Wise Review for Americans Moving to France: Is It Still the Best Way to Transfer Money?

When we moved to France from the United States, one of our first challenges was figuring out how to transfer money internationally without paying excessive bank fees or getting a poor exchange rate.

There are dozens of services that promise cheap international transfers, but after comparing our options, we chose Wise. Since then, we’ve used it to transfer thousands of dollars between our US and French accounts, pay bills in euros, and even buy a car in France.

If you’re preparing for your own move to France, we think Wise is one of the first financial accounts worth opening. You can create a Wise account here.

That said, no financial service is perfect. Over the past few years, we’ve also discovered situations where another platform, Interactive Brokers, offers better exchange rates, and we’ve encountered a few limitations with Wise as our primary account in France.

In this review, we’ll share what we’ve liked, what we haven’t, and whether we’d still recommend Wise to someone moving to France today.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you sign up through our links, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend services we’ve personally used.

Our Overall Rating

Ease of use: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Exchange rates: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Fees: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Everyday banking: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Customer support: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Overall: 4.2/5

For most Americans relocating to France, we’d still recommend Wise as the easiest way to move money internationally.

What We Love About Wise

Excellent exchange rates

Compared with traditional banks, the savings can be dramatic.

Instead of charging a large exchange-rate markup hidden in the conversion, Wise shows you the exchange rate and its fee separately.

That transparency makes it much easier to understand exactly what you’re paying.

Over multiple transfers, those savings add up.

The app is incredibly easy to use

This is probably Wise’s biggest strength.

Sending dollars from a US account and receiving euros in France takes only a few minutes.

The interface is intuitive enough that we’ve recommended it to parents and friends who aren’t particularly tech-savvy.

Everything from creating transfers to tracking payments is straightforward.

Fast transfers

Many of our transfers have arrived the same day.

Some have taken a bit longer on weekends and holidays, but overall, we’ve found Wise to be consistently fast and reliable.

Automatic bill payment

One feature we use regularly is the ability to pay our bills automatically.

We have all of our recurring bills set up to automatically pay out of our euro balance.

Our utilities, cell phones, and even our gym membership are easily set up and on autopilot now.

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If Wise sounds like a good fit for your move to France, you can open an account here.

Where Wise Falls Short

No service is perfect, and there are two areas where we’ve found better alternatives.

Interactive Brokers offers lower fees

This is probably Wise’s biggest weakness.

While Wise offers low fees compared with banks, Interactive Brokers is 50% lower for large transfers (.2% vs .3%).

If you’re just exchanging a few hundred dollars, it probably isn’t worth worrying about.

But if you’re converting hundreds of thousands of dollars for a home purchase or major investment, those small differences can become meaningful.

The tradeoff is usability. Interactive Brokers is an investment platform first and a currency conversion platform second. Its interface is considerably more complicated than Wise’s.

For most people, we’d rather pay slightly more for something that’s easy to use than risk making mistakes with a complex trading platform.

Some transfers can incur fees

While we have a system to avoid paying any transfer fees, the method can be obscure.

If using the “Add” option in Wise to add money to your account, Wise charges a 0.17% fee for the ACH transfer, something that every other bank does for free.

The workaround is to simply initiate the ACH transfer from your bank account, pushing the money to Wise for zero fees.

It’s an easy fee to avoid, but something we feel shouldn’t exist in the first place.

The Belgian IBAN can occasionally cause problems

This was one surprise we didn’t expect.

All of Wise’s euro accounts come equipped with a Belgian IBAN rather than a French one.

Thanks to European banking rules, French organizations are supposed to accept any EU IBAN.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

The biggest offender, we’ve found that CPAM doesn’t accept our Wise IBAN because it isn’t French.

As a result, we must still maintain a traditional French bank account.

For us, Wise complements our French bank rather than replacing it completely.

Who Should Use Wise?

We think Wise is an excellent fit if you:

• Are moving to France
• Need to transfer money regularly from the US
• Want lower fees than traditional banks
• Travel frequently
• Receive income in multiple currencies
• Want an easy-to-use app

Who Might Want Something Else?

Wise may not be the best option if you:

• Frequently exchange very large amounts of money, where every fraction of a percent matters
• Want a single French bank account with a French IBAN that can do everything
• Are comfortable using a more advanced platform like Interactive Brokers to save a little more on exchange rates

Would We Still Recommend Wise?

Yes.

Despite finding slightly better exchange rates elsewhere, we continue to use Wise regularly.

The combination of transparent pricing, excellent user experience, fast transfers, and reliable service makes it one of the best financial tools we’ve used since moving to France.

Interactive Brokers has become our preferred choice for very large currency exchanges, although we usually transfer the resulting euros into our Wise account, which we use for paying all of our bills.

But for everyday transfers, travel spending, paying bills, and moving money between the US and France, Wise remains our first recommendation.

If you’re preparing for a move to France, it’s one of the first accounts we’d suggest opening.

Open a Wise account with our link.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Wise safe?

Wise is a regulated financial institution operating in multiple countries and is widely used for international money transfers.

However, Wise is not FDIC insured by default, and FDIC pass-through insurance is only available for accounts with interest-earning enabled.

Can Wise replace a French bank account?

Not entirely.

While many businesses accept a Belgian IBAN without issue, we’ve encountered situations, such as with CPAM, where a French IBAN was still required.

Is Wise cheaper than banks?

In our experience, yes. We’ve consistently paid far less using Wise than we would have through traditional US banks.

Is Wise cheaper than Interactive Brokers?

Not usually.

Interactive Brokers has generally provided us with slightly lower fees for large transfers.

However, Wise is substantially easier to use, making it the better choice for most people.

Bottom Line

Wise isn’t the absolute cheapest option for every situation. We also use Interactive Brokers for very large currency exchanges because the rates are slightly better.

But if you’re looking for the easiest, most reliable way to move money between the US and France, Wise is still the service we recommend to friends and family.

Create your Wise account.

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Questions? Comments? We’d love to hear from you in the comment section, or feel free to write us directly.

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