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Anyone tried Wise (previously TransferWise) transfers to WeChat?

Last activity 15 July 2022 by mrangry

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mrangry
Wise recently added the ability to send money to someone's WeChat account.

It seems really useful and I wonder if anyone's tried this. I think my WeChat account is one that is 'outside China', so is not a 'WeiXin' account?

What about other ways to send money to people in China (indeed, to yourself too)?

keithcroy

@mrangry just send it directly through wise forget wechat it's a scam of an app

mrangry
Directly? What do you mean? Just use their UnionPay bank card? It seems like you can only send to WeiXin users who have linked a UnionPay card to their account anyway, so perhaps that makes sense to skip the intermediary.

"Who can I send CNY to?

For your personal account, you can only send CNY to private individuals who have any of the following

UnionPay bank card,
an Alipay ID
Weixin ID.

They must have opened their bank account with a Chinese national ID card — we can’t send CNY to accounts opened with a passport, driver’s licence or military document. You cannot send CNY to businesses using your personal account.
"
acoop
I have used Wise several times to transfer money from UK  to my wife in China.  There are upper limits of around £3,000 depending on exchange rates as I think the limit is set in $US.  It works very well and if you do the transfer in working hours it transfers in seconds.  Wise do not work weekends in UK so avoid those times.  I have a full account with them and transferring money from my HSBC account to Wise is very easy. 

Before using Wise for years I used HSBC UK bank account to my bank account in China and never had problems it took a day or so for money to transfer the best being 6 hours.  I have also transferred money from China to UK too.  BUT it seems to me that if you you are transferring money from UK to an account with a different name in China it doesn't work.  I had a failed transfer to. my step son and eventually HSBC got the money back for me less some fees charged by Bank of China.  HSBC could not find out why the transfer was rejected by Bank of China.  It was then that I switched to using Wise.  However, if you can get it to work HSBC to a Bank of China account is cheaper than Wise.
mrangry
@acoop Interesting. What is a 'full account' wrt Wise?

I'm surprised about your claim that transfering from a mainstream bank is cheaper than Wise - that's kind of the whole point in Wise, is it not?

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