Hello Hackers! One year ago we changed international transfers for consumers with only a fixed fee and made them on average 10x cheaper than Wise. Now we are thrilled to announce that we start “Atlantic Money for Business” to offer transfers up to £/€1m for a fixed £/€3 fee and at the current exchange rate. And while Revolut and Wise have recently raised their prices for business transfers by up to 50%, we enable savings of several thousand on every transfer. What are you waiting for?
I've been using Wise for years and am generally happy with them, but always keeping an eye out for alternatives. Why I didn't find this convincing
- Have to download app - wise lets me use a website too, and generally I want to do business banking from my laptop, not my phone
- No actual price comparisons and 99% seems unlikely. Wise also gives me the 'google exchange rate'. If you are actually cheaper, then I would show comparisons for €100, €1000, €10000, not just 'a million euro'.
- Make it clearer that you're available in the EU - I nearly closed the site thinking it was only for UK as it defaulted to GBP.
- Have a 'wall of text' version in the header - the landing page is light on details, and I don't assume I'll find more information on "News", "Blog" or "Help" - maybe a "Features" or "Offerings" header page where you go into a lot more detail (countries you're available in, currencies you offer, documents needed to sign up, full table of all fees (not the marketing version), timelines for opening an account, timelines for making transfers, etc etc)
It took me two weeks to get back into the app after switching phones. There's no way to contact support except by logging into the app or by Facebook. Then on Facebook they have an automated system that will close your ticket after 24 hours of you not replying.
I'm on a 12 hour time difference so that happened around four times before I got it solved. I ended up shouting in caps at that them, and I'm not a caps kinda guy. As soon as I got back in I withdrew all funds and closed the account.
Since I've been telling this story I've heard several more horror stories. The worst was a friend who gets paid through Revolut, so it triggered an automated finance checking system and instantly locked his account until he could prove he paid tax. Then the system wouldn't let him upload the docs for several days, support was just as helpful as they were with me. He had no money for five days.
Anyway, why would they do that? He wasn't doing anything illegal, they could have asked him to provide the docs with a week's grace and all would have been well.
I'd rather pay the higher fees than give any money to a company that treats it employees the way Revolut does. The CEO and his company culture is not sustainable and I would not be surprised in the future when some scandal comes out.
Revolut seems to act like a bank but is it regulated as a proper bank? I am suspicious of it because it was touted to me as "made by Russians" but since I'm one it had the opposite effect.
But anyway I don't think you can sign up for Revolut without a proper bank account and residence in one of eligible countries while Wise can charge even a debit card. Limits and slightly higher fees apply and they require ID verification but it works. I had to do it while unbanked.
"I am suspicious of it because (it was touted [the information was presented as if it was a good thing] to me as made by Russians but since I'm one it had the opposite effect)"
The other commenter is correct, founders were a selling point but it had the opposite effect bc I am aware of the whole laundering thing done by my rich compatriots
My company pays Wise around £100/month in transfer fees so reducing that to £3/month piques my interest but the headache I would experience if anything went wrong would cost me a lot more than £97. My worst nightmare when using a new financial platform is that I get caught up in some KYC nightmare after transferring money and it is stuck in purgatory forever.
The website doesn't include anything to reassure me that the service is as reliable (or more reliable) than Wise. There's no social proof. I found the news article with your first annual report and that's quite compelling.
- Add average transfer times so I can see what most people are experiencing when using the service
- Add social proof: positive reviews would be very helpful
- Add real time information about volume
- Shout about your reliability: Wise has reputation that does the work for them, you don't
- Mobile app only is a little concerning too for business usage: I use Wise for business and personal, business on the website, personal on my phone (I can't articulate why but using Wise for business on my phone "feels" wrong)
Thank you for the feedback, much appreciated and will be considered!
Please note that our web app is in the making. So soon this won't be an issue anymore.
To prevent our users to "get caught up in some KYC nightmare" we – in contrast to Wise and Revolut – only allow your transfer after we checked and approved your documents. This minimises the risk of holding your money.
99% cheaper is probably much more of a turn-off to possible customers than an appealing feature.
50% cheaper is something that I'd look into. 99% cheaper feels like this is going to one or more of: a scam, a fly-by-night operation [unable to afford good customer service, etc], hidden exchange fees [giving me a terrible rate and telling me that's not the case], a planned bait-and-switch, and/or an unsustainable business that will evaporate after I switch to them.
Price and fees matter. But driving them down too low and leading with that as your pitch makes your best potential customers skeptical (and hurts your own ability to build a sustainable business).
When you change an entire sector, it is always met with a lot of scepticism at first. But 99% is nothing but the truth, especially since Wise and Revolut increased their prices for biz transfers. Check out our Wise comparison we created to demonstrate the difference: https://atlantic.money/wise
Further, we are profitable with Atlantic Money on every transfer. Our whole infrastructure is built on a different concept, which is why Wise and Co. also cannot offer transfers for the same price without losing it all.
To give you a proof of our work: We transferred £160m ($200m) in our first year for private users, 16x what Wise sent back then.
A mobile app for business seems weird to me. Why use a tiny phone when you have a laptop or desktop PC with a large screen and a proper keyboard? And the accounting software is usually installed on a desktop.
There are lot of people who don't have a laptop, but they probably are not the ones who is going to transfer "up to $1M" internationally.
Everything is an app on the phone now.. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be an app. But running a website is the least common denominator - why would a company forego the basic win?!
Because there is - potentially - a lot of money involved and I like to do that sort of thing on an environment that I control. No smartphone here so the web is all I have. Money transmitters are operating in a heavily regulated domain and KYC/AML requirements are going to dominate the discussion, any operator that wishes to be taken serious should list up front what they are going to require and why as well as to state clearly who they are (physical location, names of execs) rather than to post from anonymous low karma accounts with urgent calls to action. Also: inside the EU money transfers are already fast and with minimal costs, I use these daily and any claims of improvement should be backed up with proof. 99% seems very strange as a claim without a comparison matrix listing prices. My immediate concern is that if their claims are true that they must have some other way of making money of the transactions that is not disclosed.
When you change an entire sector, it is always met with a lot of scepticism at first. But 99% is nothing but the truth, especially since Wise and Revolut increased their prices for biz transfers. Check out our Wise comparison we created to demonstrate the difference: https://atlantic.money/wise
Further, we are profitable on every transfer with Atlantic Money. Our whole infrastructure is built on a different concept, which is why Wise and Co. also cannot offer transfers for the same price without losing it all.
To give you a proof of our work: We transferred £160m ($200m) in our first year for private users, 16x what Wise sent back then.
You really should be more transparent about who you are and how you make money, comments with figures by anonymous accounts carry zero weight. The payment industry history is littered with corpses from companies that attempted to 'change the entire sector' not a few of those went the way of the dodo while still holding customer funds. When large amounts of money are involved a lot of skepticism is very much warranted, especially when a 'Show HN' is used by an anonymous account for what is essentially an advertisement.
It's financial. It's a lot more complicated for me to inspect an app than a website. I understand that the modern generation is pretty comfortable with this but us old folks have a lot of money and don't trust our phones with it as easily. (I beta tested Android while at Google. Smart phones aren't new to me. I just have a different level of acceptable risk than my kid does.)
Nobody capable of finding exploitable issues is going to be deterred by being an app rather than a website.
If their thought process on this is actually “security through obscurity”, then I would not go anywhere near this as it tells me immediately that they don’t give a single solitary fuck about proper security guidelines.
No, I think that mobile apps are either time killers - for example, for watching funny videos while riding a train, or messengers - to ask employee questions while riding a train.
A business app on a phone doesn't make much sense because in office you have a computer with a large monitor and a proper keyboard which is more convenient to use than a smartphone's tiny screen.
This is a business offering. I don't want to juggle my online banking and a transfer app and and and ... on my phone. I want them readily available on my multimonitor desktop where I can save data to my accounting folder.
I don't see a list of countries for receiving payments. Is this only UK/EU to UK/EU or can it do UK/EU to any country? I don't want to install the app just to see it doesn't work for me..
edit
I just noticed it says "global" on the page, so I guess it's possible to send to any country?
The flat fee makes it advantageous starting at about $500-600, compared to Wise. So, not for small transfers but nice for businesses paying internationally.
We are licenced and regulated by the FCA in the UK and the NBB in the EU – two trusted financial authorities that also regulate Wise. We therefore have to meet the expected high standards both authorities require from us, especially in terms of KYC&AML.
Assuming transfers only between bank accounts, so sending/receiving institution done the KYC, fully electronic transactions, and contract non-repudiation, very little can go wrong
Fraud. What if you are required to return the inward deposit but cannot obtain the corresponding outward transaction. Or you can but lose money on the rate.
Bank transfers being reversible is the reason for the difficulty buying crypto at least years ago, maybe it is easier now.
FX services in my experience have a lot of staff and ask a lot of questions even for established accounts. Also the banks ask a lot of questions (although that is to the benefit of the FX service
reducing the likelihood of fraud hitting the FX)
Not sure why no one mentions OFX when doing these comparisons. Their rates are good and I don't recall pay any fees on top of them. When I looked into this year ago seemed much cheaper than Wise.
I've been using Atlantic in a personal capacity for about a year now and I have nothing but good things to say about them. The iOS app is super slick!
One time, however, my bank blocked a payment claiming it was cryptocurrency, and I had a rather interesting chat with their customer support, with the agent(s) getting quite visibly frustrated about the situation. Apparently it happens a lot.
For the curious: In the UK, Atlantic use the British branch of Estonian bank LHV Pank (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHV_Pank), and you get a dedicated account number and sort code to send the money to (i.e. no need to fiddle with reference numbers)
looks great but when i see low prices to catch users, i always think of when services start with subsidised rates, rack in users, and then they do bait-and-switch to boost their margins later down the line. Wise/Revolut are clear examples. Start cheap/free to get users, then once they get traction start slowing increasing rates to improve margins/profitability. So great if you really have an operational model that allows you to grow and stay profitable keeping that fixed fee, but i doubt it will. I think if you explain why your product is cheaper and why you can keep it cheaper sustainably compared to competitors then I would believe it
* Huh, that is quite a bit cheaper and I don't love wise
* Is it available for US customers? I can't quite tell
* Eugh, I don't want to download an app. I'm working on my laptop right now, not my phone. I do 99% of my Wise payments on my laptop
Then reactions reading the HN comments:
* People noting that 50% cheaper is good but 99% cheaper a concern that it won't last. And the transfer fees I pay to wise are nothing compared to the headache if there was a payment issue. I agree with both of those, I'm convinced to stick with wise until I'm sure that this would be both cheaper and equally credible and low-risk / low-hassle
To the OP: flesh out your profile with your details and company affiliation, this looks super scammy. And explain how you make your money because 99% cheaper is a red flag, not a feature.
The only thing that I would consider as interesting for attention now is a service that will value me as a customer and not have AI flag transactions I do monthly and then ask me for submission of endless paperwork for aml/Kyc reasons. It’s becoming too much of a burden even though there is 0 cause beyond them trying to cover their asses ‘just in case’.
To answer your question, I’m waiting for you to enable the service outside of Europe. Also I wonder if your service works well with businesses sending several millions per month or the KYC nightmare will start then. It’s unfortunate how banks never want to support big businesses sending big transactions around the world
The only way I see possible a $3 fee on a $1m FX change is if you send the flow to an internalizing HFT, a bit like Robinhood does. So the HFT is the one actually subsidizing the exchange, because they want this kind of "non-toxic" flow.
Looks very good. But yeah, make sure you have enough £££ headroom to chase up banks when things go wrong. Otherwise you’re one failed large TX away from trouble.
- Have to download app - wise lets me use a website too, and generally I want to do business banking from my laptop, not my phone
- No actual price comparisons and 99% seems unlikely. Wise also gives me the 'google exchange rate'. If you are actually cheaper, then I would show comparisons for €100, €1000, €10000, not just 'a million euro'.
- Make it clearer that you're available in the EU - I nearly closed the site thinking it was only for UK as it defaulted to GBP.
- Have a 'wall of text' version in the header - the landing page is light on details, and I don't assume I'll find more information on "News", "Blog" or "Help" - maybe a "Features" or "Offerings" header page where you go into a lot more detail (countries you're available in, currencies you offer, documents needed to sign up, full table of all fees (not the marketing version), timelines for opening an account, timelines for making transfers, etc etc)