Lay My Hat

Our website / credit card processing integration is currently up the spout which left us a bit exposed on a two week Summer booking over the weekend when a prospective Dutch guest couldn't pay his deposit easily with his credit card.

Which made us panic a bit.

Anyway, after some hunting we proposed (and he successfully used) https://transferwise.com. They provided a very competitive flat transfer fee (0.5% on £1k ish) and near mid-market exchange rate. Money was deposited into our UK account ahead of when they anticipated (24 hours).

An impressive service worth a look and when you sign-up you can give guests a code which makes their first transfer free (in return, if 3 people make transfers with your code you get £50. Feel free to ping me if you'd like my sign-up code to make your first transfer free!).

I use it very successfully too and also have a link on my website for a free first use, but I've yet to persuade a guest to use it, despite telling them how quick and easy it is to use. Fear of the unknown I guess.

I've been using it for a couple of years and most of my non-euro guests use it. I'm delighted to see that they've now expanded into Australia, with NZ to come soon - up to now the only viable option for Antipodean guests has been Paypal.

I simply create a payment demand and give guests a dedicated link through which to pay. They can choose to pay by bank transfer, debit or credit card.

I have had people use it several times ( although the Canadian banks demand a fee unfortunately) but failed last year with Australia as it wasn't working there then. Today I had a detailed and really thoughtful email from their support in response to several questions I had and I asked again about Australia and am pleased they are now supporting that.

I did not know you could create a payment demand on there FC. I have just been giving them my code. Must investigate that....or do you mean that you send your own invoice and then your link?

You can request a 'request money' service on your account, Felicity. Then you can create a specific request for an amount of money and Transferwise will generate a link that you can send to that person. They click the link and are given the choice of how to pay. Details here: https://transferwise.com/help/article/2 ... om-someone.

I include a specific link in my 'deposit request' email - they don't have to use it - I give them various other options for paying their deposit, and I also say that if they're uneasy about clicking a direct link in an email then they can navigate to Transferwise in the normal way and set up a transfer from there. But there's no doubt about it, the link does make life easier as they don't have to enter your bank details or anything.

And I've always found their support excellent!

Thanks FC; I didn't know about the 'request for money' service either. I'll give it a try.

That's geat, thanks FC. Anything that makes life easier for my technophobe guests is wonderful.