR to buy a flat in the EU because they offered a better conversion rate.
They are not covered by any kind of FDIC equivalent (and in fairness there's not really any good deposit insurance regime for international accounts). They claim to use ringfenced accounts for customer funds but AIUI that's all self-certified (and wasn't there at all when they first started, although I understand they've gotten a bit more professional in various ways). I wouldn't worry too much about making a one-off transfer under normal circumstances - the risk of them going bankrupt in the next week is pretty low - but I'd be a little wary of keeping a substantial balance with them over the long term.
