Local currency accounts

World First Pty Ltd is a designated remittance provider with the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), remittance sector registration number: IND100192523-001. Regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) number 331945. Australian Company Number (ACN) 132 368 971. Member of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, membership number 13405.

If you’re considering making a foreign exchange transaction, or you’re a new or existing customer looking for more information, it’s important your read our PDS available online.

*20% off Margin. Offer is exclusive to Chartered Accountant members directly or to clients referred by registered WorldFirst Partners who are Chartered Accountant members. Offer is available for new WorldFirst clients only who register between 12am (AEDT) 01/04/2020 and 11:59Pm (AEDT) 30/6/2020 and not available in conjunction with any other offer. Discount rates are valid for the lifetime of client following the successful registration of a new WorldFirst account. Standard compliance and on-boarding process applies. Minimum transfers of AUD $2,000 apply. 20% off pricing/margin is defined as a 20% reduction in the WorldFirst’s standardized pricing/margin groupings. Meaning exclusive pricing/margin brackets are 0.40%, 0.20% and 0.12% dependent on annual transfer volume. More information available at https://www.worldfirst.com/au/.

*Pricing from 0.50% or less applies to 25 of our major and most popular currencies.

Price match applies if it doesn't result in a loss for us, we'll match it.

Many banks and payment providers frequently claim to offer “fair” and “transparent” pricing, yet the reality is something very different. Our new pricing model aims to provide both new and existing customers with fair, simple and transparent pricing, using 3 clear FX margin bands margins (0.5%, 0.25% and 0.15%) with no hidden fees. With transparent pricing our customers and potential customers can clearly compare WorldFirst to our competitors.

How do we collect this data?

WorldFirst obtain price comparisons from other international payment providers’ websites, at specific dates and time using a third-party supplier. The comparison table shows the spread applied by the competition to transfer amounts of AUD 1,000, 10,000 and 50,000 into EUR, USD and GBP.

1. The spread

The spread is the percentage difference between the exchange rate we buy our currency at and the rate at which we sell it to our customers. We at WorldFirst take a smaller spread than most banks and other currency companies, and pass this benefit on to our clients, making all our transfers simpler and more transparent.

2. The cost of international payments

For each pricing band we look at the FX spread applied. This is what we use to compare against our fixed bands of (0.50%, 0.25% and 0.15%).

When researching and making comparisons it is important to know if any additional transaction charges will be applied such as payment fees or account management fees. For most customers WorldFirst does not apply additional fees to make payments or to maintain an account with us. If any fees are applicable these will be made clear to you in advance.

3. How do we work out a comparison up to 8 times cheaper than the banks

When we collect data from providers, we do it using different “amounts” such as $1,000, $10,000 and $50,000 where possible. For our data we have focused on the top currency pairs in Australia: GBP to USD/EUR/AUD.

Because the WorldFirst fixed pricing tiers are based on annual volumes transacted by our customers, we have averaged out the spreads applied by competitors to transactions of differing amounts in those tiers to calculate an average spread. We take our spreads and divide by the average spreads of the big 4 banks. This is important, because providers tend to offer better exchange rates and smaller transfer fees when a customer is moving larger sums of money.

What all this means for you

Other money-transfer providers may have variable spreads across different currencies, whilst WorldFirst now has fixed spreads, agreed ahead of time, making it easier to compare.