Who can benefit from a multi-currency account?
Multi-currency accounts are also of great value to those who travel regularly, remit money to families abroad or have other overseas expenditures, such as a foreign mortgage.
The ability to hold funds and manage payments in multiple currencies is essential for all serious online sellers, importers/exporters and for other SMEs and freelancers doing business in a globalized world.
More than convenience, multi-currency accounts offer large savings on foreign exchange costs. It’s remarkable but true that a small business with many foreign-currency payments and receipts could increase profits by 10 percent or more simply by switching to multi-currency accounts.
Multi-currency accounts - Factors to consider
There are several factors that you may want to consider when selecting a multi-currency account:
1. Fees: You'll want to look for an account with low fees for things like currency conversion, international transfers, and account maintenance.
2. Exchange rates: Look for an account that offers competitive exchange rates, as this can save you money when you are converting between currencies.
3. Ease of use: Consider how easy it is to use the account, including how you can access your funds and make transfers.
4. Customer service: Look for an account provider with good customer service, in case you need assistance with your account or have any questions.
5. Security: Make sure the account provider has strong security measures in place to protect your money and personal information.
6. Supported currencies: Consider which currencies you'll need to use the most, and make sure the account supports those currencies.
7. Transfer limits: If you need to make large international transfers, you'll want to make sure the account has high transfer limits.
Additional features: Some multi-currency accounts offer additional features such as debit cards or the ability to earn interest on your balance. Consider which features are important to you and choose an account that offers them.
World Account vs. Wise Account vs. OFX Global Currency Account
We’ll now compare what we feel are the three best multi-currency accounts available today — the WorldFirst World Account, the Wise Wise Account and the OFX OFX Global Currency Account.
Business or Personal: Who Can Sign Up?
Let’s get this one out of the way.
OFX’s Global Currency Account is for business and online sellers only — that means sellers at “approved” marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, PriceMinister.com, Newegg, Buy.com, Game, Wish.com, CDiscount.com, Rue du Commerce and Shop.com.
WorldFirst’s World Account is another business-only account but this can be used by all businesses and freelancers, not only by marketplace sellers.
The Wise Account is by far the most flexible; it can be used by anybody, including for personal use.
If you’re in the US, your choice is limited to the OFX Global Currency and Wise accounts, since WorldFirst has no US operation.
Winner: Wise Account wins for flexibility; it can be used by individuals and businesses, including those in the US.
Account Fees & Minimum Balance
Neither the Wise, World or Global Currency accounts have account maintenance fees, monthly or otherwise; nor do they have minimum balance requirements.
Winner: OFX - offers excellent foreign current account rates to Business and Online-Sellers
Exchange Rates and Transaction Fees
With multi-currency accounts, foreign exchange costs will be paid only when you fund a foreign currency balance using home currency, when withdrawing foreign currency balances back to your domestic bank account, when shifting money between foreign currency balances, and of course for all payments in currencies that aren’t supported by your multi-currency account.
The provider offering the best deal on foreign exchange is easier to determine than it should be, but bear in mind that the cheapest option might not be best for you.
Wise offers money transfers at the interbank exchange rate with a small, separate transaction fee and is easily the cheapest service overall. For major currency routes like AUD-USD, AUD-EUR, GBP-EUR and GBP-AUD, the total transfer cost is typically around 0.4-0.5 percent of the transferred amount.
WorldFirst and OFX build fees into their exchange rates and might also levy a separate transaction fee. The total cost for major currency routes with these companies is usually around 1 percent, or double that of Wise.
For transactions involving more exotic currencies (think AUD-PHP or GBP-INR), WorldFirst and Wise can be considerably cheaper than OFX.
Winner: Wise Account, which offers razor-thin FX costs when receiving non-supported currencies.
Security of Funds
Wise, WorldFirst and OFX are all highly regulated firms with top-notch account security consisting of 2-step logins, TSL or SSL encryption, multi-layered fraud prevention systems and much, much more. Each firm holds your funds separately from its own in a major financial institution and is extremely well capitalized. All said, we cannot see any reason why funds would be at risk in either account.
Winner: All.
Customer Service
Customer support options for each account are excellent, and include phone and email support.
From a customer service perspective, the best feature of a OFX Global Currency Account is that it offers true 24/7 phone support.
With a World Account, you’ll be assigned a personal account manager and can also consult FX dealers for transfers above £5,000.
With a Wise Account, you’ll be offered 13 regional phone lines for support in the most languages.
Winner: All (Wise for non-English speakers).
Debit / ATM Cards
An easy winner here.
The Wise Account is the only product that offers a debit card, although this is only available to UK and EEA residents as of June 2019.
With its Mastercard logo, the Wise card can be used to spend internationally, and no transaction or FX costs will be incurred when spending in currencies held within the Wise Account (for some ATM withdrawals, fees apply). For currencies not held within the account, spending will be subject to Wise's low conversion fees.
Winner: Wise Account; it’s the only account that comes with a card.
Advanced Features: Recurring Payments, Batch Payments, Limit Orders
OFX, Wise and WorldFirst all provide advanced features as part of their broader money transfer services; these include limit orders, used by those willing to wait for improved exchange rates; bulk payments, allowing for payrolls (500-1,000 payments) to be processed with a single click, and recurring payments (weekly, monthly etc.).
The full details of these features are beyond the scope of this review; however, a couple of obvious negatives stand out: OFX has a minimum transfer size for limit orders that we feel is too large, at AUD 30,000 (varies by currency), and Wise makes limit orders and recurring transfers more difficult than we’d expect, since these require use of the company’s API.
An obvious positive is with WorldFirst; this being its enhanced order types, which include “stop loss” orders, designed to limit risk on open FX positions, and OCO (one-cancels-the-other) orders.
Winner: World Account, backed by WorldFirst’s advanced order types.
Xero Integration
Both the Wise and Global Currency accounts can be easily integrated with Xero — the popular cloud-based accounting platform.
WorldFirst is somewhat late to the party, but following its acquisition of CurrencyVue in March 2019 it now offers integration with Xero, as well as with other popular accounting and ERP platforms like Netsuite and Quickbooks.
Winner: A tie between OFX Global Currency Account and Wise Account.
FX Forwards
Money held in World and Global Currency accounts can be used to fund forward contracts in addition to spot payments. FX forwards aren’t available with a Wise Account since Wise don’t support these.
The buyer of a forward contract is allowed to “book now, pay later.”
With a forward, you’ll fix an exchange rate today for a future money transfer, secured by a small deposit. Forwards are used for hedging against adverse currency movements and make budgeting easier because of the price certainty they offer.
WorldFirst allows account holders to fix an exchange rate for up to 3 years; OFX allow for only 12 months, but for the majority of SMEs this will be enough.
Winner: World Account edges OFX Global Currency Account due to long-dated forwards.
Why You Shouldn’t Open a Multi-Currency Account with a Bank
A multi-currency account with your bank or another global bank might sound like a great idea but many of these require local addresses, come with monthly account fees and/or require a large starting deposit. But far more important than these are the shocking transaction fees that a bank will subject you to.
It’s now well established that banks offer horrific exchange rates, either separated from or including an expensive transaction fee. Simply put, each of the account providers we compare below can save you 70-80 percent on money transfers while offering a customer experience as good, if not better, than the banks. Don’t settle for less.
Conclusion: What's the Best Multi-Currency Account?
Before stating which multi-currency account, if any, we feel is the best, it should be said that all of these products are excellent and BER would happily recommend either. Each of these accounts comes with excellent customer service options, top-notch security, costs nothing to open and each will trounce the banks when it comes to foreign exchange costs.
When deciding upon the very best account, it really is a matter of “horses for courses.”
Although we feel that Wise’s Account is the best product overall — it is the only product that can be used for personal use and it offers the cheapest transfers for non-supported currencies — it wouldn’t satisfy a sophisticated business in need of hedging solutions (FX forwards), nor any business with significant exposure to Asia, since it offers no receiving accounts for Asian currencies.
For businesses, we feel that the World Account is a much better option and, all considered, betters the OFX Global Currency Account. The World Account is the only product that comes with receiving accounts for CNH, SGD and JPY; it offers long-dated FX forwards, advanced order types, a personal account manager and for non-supported currencies, overall it’s cheaper to send money with WorldFirst than with OFX.
However, we return once more to “horses for courses” because business owners in the US must choose the Global Currency or Wise accounts, since WorldFirst has no US presence. And what if Xero integration is an absolute must? If that’s the case, then you’d again be choosing between a Global Currency or Wise account while you wait on WorldFirst to roll out this functionality (possibly in the second half of 2019).
To repeat what we've already said, we’d wholeheartedly recommend all of these accounts. The best for you will be just that — the best for you.
The Wise Account allows users to hold and convert funds in 40 different currencies and send and spend internationally, all at the “real” exchange rate and with exceptionally low service fees. Users can also receive major-currency payments free of charge. The OFX Global Currency Account is perfect for sellers who need foreign bank accounts in GBP, EUR, USD, AUD, CAD and HKD. News2019-05-16 World Accounts now let your business collect funds and pay local suppliers in HKD or make payments to offshore CNY (CNH) accounts in China. Further reading on Foreign currency accounts - Guides, Reviews & News from our research team.
Articles that mention Foreign currency accounts:
Wise Account
OFX Global Currency Account
WorldFirst add Hong Kong Dollar and Chinese Yuan to World Accounts
Disclaimer: Please note any provider recommendations, currency forecasts or any opinions of our authors should not be taken as a reference to buy or sell any financial product.