If you use Wise to transfer money or even use Wise as a wallet for your money, you would need to rethink how to add money to your wallet. For the accounts in the Netherlands, iDEAL is a great way to transfer funds and make payments. Wise offers iDEAL as an integrated solution to transfer money between accounts.

I’ve been using iDEAL to add money to my Wise account and the main reason why I always chose iDEAL was:

• Very simple and easy UI
• Free of cost

While the core iDEAL service is still free and very simple. The ability to add money to your wallet via iDEAL is no longer free, and itis no longer a flat fee either.

How Expensive?

The amount you have to pay depends on the amount you are adding to your wallet. When you chose “External account”, you can add the amount you are transfering and then based on the amount you add a variable cost is shown. In the UI, Wise shows that the cost is not coming from Wise but from the underlying platform.

Here is a range of amount, fee, and total:

Amount	iDEAL fee	Wise fee	Total fees	Total
500	1.15	0	1.15	501.15
1000	1.85	0	1.85	1001.85
10,000	14.45	0	14.45	10,014.45
50,000	70.45	0	70.45	50,070.45

The amounts above are in euros. The maximum money that you can transfer using Wise is 50,000 EUR and this fee makes it impossible to add 50,000 EUR to your wallet.

I’ve honestly used iDEAL to always transfer the amount, and while iDEAL still offers free of cost payments, perhaps their costs were increased to transfer money. I have no idea why this change was introduced–or who introduced this change. But, I am not a fan of paying extra; are you?

Alternative?

Disclaimer: This is neither a sponsored post nor an affiliate content to recommend any party. The content in this post is from my own experience of using the platform.

When you are adding money to Wise, you can transfer using various methods. One of the methods is bank transfer. Wise uses Tink service to connect you to your bank (via application or online) and you can transfer the money directly through your banks’s application. Safely.

Note how the regular payment methods are:

1. Extremely expensive.
2. Not fast enough.
3. Not available for big transfers.

As an expat, I do sometimes transfer about 5000-10,000 EUR, but not quarterly. And mainly only when there is an event or a plan. In such cases, every extra EUR counts. Look, I’m not against the fees. I understand the platforms also need to make money to pay for costs and expenses. But at least make some sense of the costs.

I haven’t actively used Tink, but I’ve transfered money via Tink a few times to Wise and the only hiccup is that it is a few extra clicks (taps) before you perform the operation and it takes a few more seconds before you receive the money in Wise wallet. Otherwise, sending 100 EUR and receiving 100 EUR is worth the extra wait.