If you're not paying for it, you're the product
Posted on the 11th October 2018 by Hamish Anderson in Business, Founders' blog, Founder Insights
There is a growing number of international payments services out there, and new ones spring up all the time. It’s always been important to us that people understand why Money Mover couldn’t be more different from old school foreign exchange businesses with their boiler room sales people and low-tech service.
For us, transparency is all, and we’re committed to being honest about how we charge for our services, rather than subsidising costs with revenues generated from advertising, referral fees and cross-selling. Above all, we are vehemently opposed to monetising our customers’ financial records and transaction history.
If you're not paying for it, you're the product
We’re probably all familiar with the ‘freemium’ concept; online games, video sharing websites and social media which describe themselves as being free but make money by selling targeted advertising or generating commissions from selling third party services based on data that they’ve gathered from their users.
We’re starting to see financial services businesses that are adopting this commercial model. A limited primary service is offered at a low cost, or for free, while as much data and financial information is gathered as possible while you use it. The business then generates revenue by selling this data in the form of targeted advertising and referrals to tied services.
We don’t believe this is in the best interests of the user.
Delivering financial services involves a range of costs for compliance and fraud prevention, customer service, transaction processing fees and finance charges. Our policy has always been to be completely transparent and ensure that our customers have all the data they need to make an informed decision. A premium service will always have a cost, and we’d rather be upfront and disclose it honestly rather than hide it in kickbacks and cross-subsidies.
You can rely on us
Our pricing is always consistent and stable. We don’t offer teaser rates, which get increased when you’re not looking. We’ll never change your pricing without discussing it with you, and you don’t have to call and haggle with us to get the best rates. Our platform makes it easy to see the interbank exchange rates and the all-inclusive fee for the payment. We constantly monitor our fees to make sure that they’re competitive, so you don’t need to. All our payments go by Swift wire transfers, which are reliable, secure and easy to track.
We help you take control
Our customers are used to making decisions based on a knowledge of the facts. Why should their international payments be any different? We show you everything you need to know to understand the transaction and make an informed decision, before you commit to making a payment. This means that it’s easy to compare our service with your existing provider.
We save you time and money
We’ve spent a lot of time building a service which is focused on the needs of our customers, and have designed tools and reports which make our customers’ lives easier - the kind of features which banks should be offering you already, but can’t or don’t. Do you make several foreign currency payments in the same currency at a specific time of the month? An overseas payroll or a batch of invoices to suppliers in the US? Our ‘Multiple Recipients’ tool makes it quick and easy to do this, and settle it with a single payment from your bank. And all for a low, single fee.
Need to send a supplier proof of payment so that they can release your order early? Simple. Our customers can either forward the Swift MT103 wire transfer confirmation that we provide instantly, automatically and free-of-charge for all payments, or the detailed PDF confirmation that we generate for each payment.
Want to lock-in an exchange rate for a pending payment or receivable? Use Money Mover’s ‘Flexible Payments’ function to lock-in a forward exchange rates for up to 6 months in the future.
Would it be helpful for your accountant, portfolio FD or office manager to access the platform? Our user structure makes it easy to attach multiple businesses to your profile, or to add accountants as ‘mandate holders’ who can help manage your account on your behalf.
We keep you informed
We update you at every stage of the transaction lifecycle so you always know what’s happening with your payments - your money will never disappear into a black hole for a week. Whenever something important happens, such as confirming a payment, adding a mandate holder or a new recipient, we update your dashboard. But if you need to speak to someone, just give our support team a call.
Your success is our success
The better we tailor our service to fit your needs, and the more you use us, the happier we are. Money Mover is unique in being designed for dynamic, international-facing SMEs. The development of our platform is driven by the way that our customers do business, and most of the major enhancements over the couple of years that we’ve been around have been to solve specific pain points. We’re here to transform international payments - we do this best when we’re working closely with you.