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

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• tw33ty says:

  19 Aug19 August 19:13

  I’ve used zing since launch, not a lot, but in certain situations for spend and some for receiving. but with the changes to curve to today in fact (which is probably the reason behind the paid promotion on hfp), the slight benefit is did have in some situations is now gone for spending.
  Going forward it’ll be receiving payment only for me with zing

• ADS says:

  19 Aug19 August 19:32

  just looked at the HSBC website, and can’t work out what the fees are for receiving EUR bank transfers using Global Money – it just says “HSBC Global Money Exchange Rate is made up of the cost to HSBC and a foreign currency conversion margin that we include”

  does anybody know what sort of “margin” HSBC adds for these transfers?

  • blenz101 says:

    19 Aug19 August 22:38

    Global Money is pretty much near spot rate. You can set up a dummy transfer and see the rate at any time.

    Just make sure you are actually using Global Money as the legacy international payments options still exist and have terrible rates and can attract intermediary fees.

    • Sebix says:

      20 Aug20 August 17:02

      What do you mean by legacy international payments options please? I want to start using HSBC global money but I want to make sure I’ll do it properly 🙂

• teddyboy says:

  19 Aug19 August 20:19

  I’ve used Wise (ex TransferWise) for a while. The fees are 0.35% on interbank rate with EUR and USD conversions. They have a huge range of other currencies available, where the rate may differ. It’s not clear what Zing offers that beats this, other than the fact it is being backed by a high street bank (Wise is FCA authorised and funds are ring-fenced with Barclays).
  Wise also offers proper local account numbers for EUR, AUD, HKD, CAD, CNY, JPY and many many others, which is great for receiving money.

  • ChrisBCN says:

    19 Aug19 August 20:29

    This is not accurate; you need to look at the total you receive. Zing will beat it on some currencies on some amounts some of the time; Wise will win other times.

  • yonasl says:

    19 Aug19 August 22:30

    JPY account with WISE (and Revolut) both have a GB Iban so not local (but instead a UK bank account with JPY sub account). Transferring JPY from Wise to Revolut for instance costs JPY 900!

• Londonsteve says:

  19 Aug19 August 23:28

  I’d be interested to know what ‘ring fenced’ actually means in this context. If you had half a million in your Zing account and Zing keels over, would you get all the half a million back? Normal bank deposits are subject to the £85k limit per institution in the UK (100k EUR in the Eurozone), is this therefore an additional safeguard on your money versus keeping it in a traditional bank or building society? Would be odd if you get more protection from Wise/Revolut/Zing than you do at, say, Lloyds!

  • andy says:

    20 Aug20 August 07:35

    its not. every high street bank ‘ring fences’ client money. What this means is that this money cannot be used for speculative activities (stock market etc, you get the idea). Think of WireCard, customer funds were not exactly ‘ring fenced’, so to say 😉

    In a bankruptcy, however, creditor hierarchy still applies. Whatever money is left over goes first to ‘secured creditors’, of which the GBP85k limit holders would be one group. Any other secured creditors will be paid off after that. If there is still money left, then it goes to the rest of the Unsecured Creditors, of which the balance to 1mm in your case will be part of, alongside other Unsecured Creditors, etc etc.

    Ring fence here just means that it reduces the likelihood of customer deposits to disappear. But no additional guarantee per se

    • Delbert says:

      20 Aug20 August 18:44

      This is exactly what happens.

      A recent example being RationalFX / Xendpay going belly up end of November 2023 – an acquaintance was stung making an international transfer the evening before they went into administration.

      Anyway, it would appear from recent correspondence that they are deemed a secured creditor so good chance of recovering the full amount (fingers crossed!), but not looking good for the unsecured creditors and there will be many. I take no satisfaction knowing the devastation that this will cause a lot of innocent people.

    • Delbert says:

      20 Aug20 August 18:48

      I should add that in the case of RationalFX / Xendpay customers, GBP85K limit holders don’t qualify as a secured creditor, it’s more complicated than that.

      • Andy says:

        23 Aug23 August 05:33

        Correct – i used it for simplicity. In reality your guarantee comes from the deposit insurance scheme which is run outside of these entities, but i *pretended* its secured for illustration.

        The big caveat here is that whatever service you are using, make sure they have a banking license, otherwise the 85k deposit guarantee may not even apply. Look into Revolut (hint).

• Bagoly says:

  20 Aug20 August 03:57

  “ring fenced” means they say they keep money in Client Accounts.
  Does anybody know how frequent the FCA auditing is? Daily?
  In the cases where things have gone wrong, it was all hunky dory until the day/week/month before collapse with money not in the Client Accounts.
  Although the chance of that happening at a subsidiary of a major bank is very very small.

• Francisco Sapunar says:

  20 Aug20 August 11:48

  This app is really a pain. I applied yesterday and my data is still under review. The help pages say it would take 24h max but the help desk said 48h now. I asked to delete my application and the member of staff said he will escalate this case and proceed to the deletion immediately. How easy is to get rid of a customer! When I retierated I was unhappy with the service he said “sorry you had a bad experience with us. Have a good day! Be prepared to deal with a team that does not care of customer experience. Thanks HfP for leading loyal followers to bad companies!

• Pete says:

  21 Aug21 August 10:56

  Trying to sign up but the app code never arrives on my phone!

  • Simon says:

    21 Aug21 August 13:31

    I have the same issue. Apparently they are aware. No timescales for resolution though.

• Lordy says:

  21 Aug21 August 14:53

  This issue has been fixed apparently (well it just worked for me, just now)
  Referral if anyone needs:
  https://zing.me/referrals?referralCode=ODE3YmUyNmEtNzcxMC0zYzM2LTkzNDUtYzU2MDNlMGM2ZGZm

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.