WorldFirst's bank-beating pricing

The exchange rate you receive from us, or the margin charged, is determined by a range of factors including size of payment, currency pairs being traded and your annual transfer volume. The more you transact, the better your exchange rate will be, but you can take comfort knowing our margin won’t be greater than 0.60%.

Similar to when buying physical products from a supplier, the price generally improves as your order quantity increases. This translates to FX in so far as a clients’ pricing is a function of the number of payments they make and the volume of their foreign exchange.

The costs of making a payment with our banking partners can be as much as $20. On smaller payments, the margin we charge will often not cover the cost of the payment, so we need to also include a fixed fee.

For example, on an AUD $3,000 transfer, a 0.60% margin would yield AUD $18 gross profit. Our costs to make that onward payment with our banking partners can be as high as $20, meaning WorldFirst would be making a loss on the transfer. On a similar transfer with a bank, the cost to the client could be as much as $150.

A margin is how our business makes money. Simply put, without a margin there would be no FX businesses.

We believe we are one of the market-leaders when it comes to transparency and pricing. Many FX businesses won’t disclose what their maximum margin is and can offer introductory rates for new clients and then charge more in the future.

The costs charged by WorldFirst on transfers is the margin on the exchange rate and a fixed fee for transfers less than $10,000 AUD. It is important to make sure you are aware of any fees that your bank, your beneficiary’s bank (and their intermediaries) charge for sending or receiving funds. Intermediary and receiving bank fees are mostly unknown and out of the control of WorldFirst. If the intermediary or receiving bank does charge a fee, your payment may arrive short the value of their processing fees. If you are aware of any intermediary or receiving bank fee charges, please contact us to discuss the options available.

The comparison savings are based on a single transfer of AUD$25,000 to USD. Savings are calculated by comparing the exchange rate including margins and fees provided by each bank (ANZ, CBA, WPC and NAB) and WorldFirst. FXC Intelligence Ltd, an independent third party provides the pricing date.

The data provided is for the month of February 2022 and looks at the cost of transacting foreign currency using WorldFirst and each bank.  Because the WorldFirst has a maximum margin of 0.60%, we have averaged out the margins applied by competitors to transactions of differing amounts in those tiers to calculate an average margin. We take our margins and divide by the average margins of major banks who have customer rates in FXC Intelligence.

This is important, because providers tend to offer better exchange rates and smaller transfer fees when a customer is moving larger sums of money. The comparison savings provided is true only for the example given and may not include all fees and charges. Please note that different currency exchange amounts, currency types, dates, times and other individual factors will result in different comparison savings.

These results therefore, may not be indicative of actual savings and should be used only as a guide.

Your margin is charged as a percentage, not basis points.

For example, a margin of 0.60% doesn’t mean the charge is 60 basis points. If the interbank rate is 0.78 for AUD to USD then a margin of 0.60% would result in your exchange rate being 0.7753. However, if you were charged 60 basis points then the exchange rate that would be offered to you would be 0.7740 which is not as favourable.