Editing The Pen Addict 459/transcript (section)

== Money Transfer Issues ==


'''Brad:''' It's not. It is a concern for you because it just happened. Like, this is why I'm so, like, fired up as we're going into this. The international banking system sucks.

'''Myke:''' Oh, I read about this in Refill. You should have come to me and I could have helped you.

'''Brad:''' That's actually a good point. It is so frustrating. All I want to do is pay someone money without... Yeah, and both of us, both parties want to pay and receive money in an efficient and non-extra fees kind of way, right? Yeah. Because when you're dealing with a large sum of money, every percentage point matters, right? When you're dealing with a large sum of money and low profit margins, every percent matters. Oh, M.G. I think after a month, Myke, literally a month, today was the day I think we got it taken care of physically at my bank. And that's the second trip I've had to make for that after failing at all the online aspects of this. And this is to pay for a PIN, so it is stationary related. I feel comfortable in bringing this topic up. But my goodness, what a terrible, terrible system it is to pay people money. And I'm happy to pay your fees. Just one, don't make them exorbitant. And two, make your system work. Oh, my gosh. I'm done. I'm done. Hopefully. I can't solve... I say this and something else is going to happen.

'''Myke:''' Your end, because you're always going to have issues with your bank. But in the sense of making transfers relatively speedy and pain-free, I have been using for years now a service called TransferWise. It's called Wise now in the UK. So, okay. This was recommended. Yeah. I really strongly recommend people that are transferring money overseas, at least one person being on that. Because one of the great things... So, this is how I receive my RelayFM money, right? So, it's how I get paid to buy our company. Because what I like about TransferWise is you can set up what seem to be essentially fake international accounts. So, I have a bank account with an American bank account number in TransferWise. And the money gets sent there. And then I can just swap it over into UK money. And it's immediate. It's really incredible. And Rosemary is in the chat. He's one of the hosts of Automators and RelayFM. I believe we may have recommended to Rosemary to use TransferWise because we were struggling for years to try and work out how to do it. PayPal was just destroying me fees-wise. Absolutely. So, I ended up using that. It takes a bit to set up because you've got to go through a lot of like... You know, especially if it's any significant amount of money, you know, over like a very small amount. You've got to start providing documentation to them to prove that you are who you say you are kind of stuff. And that you're not money laundering, right? But once you get it all set up, boy, is it an easier experience.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So, Wise was the recommended platform by my receiving party. And it failed me for weeks. And then we had to give up and physically go to the bank.

'''Myke:''' Well, okay. I don't know what happened there then. Yeah, me neither. Do you know what issue you were having?

'''Brad:''' I'm almost certain. And there's no clear error message. I'm almost certain it's because it's a business account with my bank. And they're only accepting the checking accounts from my bank, which are like... Like I use a huge U.S. bank. Like that's, you know, gigantic. But my business account is not... Doesn't seem to be recognized. But if I used like a standard checking account, it would have gone through. That's weird. Is what I'm getting. Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. Anyway. But yeah, that was... Why is this the way to go? It just didn't work for me in this instance. And there was no clear reason to why. We spent weeks on that. Like everything's not instant either. That's why it's taken me a month to get this.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, no, you've got to wait a couple of days at least when the transaction actually goes. It's a... You know, I used to do this stuff for a living.

'''Myke:''' Transferring money internationally is expensive, time-consuming, and can go horrifically wrong really, really fast. And just to clear it up, you said it's for a pen. You're not buying a pen. You're buying pens that you're going to sell, right?

'''Brad:''' Like you... Yes, yeah. I'm working with a Johto to make a sweet pen addict edition.

'''Myke:''' It is epic.

'''Myke:''' Oh, God. I've got to get one of those things.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. It's going to be good. We'll have more on that later. But yeah. Like a Johto is awesome and they've been so patient with this. But man, what a mess. What a mess. Oh, boy. It's literally taken a month. I think we're almost exactly a month from when I got the invoice. So I think today we have solved all our problems with many, many, many, many... I do hope so. That's the thing is you can't fail quickly with this, right? It's like you do a process, then you wait a week to find out what happens.

'''Myke:''' Yep.

'''Brad:''' So that's why we're a month. But anyway. Really sucks. All right. We should talk about other stuff. We should talk about the real show. But I'm sorry. I had to hijack because I literally just like... I was hoping I would get to the podcast in time because I was at the bank finalizing this. So good times. In more business news, I was on the Nib Section podcast, one of my favorite podcasts, with the Fountain Pens Oceania group. I talked with Diana of the Nib Section on a really wide-ranging interview. A lot of the premise of why she wanted me to get on there was to talk, you know, the turning your hobby into a business aspects of what I do. The jobby. Yeah. I hate that. I never used that term. I should probably use that more.