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Re:Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra by pavlov on Sunday December 06, 2020 @11:36AM (#25324549)
The 250 GBP must be the exchange fee? If your account is in GBP and the destination is in EUR, the bank gets to charge you for the exchange. 2.5% is a typical rate. That's unfortunate, but is unrelated to the cost of transfer.

Euro transfers have become instant and 24/7 thanks to the SEPA Instant Credit architecture:

https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

You can transfer up to 100k EUR in less than ten seconds; works overnight and during weekends and holidays.

In the UK, at least Revolut supports this already:

https://blog.revolut.com/sepa-instant-euro-transfers-now-ava...

Re:Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra by tomp on Sunday December 06, 2020 @12:18PM (#25324892)
I don't mind the fee per se I just object to obfuscating it (which I term "fraud" thought that might not be the legal definition).

NatWest app says £0.00 fee and some FX rate but when I compare with TransferWise, the difference is £250, which means that the "FX rate" implicitly contains the fee.

Maybe not "fraud" legally but I don't want to support such non-transparent business practices.

Re:Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra by raverbashing on Sunday December 06, 2020 @02:09PM (#25325779)
If it's a fixed cost, it's a fee

Yes banks charge commission (where TW usualy has a cost advantage but anyway, it's a money maker for banks and calculation of the fx rate to be used at a given moment is not something simple)

Re:Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra by jeltz on Sunday December 06, 2020 @11:50AM (#25324644)
Maybe it is typical with 2.5% in the UK but here in Sweden the typical is 0.5% so I feel like you are being robbed.
Re:Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra by Reason077 on Sunday December 06, 2020 @06:47PM (#25327804)
> "If your account is in GBP and the destination is in EUR, the bank gets to charge you for the exchange. 2.5% is a typical rate."

2.5% is a rather expensive fee for a GBP-EUR transfer, especially on £10,000! Some banks offer as low as 0.4% (on top of the real mid-market rate), probably even less on large transfers.

Re:Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra by spurgu on Sunday December 06, 2020 @05:08PM (#25327083)
My Revolut account is moving to Lithuania though. Are UK customers keeping their UK ones?

From experience with bank accounts from 4 different European countries those instant transfers definitely don't work everywhere and are often accompanied by an extra fee.

Edit: And this is 2020. I highly welcome some innovation in this field - five years ago..

Re:Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra by riffraff on Sunday December 06, 2020 @03:49PM (#25326482)
TransferWise also supports instant SEPA payments. The first time I transferred money to my bank in a different country and I received immediate confirmation I was mindblown.