Wallex – Better than M1 Remit? Possibly.

It’s been quiet!

I just got married the weekend that past, so I’ve been extremely pre-occupied with that. I’m now back in action and continuing my “Malaysians in Singapore” series.

I previously compared the money transfer platforms in Singapore from the perspective of transferring SGD to MYR and “declared” M1 Remit to be the best option, primarily on the basis of rates. I then stumbled upon Wallex, which I hadn’t used previously, but have now used and can comment on. Obviously a big part of this was due to wedding expenses!

I’ll discuss Wallex in the context of Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Reasonably seamless web-based UI
• Clear rates and fee
• (Unofficial?) WhatsApp support
• Fees can be adjusted at discretion – I was able to do this on the basis of transferring a larger volume and showing Wallex a competitor with a better rate (Skrill
  • This has directly resulted in Wallex being the better option for money transfers for SGD->MYR compared to M1 Remit.

Cons:

• Unable to see rates unless you log in i.e. You need to sign up to be able to use rates. I have already provided feedback around this as I think this would probably a reasonably significant deterrent which would deter people from even being able to consider their product in the context of rates. The vast majority of platforms show you the rates without being logged in.
• Total cost of the transfer is given in reverse of how they’re normally quoted – that is, you usualy advise how much you wish to send, but Wallex asks you “how much you wish the beneficiary to receive”
• A supporting document (e.g. invoice) is typically needed for transfers
  • However, I’ve been advised that transfers below $5000, no supporting documents are required. It still asks for it, but you can supposedly just “upload a screenshot of the transaction page itself” – seems a little pointless…?
• No mobile app to do transfers

Other Points:

• Transfer Limit without Supporting Documents: $5k/transaction, $20k/mth
• Default Fee: 0.48%
• You are given ~6 hours to make the payment to a specified bank account for the purpose of this transfer

I’ve used Wallex for two transfers, and it’s so far been reasonably good. As a result of the manual adjustment to my fees, Wallex is now typically the best option for me to transfer SGD to MYR. Compared to M1 Remit, the rate on Wallex is a lot more dynamic and fluctuates almost to the minute (it seems). M1 Remit seems to have fixed updates to their rates at fixed intervals.

Next up in the context of money transfers, I will probably be reviewing Skrill. They actually seem to offer even better rates than Wallex/M1 Remit, but when I tried to use them recently, I was not having any luck. Another odd (but useful) benefit of Skrill is you can make the payment with Credit Card. Of course, it is possible that the nature of this transaction may be excluded for the purposes of earning points/cashback and may even possibly be considered a cash advance, but similarly, it’s possible that a Credit Card could consider a standard transaction, in which case it would be quite a significant benefit.

There’s no referral – this is just a very organic review 🙂