Is transferwise secure

[FRANCO]

Hi,

Sometimes the only solution to have either a personal account or professional account is Transferwise. Especially when you don't have an european or american passport like me.
I am wondering if transferwise is enough secure so that it becomes my only bank on which I would have more than 500 000$.
Isn't this risky? I feel that transferwise should be a temporary account to be used for a while before transferring the money to a real account in a real bank

Am I wrong?
Thanks

 

[Mr Magoo]

Real banks are as risky as TW or other EMI. Big plus of banks can be a deposit guarantee like in the EU or CH.

 

[bibing]

I wouldn't definitely keep 500k on TransferWise.
I would probably spread that amount among a multiple of different bank accounts

 

[Spinat]

500K is a lot of money but less then 100K would be fine to work with in the TW accounts'. You may open more then just one account and divide your amount into several accounts to avoid troubles or loose all money should something go wrong.

 

[FRANCO]

Yes I agree. You confirmed my feeling.
Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[nomad999]

Personally i wouldn't hold anything above 4 digits on any EMI for more than a few days, just the time to convert and transfer somewhere else.

 

[nomad999]

BTW, without the ability to get a solid banking you should seriously look at bitcoin/crypto and those USD stable coin (the ones regulated in the US) and find a way to convert that on a regular basis when needed, a few EMIs like advcash are friendly to crypto if i am not mistaken. Store everything on a hardware wallet hidden from anyone.
Will takes a bit of time to learn though, worth it imho.

 

[moneyrequired]

@FRANCO, currently I'm spending about 80k eur/month for marketing purposes(bing, adwords, fb ads, yandex) using TW (business account, EEA based) without any problems.

 

[fabrice34]

Transferwise is secure but 500k is a lot money, split in different bank accounts is safe more ;-)

 

[Traveler]

The general "rule" is to use EMIs for transactional banking & actual banks (or other vehicles if you're unable to get an account) for anything more than short-term.

While Transferwise may very well be the safest of the EMIs currently around, I wouldn't ever consider, for a second, holding more than 1% of my net worth there for any extended period of time.

But then there's the big question of what % of your asssets the $500k represents. If it's a significant percentage then the first question should be not where to keep the cash, but why keep it in cash in the first place. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable with ANY bank in this situation and would immediately look at diversification between different asset classes.

On the other hand, if the $500k represents a month or two worth of opex then TW might be an absolutely plausible option, as that, in my book, would fall well within the "transactional banking only" rule.

 

[JohnLocke]

I agree with what already is posted here about TransferWise. As for so far, there has not been any issues reported with Transferwise at all. Considering the owner structure which @Martin Everson pointed out, then I don't believe there will be any troubles with them at all.

That said, I'm not sure if I would put 500K into a TW account and sleep well, at least I would put it in several different accounts.