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New website CurrencyFair lets you change currencies cheaply

Posted Monday, January 17, 2011

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Currency Fair

Movillians lose a fortune every year when changing currencies.

Just about everyone has to change from Euros to sterling when we are going to Derry.

The bank will take a few cents from you for every Euro and then charge a transaction fee on top of that.

Losing Money

Also, many people work in the North and then have to convert what they earn into Euros.

Many earn their money in sterling and then have to make a huge mortgage payment each month in Euros.

The banks are the in-between people and make money for every Euro or pound change.

Middle Man Cut Out

However, one of main points of the internet is that it cuts out the middle man.

We've already seen it with online betting sites like Betfair where people bet against each other and cut out the Bookie, i.e. the middle man.

One guy makes the odds and another takes them.

Same Thing

Now the same thing is happening with currencies.

There's a whole load of people with Euros out there who want to change them into sterling.

There's another lot of people out there who have sterling and want to change them into Euros.

This website matches them up.

The middle man (the bank) is cut out.

Contact

The website is called www.CurrencyFair.com

I haven't joined up yet so I don't know any more details than this.

I don't see if there is a transaction fee or not and if there is how much it is.

Night Out

However, when I tried to see how much I would get when I swapped 1,000 Euros into sterling it the website offered me £837.10 when the bank were only offering £811.74.

The difference is enough for a night out.

By the way this is not a paid ad and I have nothing to do with the website.

I only came across it when reading one of the Sunday newspapers.

It's worth looking at though.

Update from Currency Fair Managing Director

I've just had an email from the Managing Director of Currency Fair.

He must be an avid Googler to find us.

Here's his reply with an explanation about charges.

Email from Currency Fair MD

Hi webmaster,

I just noticed your recent post about CurrencyFair on your site. Thanks for that, you have it pretty much spot on as to what we’re doing.

I just wanted to let you know about the transfer fees, which are in our FAQs but possibly not as easy to find as they should be! The link is here:

http://www.currencyfair.com/transfer-fees.jsp

So it’s 3 EUR or 3 GBP for the standard transfers (which usually take 1-2 days in EUR and 2-3 days in GBP).

It’s free to deposit into our accounts unless your bank has charges, which generally they don’t, since our EUR account is in Ireland and our GBP account is in the UK, so it’s usually local transfers on each end.

So basically you deposit, for free, and then get either the rate that you see and match on the market straight away (or a better rate of your choosing, assuming it does get matched down the line), and then pay the 3 EUR or 3 GBP to send it to out to a bank account.

Note we don’t do cash deliveries, so the money must be sent to a bank account in the same currency (it doesn’t have to be your own though, so you can send money to friends/family, or pay for things in foreign currencies as long as you know the destination bank account details).

Please give me a shout if you have any questions and thanks again for helping to spread the word.

Best regards

Brett Meyers - Managing Director

CurrencyFair Limited