@izzy What is this you speak of? Link? They always call me and tell me I need to come in. AND I have to go to the branch where I opened the account, not the one by my house.
Haha. Well ya 
how can 1 branch know the details of customer in another branch?? 
I have a NTD and a USD account with First Bank and enabled online banking for both.
I transfer USD from overseas to my USD account here. Then, when I choose to convert them to NTD a pop up form comes up asking me to choose the nature of the funds (e.g. interest from overseas investment , funds to support expenses abroad etc.). next phase is to confirm the transaction again using my e-banking password and you are done.
I have doing it for about 3 years now without having to go to the branch.
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For this, most people still have to visit their bank. Or answer the Q over phone.
I used to as well. However, the last few years I was able to do it all online without going to the branch or phone calls. I don’t know about other banks, but at least in First Bank it is possible.
No idea - I am not using the card, so not sure if it still works now after changing the address.
In theory, it would be possible with E.Sun too. But I have another issue there: Remittance code - which one to choose? - #5 by qwert_zuiop
@izzy Do you need to select a remittance code too? Which one do you chose?
yes, you need to choose remittance code. you choose according to the case, if it is work related or family related etc.
Which codes do you usually use? For me, the most fitting ones are unavailable online…
i don’t remember the exact code number, the overseas family member remitting to Taiwan one. This is actually my case. I guess if you get a remittance from an LTD company and not a private person its not possible to use this code.
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I changed address (and country) when I moved out of Singapore last year, but I was told that the card would remain the same until it expires. After that, a new one will be shipped to the new address.
Good point. You need to use an address in a supported country. In my case, I used my parents’ in Europe.
New record with Wise today: Sent out money yesterday around 7pm from my EUR balance via SWIFT. Around 9am today I received the push notification from E.Sun that the money is now available for remittance. Just a bit over 12h - really can’t complain about the speed.
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First issue with Wise today: Sent some money at around 3pm from my Wise account to E.SUN - just received the e-mail from E.SUN that the money has been received (which would be another new record!).
However, there are EUR 15 missing (in addition to the Wise fee and before E.SUN has taken out their fee) 
Maybe Wise (or E.SUN?) has changed partner banks resulting in an additional intermediate bank fee which would be very unfortunate.
I have contacted Wise’s customer support - I’ll update here when I receive a reply.
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Just received their reply. Pretty generic and saying
Intermediary banks take their own, separate fees — so your recipient may get less than you intended. We don’t have control over when these fees are charged, or how much they are.
Unfortunately, no explanation given if they recently changed their intermediary for sending money to Taiwan. I‘ll ask E.SUN next but also don’t really expect a reply.
Next transfer I will try without Transferwise and check the fees again.
Yesterday I withdrew 5000 TWD with Wise debit card at Cathay United ATM.
I think this is normal, unfortunately, with the explanation you suggest. I don’t see it as a Wise “issue” tbh. Did you choose the option on Wise to pay a little more to guarantee the maximum fee including intermediate bank fees? The last time I did that, it was US$14.51 (including the Wise fee) for a US$3,056.28 transfer (after deduction of the aforementioned fee), and I then paid US$7.17 on the Mega Bank end (just the Mega Bank fee with no additional intermediate bank fee).
For previous transfers when I haven’t selected that option, the “missing amount” (i.e., intermediate bank and Mega Bank fees) was on the order of US$18 for transfers between US$1,100 and US$1,500, with the Wise fee of US$4.25. So an intermediate bank fee in the range of US$10-12. (I don’t think it makes much of a difference to the total fees which option is selected, but the intermediate bank fee can’t really be avoided.) I don’t think you’ll get a good explanation from E.SUN either. It’s deliberately obfuscated.
Yeah, but that’s just a totally normal ATM transaction using a foreign debit card. Not at all relevant to intermediate bank fees for actual transfers. Yesterday I withdrew NT$11,000 at a Cathay United ATM using my Starling card.
My case:
Amount taken: £294.17
Converted to: NT$11,000
Exchange rate: 37.3933 TWD/GBP
xe.com mid-market exchange rate for March 30: 37.5970688 TWD/GBP
Expected cost for NT$11k at mid-market exchange rate: £292.58
“Fee” (amount taken minus expected cost): £1.59 (0.54% of £292.58)
Your case:
Amount taken: €159.02
Converted to: NT$5,000
Exchange rate: 31.7146 TWD/EUR
xe.com mid-market exchange rate for March 30: 31.9176943 TWD/EUR
Expected cost for NT$5k at mid-market exchange rate: €156.65
“Fee” (amount taken minus expected cost): €2.37 (1.51% of €156.65)
The Wise card just functions as a regular debit card here - probably better than many old-school banks, but certainly not the best among more recent offerings in the UK/Europe.
If it actually was Wise that changed partner banks resulting in an increased fee, I would definitely blame it on them. Will find out when I send the next transfer directly from my German bank account. Maybe they have a better „transfer route“.
Haven’t seen that option yet. Did they recently add it?
Since when has this intermediate bank fee appeared for you? I had sent out another transfer at the beginning of the month and from that one, no additional fees had been deducted.
I was showing an alternative. I immediately deposited the money at the same ATM with my Cathay card. The result is the same as a transfer, just faster and less fees.
But depends on the amount as ATM’s give out about 20-30k max at a time.
Probably not. The amount I took out was quite low, so the fee percentage would be much lower with higher withdrawal.
I am not resident in Germany, so I can’t open new accounts in many banks in Europe. Wise is enough for me to do my rare transactions.
I’m not sure that Wise actually has much control over this. I believe they do these transfers through the SWIFT network (at least for USD/TWD) and, again, it’s deliberately obfuscated. There doesn’t seem to be any way for the consumer to figure out expected intermediate bank fees.
It might depend on the currencies? I was transferring from my USD balance. The transaction I mentioned was in October 2021, but that was the first time I’d seen that option so I assumed it was a new feature at that time (within the previous 6 months or so).
It happened for the previous two or three USD transfers I did to Mega Bank. Again though, it’s not obvious (unless you ask) which is the intermediate bank fee and which is the recipient bank fee - all you see is the money missing from the amount received in the account…
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Looks like I am done with Wise for some time:
Did the next transfer (same amount) without Wise this time directly from my (German) bank account. No €15 “mystery fee” this time - just the €12.50 fee my bank charges (which is still lower than €15 + €3.83 Wise is charging). Also, I don’t need to transfer the money to Wise first, so overall more convenient.
In addition, when I tried to transfer money from my Wise account to another Wise account recently, I was shown a fee of €0.04 although their website says that transfers from one Wise account to another one are free. Asked their support via chat - they were surpised and asked for a screenshot and then promised to get back to me via email, but never did.
It was great when it started, but now - not so much… 
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This seems to suggest that E.Sun doesn’t charge you at all for receiving foreign currency transfers? That’s strange - Mega Bank does.
If sending it directly from your bank doesn’t result in intermediary bank fees I agree that’s a better option. I don’t think there’s any way to know that without trying though (I guess it depends on the route from the sending bank to the receiving bank, and there doesn’t seem any way to predict that).