Wise USD to EUR: How To Auto-Convert With Desired Exchange Rate

My favorite way to transfer USD to EUR

Wise is my favorite way to transfer funds from the USA to my accounts here in the EU. My wife and I lived in America for many years. Then we started a business in the EU, and moved to Ireland, while we slowly moved our financial lives overseas.

During this time we were transferring funds across, and we were traveling around the EU to France, Italy and Spain, purchasing goods that ended up being sold in London, Berlin and back in America. Our frustrations with traditional transfer services became larger and larger. When using a foreign credit card in the EU, there is always a choice presented of what currency to use for payment.

The Wise payment system allows you to transfer and store funds in 50 currencies. For most countries and supported currencies, only the option of bank transfer from account to account in the recipient's bank is available. But in some countries it is possible to pay with a credit or debit card.

Supposedly, the intelligent choice to make is to choose to pay in the local currency, somehow this allows for a better USD to EUR exchange rate than allowing the credit card issuer to make the spread on the conversion rate. For us, it never seemed to matter, no matter what we did the USD to EUR exchange rate was terrible. This was probably because our bank was Chase, which actually lost a class action lawsuit over the extremely abusive exchange rates they charged to clients using their credit cards overseas.

Before WISE

Before I discovered Wise, I was sending wires to transport money back and forth between the US and Europe. Money transfers within America are done by ACH, an automatic check transfer, at very reasonable rates. But international transfers from the bank have to be by wire, which immediately added around 35-50 dollars per transaction, and made small transactions not worth the effort.

Worse than the wire fees on transactions, when sending larger amounts of money, the exchange rates Chase offered on USD to EUR were just scandalous. We ended up investigating various forex services for larger USD to EUR transfers, but they were all very difficult to sign up and use, and added extra steps to the entire problem.

In addition, the different forex services had different sweet spots for their use, depending on size, frequency, etc. In some cases, when looking at a forex services, they forced you to speak to a sales guy, who then might annoy you with followup calls and messages! More complications we did not want.

Discovering WISE for USD to EUR transfer

Finally, one day we needed to send USD to EUR from our bank in the states to a new destination in the EU. Our bank in the states said that we could only order the wire if we were physically present in the bank. This seemed like really horrible, almost deliberately bad service, Especially considering all the money we had paid for bad exchange rates over the years! That day, we discovered Wise.

Cheapest EUR To USD Exchange With No Hidden Fees

Did you know that you can easily open a multicurrency account on which you can hold many currencies, such as EUR and USD among others, and convert your EUR to USD or your USD to EUR at anytime with a few clicks and some of the world’s lowest fees?

Free registration

It was amazingly easy to sign up, and very easy to link up accounts, unlike the forex services we had tried. But the most stunning part was the fees Wise charged were so low as to be non-existent next to wire fees! Well, the great, actually mid-market exchange rates we achieved were even more stunning.

What a difference! The ease of use was striking as well, since we were used to a long authentication process to send an international USD to EUR wire, usually requiring a callback from the bank.

Wise auto-convert currency at desired exchange rate

Now that we are Wise converts, we really enjoy another solution that we did not even know we needed - the Wise auto currency exchange conversion. Back when we did wire transfers for USD to EUR, we would read the news and try to guess when/if the exchange rate moved in our favor.

Which was pretty much impossible, as we did not have the time to focus on this day and night and be ready to strike at any time. With Wise's auto-exchange, we can set up a transfer as an open order to be hit when the market moves to our target forex rate. Which is great, as opposed to waking up to see that the USD to EUR market moved the right way but moved back before we we able to take advantage!

Various auto conversion orders

COVID shut down our travels for a while, but we are looking forward to going on buying trips again. We also are placing some items into auction in London and the USA, where we will be receiving and paying in USD to EUR, EUR to USD, EUR to PLN, and GBP to EUR. Wise now has a new feature where we can have a multi-currency wallet, to receive, store and send different currencies. We are looking forward to trying out this feature, as we should be able to leverage it to save money versus having to accept payment in for example, GBP and having our bank use their (bad) exchange rate to convert to EUR.

At one point during our struggles to move funds USD to EUR internationally without waiting forever, or being blocked by our bank, we started using crypto currency to move money. Recently, we discovered that Wise has also grown into this area. At first, Wise was blocked from sending money to some crypto exchanges. Now, Wise has integrated with a couple of major crypto systems like eToro and Paxful, who can now take payments directly from Wise to be used to purchase crypto.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Wise users set their own target exchange rate for auto-conversion from USD to EUR, and how does this feature work?

Yes, Wise allows users to set a target exchange rate for auto-conversion from USD to EUR. Users can specify the desired rate, and Wise will automatically convert the funds when the market rate matches the target rate, helping users take advantage of favorable rate fluctuations.

How to Auto Convert EUR To USD With Best Exchange Rate Before Traveling