Your introduction to Zing, HSBC’s new multi-currency and FX payments app

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• Kit Aspen says:

  19 Aug19 August 07:25

  It’s as though they asked their designer to copy as much of the Wise visual identity as possible. Their logo colour is only a few shades off Wise green, and frankly if you had dropped the in-app screenshots onto Wise’s website I doubt many people would notice anything amiss.

  Given the cash bonus for referring a friend (again, not long ago that I remember earning that incentive from Wise), I wonder if Zing’s whole strategy is to get folks to use them once for the cash bonus and then stick around for the identical experience.

  Makes me uneasy…

• TooPoorToBeHere says:

  19 Aug19 August 07:25

  I was a launch-day customer for Zing.

  I’d like to hear other people’s opinions who have used it recently, please.

  I slunk off back to Wise and Revolut because every significant-size transaction put through Zing resulted in a block, and a manual check involving emails with Zing.

  They might have calmed down on this a bit now, and if so it’d be useful to have a “backup Revolut”.

  • Brighton Belle says:

    19 Aug19 August 07:56

    Is Revolut better these days as in the past the comments here were full of angry stories about frozen accounts and invisible customer service. After they blocked my grand daughter’s €30 birthday present on a ludicrous money laundering spin I left. They claimed the transfer comment was a money laundering tag line.

    • daveinitalia says:

      19 Aug19 August 08:02

      I’ve been using it more since Revpoints were launched. I’ve not had any issues. I use it for moving money between my UK and Italian accounts, paying people in Italy and since Revpoints I use the debit card in places Amex isn’t accepted (which is more so in Italy than the UK) or when using the card overseas to about the Amex exchange fees.

    • TooPoorToBeHere says:

      19 Aug19 August 12:35

      I’ve not actually had any personal trouble with Revolut for money, for many years, but there are WAY too many reports of it to be comfortable.

      The crypto side can be a bit of a pain – they’re very sensitive about what wallet addresses they will allow in and out – but that’s kinda niche.

      Wise did the usual “block and thoroughly inspect documentation” thing after the first sizeable transaction, but ever since it’s been very smooth indeed.

    • John says:

      19 Aug19 August 22:10

      They were probably correct – better to just never put free text in a payment reference (including domestic transfers)

  • pointsarb says:

    19 Aug19 August 07:57

    very true, biggest problem with Zing is their over zealous security and blocking of transactions that exceed say £500 equivalent. Resolvable with an email back and forth with their customer service but a pain nonetheless. ‘Zing’ wants to imply speed but that is definitely not always the case……

  • Bloomy says:

    19 Aug19 August 11:04

    Iv been using wise for years, i use them at least 4 or 5 times a month to send money abroad and never had a problem.
    Not sure if i want to chance Zing with blocks with every significant size transaction which involves emails and delay in the money transactions! 🙈

• pauldb says:

  19 Aug19 August 07:48

  The paragraph on security could be a bit tighter. You refer to deposits when the link is clear they aren’t ranked as deposits. “…in a secure account” – what does “secure” mean?
  The user is a creditor of MP Payments which has no explicit guarantee from HSBC, and there must also be exposure to the unnamed third-party bank that holds the money.

• daveinitalia says:

  19 Aug19 August 07:59

  I never miss the chance to earn points even if it’s a small amount so why would I use this over Revolut?

  Revpoints convert to BA Avios or Flying Blue miles and maybe others too. Perhaps misleadingly they show other airlines in the list that use Avios as their currency but it currently only works via BA and then you’d have to transfer the points to the other airline via BA.

  I’m currently on the plan where you earn 1 point per 2 pounds (as I have to move a lot of money between UK and Italy) but you also earn fractions of a point on your spend too so even if I spend 50p I still get some points. This means if you’re on a cheaper plan (like 1 point per 8 pounds) you’ll still get fractions of a point if you spend below that.

  If you can justify the high annual fee for Ultra then you get one point per pound.

• Magic Mike says:

  19 Aug19 August 08:22

  Wise have been faultless in the many years I’ve been using them – and they don’t block large transactions, even £100k+, if you have a history with them.

  First Direct (interestingly another part of HSBC) have fee free fx everywhere on their debit card with no monthly limits, but obviously no points on that…

• RussellH says:

  19 Aug19 August 09:20

  As this appears from the description to be a smartphone only operation, for me that is a complete no-no.
  I know many people find them easy to use, but I do not.

  Yes, there are one or two around with a proper keyboard and not the ghastly touchscreen, but they are very expensive and I would still much rather use a small computer, though even that is not as convenient as a prper desktop full size keyboard.

  • RussellH says:

    19 Aug19 August 09:22

    And I really, really hate people at supermarket checkouts who spend a couple of minutes trying to find the card payment bit of their “phone”, rather than just use a convenient real card.

    • Dominic says:

      19 Aug19 August 09:38

      You don’t need to find the card payment bit… literally put phone near scanner and it knows you want to pay.

      Unlike a ‘convenient real card’ that you need to find in your wallet…

• A says:

  19 Aug19 August 09:23

  Can’t see why ang HSBC customer would go for this as Global Money is great

  • Axel says:

    19 Aug19 August 09:46

    I have global money on both my HSBC Premier and Expat Accounts. The conversion rates are always marginally lower than Wise, even with the Wise fee.

    HSBS Expat also offers savings rates in foreign currencies, which is what I would exoect Zing to offer as well.

  • supergers49 says:

    19 Aug19 August 09:50

    Agreed

• Colin_MacKinnon says:

  19 Aug19 August 09:43

  Advice needed:
  Will need to send around £1,000 a month from Bonnie Scotland to daughter in the USA for the foreseable.
  She has a local USA bank account.
  I find the web pages for Wise and Revolut quite opaque – lots of pretty pictures and words, but not so much detail!
  Apparently quite a few folk over there use Wise to send money to each other after nights out etc. But I am familiar with Revolut.
  She has a local bank account. Perhaps, for my brain, the simplest way is just to get the cash into her bank account.
  Should I just her signed up to Wise and use that for her to recive the cash, which she can then send into her bank account. Or do I sign up to Wise and then send the cash into her bank account?
  Or would you recommend Revolut – it seems, co-incidently – you can send £1,000 a month to a bank accont with no fees?

  • AJA says:

    19 Aug19 August 10:30

    I don’t know anything about Revolut but as far as Wise is concerned it only needs you to sign up to Wise. You can send money to any account in any currency. So you convert GBP to USD and send that directly to your daughter’s current account .

    If your daughter’s current account charges fees to receive cash then it might make sense for her to open a Wise account. But she would still incur a fee transferring to her current account.

    • ChrisBCN says:

      19 Aug19 August 11:12

      Why are you doing the work here? Send the money to your daughter’s UK account and let her figure the best way to send to her US account.

      She should compare the final amount (not the exchange rate) of converting the 1000 via Wise or Zing (and whoever else). Sending between EUR/GBP I find one of them gives me more for lower values, and the other for higher values – you need to find at what point you should use each provider.

      Of course the 500 fee free promotion will mean Zing performs best, at least for this year.

      • Colin MacKinnon says:

        19 Aug19 August 11:28

        @ChrisBCN. Doing the work because a wise person learns from other people’s mistakes – any fool can learn from their own. So rather than learn from her own mistakes she thought to learn from mine!

        She’s also a very trusting and creative (rather than scientific) person – so when she sees things like “no commission” she used to think that was a good deal, until she saw how few dollars, say, she got for her pounds at the airport!

  • Nick says:

    19 Aug19 August 11:03

    I can recommend Wise too. Annoying to set up account, but it does work seamlessly once you do. It was originally built by and for expat communities rather than a big bank so they knew a thing or two about the friction they needed to avoid.

    • John says:

      19 Aug19 August 22:12

      They are now too big to care about that kind of thing, best to just treat them like you would a bank

  • Kevin says:

    19 Aug19 August 12:59

    I send once a month to the USA using Wise. Started off to local USA bank account, took a couple of days, low fees with Wise. However, now send USD to receipents Wise account. Wise offers a free Wise USD ApplePay debit card and or a phyiscal one can be ordered for a small one off fee.
    So works both ways but having the Wise account is better way of doing it as less fees and instant transfer which could be handy as its your dauther and there is the possibility of an emeregncy and getting funds over in a hurry.
    PS: Your dauther can always transfer her Wise USD finds to her local bank if ever needed.

  • Londonsteve says:

    19 Aug19 August 22:48

    My experience is with Wise. I think, if you convert 1000 GBP to USD in your own Wise account by moving it between the currency wallets, you can send this USD to your daughter’s wise account fee free and she should be able to withdraw it to her USD bank account also fee free. Or of course, send your daughter the 1000 GBP to her Wise account then she can do the currency conversion herself at a time of her choosing when she likes the spot exchange rate. This should be cheaper than sending 1000 GBP direct to a US bank account as it cuts out the fee applied to overseas account transfers. If your daughter’s Wise account is registered in the UK rather than the US she might however have to pay the same fee to send the money to her US bank account but if she spends directly out of the USD wallet using her Wise debit card it will be fee free as the currency conversion has already taken place. Therefore, sending it to a US bank account might be a superfluous step.

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