Open General Forums

okay, as you may know, we (both Luis and the og team) currently use paypal for collecting your donations and paying our bills (server hosting, renting the domain, etc.)

paypal was the ultimate tool for collecting, exchanging,transfering money (usd, eur, gbp, local currencies) in the past years. however, their costs and exchange rates are more and more ridiculous, e.g. if somebody donates 50€, we got only 48€, it's 4% cost. but if somebody sends only 10€ (and it's closer to the average what most people send), the cost is going up to 7%. for me, the costs of paypal more and more seems like a robbery

when paying the bills, paypal is still very accepted, though regular iban/swift transfers are also accepted. their costs in hungary is almost the same terrible than paypal has

but what about the new fintech companies like transferwise, curve? are they better? does anybody have any experience with these alternatives?

it's really a brainstroming starter question, there is nothing urge issue to change

I am not an expert on pricing of the alternatives - with the exception of EUR electronic funds transfers within Europe which legally must be priced the same as in-country EUR transfers. In practise that only offers a real solution for EUR transfers between EUR countries. I can e.g. transfer a EUR amount free to Luis in Madrid using my Dutch bank. Luis should recieve the same amount as someone in Spain sending him the money. There is actually a real chance that he will receive the money within 15 seconds 24/7. If I find the time, I could look into rest of the world alternatives.

SWIFT or SEPA - comparison of currency transfers

The two most common foreign transfer systems are SEPA and SWIFT.

Information October 2019 Poland

SEPA transfer
SEPA is an abbreviation of English Single Euro Payment Area . As the name implies, SEPA transfers can only be made in one currency - the euro (as the billing currency; the currency in which the accounts are kept does not matter); for this, the transaction area is limited to parts of Europe. In addition to EU countries, you can also pay in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Andorra, Monaco and San Marino (excluding certain dependent territories, e.g. Greenland).

The biggest advantage of SEPA transfers is their low cost. First of all, only two banks participate in this type of transaction - sender and recipient - so the role of a third party is neglected, so-called the intermediary bank that generates the largest fees. The cost of a single SEPA transfer is usually in the range of PLN 5-10, although more and more
Apart from the transfer commission itself, it should also be remembered that - for accounts not denominated in euros - we must take into account the bank spread resulting from currency conversion (it is at the level of 5-10% depending on the bank)
SHA - costs are shared between both parties: the sender covers the commission of his bank, the other costs (commission of the recipient bank and intermediary banks) are covered by the recipient;
Some banks (some accounts) - commissions - we won't pay

SWIFT transfer
We also have a full choice between three cost sharing options: OUR (all costs are paid by the sender), SHA (costs are shared between the sender and recipient) and BEN (all costs are paid by the recipient).
The costs here are incomparably higher and usually determined as a percentage of the transfer amount (approx. 0.2-0.5%), but with a set minimum and maximum value - usually they range, in the case of a standard transfer, from 20 to even 250 PLN . For this (apart from spread) you also need to remember about the costs of so-called intermediary banks, which may amount to another several dozen or several hundred zlotys. Who incurs this cost depends on the split option chosen (and this decision always belongs to the person ordering the transfer).

thanks for your answers!

so far i haven't seen too much sites using different donation channel like paypal, and as i see, all these european ways like swift/iban are absolutely strange for people living outside of the eu. for us, the opengen community, what is the most important is to find the easieast AND the cheapest way for our supporters to transfer money. for years, paypal was the ultimate answer, nowadays, i'm not sure it is the only and the best option, though it's possible that i'm wrong (just ask my ex-wife, according to her, i'm always wrong. i married her, so she might be right )