Wise vs PayPal & Banks

Does Wise Have Lower Fees than PayPal and Traditional Banks? 

The short answer is yes, usually.

Although Wise often charges a higher transfer fee than PayPal the exchange rate Wise provides is typically better.  The exchange rate usually matters more, especially on larger transactions, so you usually end up paying less overall if you use Wise. 

I've posted three screenshot examples below.

As you can see, Wise beat PayPal on the overall cost in all three examples. But interestingly, it actually lost to RBC on the smallest $50 amount. And then it did something even more interesting - it admitted it! Most banks try to hide when they're not the best, but Wise just straight up tells you. And that honesty counts for a lot in my books.

Still, honesty doesn't pay the bills. You probably care most about whether they have the lowest fees. And from our research, it looks like they do have the lowest fees the majority of the time. This is especially true for larger amounts when Wise's lower exchange fees make the biggest difference.

For instance, in the third example shown above the total transfer cost for using Wise to transfer $10,000 was only $50.40. That's a big discount compared to the $198.64 it would've cost to transfer with RBC, and a huge discount compared to the $415.87 it would have cost to transfer with PayPal.

Get Your First Wise Transfer For Free

If you want to try Wise, sign up for it using referral link https://wise.com/invite/dic/jermain to get your first transfer for free (fees will be waived on your first $800 of transfers). You can transfer more than $800 but the fees will only be waived on the first $800.