Kibkom North Cyprus Forum

In an effort to avoid the new ATM charges I have tried to set up a TransferWise account to transfer and exchange sterling from my UK account to my TRNC lira account. I have set up the account but am now struggling to understand the process. Is there anyone out there that does this, or any advice on a better way to move a small amount of sterling from the UK every month, either into a sterling or lira current account?

Hi

I use an online Starling account, you open it online and use the card just like a debit card in UK. They charge no fees for purchasing or cash withdrawals. However some banks here still charge for withdrawals.

You do need a UK address so you can get your bank cards and obviously they will need forwarding or bringing over. After that it’s all on your phone.

Hope that helps.

Kind regards

Lasagne

I use a 'Revolut' Debit card. It's a Pre-paid Debit Card.

The Revolut App on my 'phone allows me to transfer funds instantly, at no cost, to my Revolut account.

I can then use the Revolut Debit card to make purchases in any currency (including TL, of course!) which are then debited from my Sterling (or whatever) balance. the Exchange rate is always better than the local exchange bureaux in TRNC - Revolut obviously operate on a smaller margin.

You can have accounts - all on the same card - in as many currencies as you want, although to use it as I have just described, you would only need a Sterling account - and it wouldn't matter whether you were purchasing something in GBP, TL, or Euros - or anything else for that matter.

I decided to have 3 different currency accounts on my card, in fact all 3 that I mentioned. The advantage of doing this is that if you want to 'lock in' to a particular exchange rate - if for instance you fear that 'bad news about Brexit' might cause the value of the pound to fall - then you can use the 'App' to change some GBP into TL or whatever, so that you can be certain that you will have as much of 'whatever' currency to meet your commitments without worrying about whether the exchange rate is going to alter...

Although Revolut's margin (spread) is very small, it isn't Zero, obviously, so if you sat and transferred currencies back and forth, back and forth, you would end up with less cash than you started with - just the same as if you tried to do that at an exchange Bureau

You can use the card to withdraw cash from an ATM in whatever currencies the ATM has 'in stock', and Revolut will not charge you***, although the ATM might!

*** On the 'Standard Card' which incurs no monthly charges, ATM withdrawals are limited to £200 per month before Revolut do charge, there is also a version of the card which incurs a charge of around £6 a month, which allows more ATM cash to be withdrawn.

So, you get a better exchange rate and you don't have the hassle of finding an ATM which will dispense Sterling without any additional charge and then having to check which exchange bureau will give you the best rate - although if you do want to have a small amount of cash, you could do that as well.

I use the card for anything over 10 TL

Erol introduced the subject onto the Forum, so if you do a search for Revolut, then the earliest dated post will be the one where he explains it all!

Timely reminder to sort this out when we are back in the UK next thanks Keith. I will do the same in respect of the three currencies as I always feel ripped off having to change money for Euros just to buy a cuppa in the South.

Thanks for the replies. I made the first post a month or so ago and since then have exchanged sterling to TL and then transferred to my TRNC account using TransferWise. It worked surprisingly well, although the saving from using a cash point here that charges was small. I have also ordered a Revolut card to be delivered to a U.K. address. For TransferWise I used my address and phone number here, but therefore couldn’t get a credit card from them (I could if I’d used a U.K. address). Therefore to get a Revolut card I used a friend’s U.K. address but my local phone number and that worked okay. I think I’ll probably make more use of the credit card than the transfer facility but both are useful to have as an alternative to trying to find a cash point that doesn’t charge and has sterling.

Transferwise is great. Low fees, great conversion rates.

Exchange offices are a rip-off!