
EU cross-border payments outside Eurozone: MEPs scrap excessive fees - riffraff
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190207IPR25223/eu-cross-border-payments-outside-eurozone-meps-scrap-excessive-fees
======
lini
As someone from Bulgaria, I am really glad they are doing this. At the moment
it would cost me 10 EUR to make a SEPA payment from my bank to another country
in the Eurozone. A few years ago when SEPA was first introduced I was able to
make the same payment from the same bank with just a 2 EUR fee. Banks were not
happy that people turned away from SWIFT so they simply raised the SEPA fees.
I am glad that Transferwise and other fintech companies are able to offer
cheaper payments but I would still prefer the banks to have a reasonable fee
in the first place.

It's very similar to the EU mobile roaming situation that took years to get
better but is now very convenient and I don't need to buy prepaid SIM cards
whenever I visit another EU country.

------
black_puppydog
This is very cool to see, and something that _should_ have been at the heart
of the EU monetary union project, we're it to serve "the people" and not just
"the corporations, in the hope that trickles down". Very similar to the just
unjustified and unnecessary (and hopefully soon to be gone) telco cross border
BS.

Of course, if the cost of currency exchange is _estimated_ , it won't
necessarily solve the problem I faced transferring money from a German to a
Swedish account to pay my rent at the time: not knowing exactly how much of
the sent money would end up arriving, and how much would be used up for fees,
I had to resort to other payment services with much higher fees... This is
purely a UI problem of the banks I tried, but that also means apparently the
almighty market does not give them enough incentive to solve problems that are
not those of rich people. Who'd have guessed.

~~~
jrnvs
I was in the same situation and just made sure to always pay an amount in euro
that would definitely be too much in Swedish Crowns once converted. Better to
pay 1% extra than to lose much more paying ridiculous conversion costs to my
bank.

------
himlion
Transferwise must not be happy about this. I use them for all my payments
outside of the eurozone and it saves a boatload of money.

~~~
xiphias2
Transferwise is maybe the real reason why this law is created. It gives bad
reputation to the banking system.

~~~
riffraff
Banks still apply cutthroat conversion rates, the law only stops extra
commissions.

TransferWise still offers a very useful product even after this.

------
tin7in
As someone having a GBP, EUR and a BGN currency bank accounts, transferring
money from one to the other is really painful and is currently solvable at low
cost only by some digital banks - Revolut, n26, Transferwise.

Also interesting that the legislation was pushed by a Bulgarian EMP - Eva
Maydell, where fees seems to be the highest.

------
PunchTornado
Finally, I was waiting for this.

I was sending money from UK to Romania and it was so expensive. About time to
challenge those fees.

~~~
jotm
Those fees look very high for intra-EU transfer, I think they carried over
from the old SWIFT system?

SEPA fixed that, but obviously some countries need to be forced to remove the
high fees -_-

Also, you may be happy for about a month heh

------
glogla
Next step should be regulating currency exchange rates. Not sure about rest of
Europe, but banks here have such a high spread they effectively add 2 to 4 %
fee to every transaction. And it's even worse than normal fees, because it's
hidden from the clients.

If you know about it, you can do something about it (like using Revolut or
some credit cards with better exchange rates), but most people just get stolen
from.

~~~
pas
Revolut. I'm not saying they will forever offer interbank-rate exchange, but
currently they do.

And this is a very simply commodified service, so it should be solved by new
entrants to the market.

------
nikolay
If you're doing a currency exchange along with the transfer, XE.com is a
better choice than TransferWise - they only make money from forex, and their
rate is still competitive to TransferWise, which also charges you a transfer
fee.

------
BorRagnarok
Wow, look at the percentages these people have been scamming off of everybody
for years! That must amount to massive numbers of euro's total. Hilariously,
people will be happy with this news.

