A huge number of people use their bank to send an international payment.
Whilst this is totally unsurprising, we'd like to give you some reasons why using a company like Prime Cap might be better, cheaper and easier.
The rate you'll get:
For a couple of reasons, your bank isn't minded to improve a rate of exchange when pushed to do so.
A lot of time and money was no doubt spent on your bank improving and refining their online banking offering to their customers.
Sending an international payment from that online banking platform, although an increasingly desirable feature, was never at the heart of such developments...and this is largely because, actually, of all the customers a bank may have, relatively few of them will ever need to send money to someone abroad.
Therefore, whilst it cost the bank to develop and implement the ability to send and receive a payment, bank's include this feature as a default measure, rather than as one designed to tempt customers to move to the bank and to use their services.
We tend not to hear about someone changing their bank because the rate of exchange is better, or moving from a bank because the cost of sending a payment is high.
These elements tend to be secondary to lending, savings and current account products on offer...unless of course you are a business for whom expense is key.
So, as a default feature of an online banking platform, international payment capabilities are priced at something of a premium; hence why you pay more.
You use these features infrequently and as a result you get a less competitive pricing and cost structure.
Prime Cap and our institutional partners deal far more regularly with our bank when it comes to international payments, than you do with yours.
For that reason we are able to command a lower cost of engagement.
It costs us less to send a payment than it does you.
So, for as long as we are prepared to pass on some or all of that saving to you, you are able to reduce your own associated costs.
Additionally, we exchange far larger amounts of currency with our bank.
Being in the business of exchange currency, professionally, means we know how to push our banking and currency providers to give us better rates.
Just as you might say to your currency broker that you are getting a better rate elsewhere, so can we say the same to our bankers.
Our bankers want us to place our many hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of foreign currency activity with them...and this is precisely how we can offer something more competitive and attractive to you.
Usually we can reduce the transaction cost of a payment by between 50 and 80%. Also, we can increase your buying power by between 1.5 and 2.5% by providing you with a more competitive rate of exchange.
We do this by making less money ourselves on an exchange.
Our fees and costs for exchanging currency and sending a payment are akin to a wholesale transacting structure, and, as our retail customers, provided our mark up is less than a bank or another broker, you get more for your money.
The 'How' of sending a payment:
Did you know that there is more than one way to send a payment?
There are a few contracts made available to companies like Prime Cap which are not directly accessible to retail bank customers.
Even though you may be aware of the useful contracts and tools available to you through companies like us, are you fully versed in how to use those contracts to best effect?
We suppose not and this is why we place emphasis on the value of speaking with our team about 'the how'.
