Why international transfers are a separate problem from card spending

Most articles about travel banking focus on card fees: foreign transaction charges, ATM withdrawal costs, exchange rate markups. Those matter, and if you haven’t sorted them, start with our banking comparison guide first.

But card spending and international transfers are different mechanisms with different fee structures. When you tap your Starling card at a Thai restaurant, you’re paying via the card network and the conversion happens at the point of sale. When you’re sending £1,500 to a landlord’s Thai bank account ahead of a month’s rental, you’re initiating a SWIFT or local bank transfer – and most UK banks treat that as a completely different product, with completely different fees.

The problem is that most travellers don’t realise this distinction until they’re standing in a situation where they need to send money, they use their existing bank, and they see what it cost afterwards.

What a high-street bank actually charges you

UK high-street banks typically charge a combination of a fixed sending fee and a percentage markup on the exchange rate. The sending fee is often £15–30 per transfer. The exchange rate markup is harder to spot because it’s baked into the rate you’re quoted rather than listed as a separate charge – typically 3–4% above the mid-market rate.

On a £500 transfer, that combination can cost you £30–50. On a £1,500 rental payment, you’re looking at £60–90 gone before the money arrives. Over a year of direct bookings, those costs compound quickly.

To make this concrete: if you’re paying a landlord £1,200 per month via a high-street bank at a 3.5% rate markup plus a £20 fixed fee, you’re paying approximately £62 per transfer in fees. Over six months, that’s £372 in transfer costs alone on what you thought was a money-saving direct booking strategy.

What Wise charges instead

Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate – the one you see on Google – and charges a small transparent percentage fee on top, with no fixed sending charge. For GBP to THB or GBP to USD, the fee is typically in the range of 0.4–0.8% of the transfer amount, depending on the currency pair and payment method. The exact fee is shown clearly before you confirm, so there are no surprises.

On a £1,200 transfer, that works out to approximately £5–10 in fees rather than £60+. The transfer typically arrives within a few hours for major currencies, and within one to two business days for less common ones. You can track it in the app in real time.

For the sake of honesty: some currency pairs attract higher fees than others, and paying by debit card rather than bank transfer sometimes costs slightly more. Wise is transparent about this at the point of sending – always check the fee breakdown before confirming, especially on larger transfers.

The five situations where we use Wise

Paying rent directly to a landlord. This is where we’ve saved the most. Aparthotel and guesthouse owners across Southeast Asia are almost universally willing to accept a direct transfer rather than an Airbnb or Booking.com booking – sometimes at a discount, always without the platform fee markup. Wise lets us send money to their local bank account in their local currency, and the landlord receives it as though it came from a local bank. The process is straightforward once you have their account details.

Sending a deposit ahead of arrival. Some direct bookings require a deposit to hold the room, particularly for longer stays. We’ve paid deposits into Vietnamese, Thai, and Cambodian bank accounts using Wise. The transfer confirmation also gives us a receipt, which is useful if there’s ever any dispute about what was agreed.

Paying for visa services. E-visa applications for some countries are straightforward. Others involve a local agent or visa service, and those services sometimes require payment to a foreign account. A Wise transfer handles this cleanly – we know exactly what we sent and when it arrived.

Receiving money from the UK. Wise also has a UK account number and sort code, which means family can send us money to our Wise GBP balance as easily as a domestic bank transfer. From there we can convert it to whatever currency we need, at the rate we choose, when it suits us rather than at the rate on the day someone sends it.

Timing currency conversions. When the pound is strong against a currency we’ll be spending in shortly, we convert in advance and hold it in our Wise account. This isn’t currency speculation – it’s just avoiding being forced to convert at whatever rate applies on the day we need cash. Wise holds dozens of currencies and lets you convert between them at any point.

The one thing to understand about Wise before you use it

Wise is not a UK bank. Your balance is not FSCS-protected up to £85,000 in the way a Starling or Lloyds balance would be. Instead, Wise protects customer funds through “safeguarding” – keeping your money entirely separate from Wise’s own finances, held across regulated banks and government bonds. This is meaningful protection, but it is structurally different from FSCS cover.

In practice, what this means is simple: treat Wise as a working account, not a savings account. Money comes in, gets converted, and gets sent – or gets spent via the Wise debit card. We do not hold large sums in Wise for extended periods. Our savings stay in FSCS-protected accounts elsewhere.

This is not a reason to avoid Wise. It’s a reason to use it correctly.

Who this is and isn’t right for

Wise for international transfers is the right choice for almost any UK family doing long-term travel who is making regular payments to foreign bank accounts. If you’re booking direct accommodation, paying local landlords, sending deposits, or moving money internationally more than occasionally, the fee difference versus a high-street bank is significant over any period longer than a few months.

It is not the right tool if what you need is an everyday spending card – Starling handles that better and with less friction. It is not the right place to hold your travel fund or emergency savings, for the reasons above.

If you haven’t opened a Wise account yet, the process is straightforward and takes about ten minutes. The more useful step is testing it with a small transfer before you need to send something important – don’t discover a verification requirement or account limit for the first time when you’re trying to pay a deposit from a campsite in rural Vietnam.

Open a Wise account

For a fuller picture of how we manage travel finances day-to-day, see our guide on how much long-term travel actually costs and our complete banking comparison.