Key Takeaways
- Transfer limits determine how much money you can send, spend, and withdraw.
- Payment services generally offer reasonably high transfer limits, but their rules can change at any time, so it’s important to understand the details.
- Wise, for instance, has faced criticism for a 25,000 GBP withdrawal limit on certain European business accounts.
- With Payset, you can almost always send and receive funds without transaction limits, subject to legal compliance and higher risk exceptions.
- That makes it easy for Payset users to transfer the amounts they need.
What Are Transfer Limits?
Transfer limits are easy to understand: they’re simply the amount of money that you can send, receive, or withdraw for as long as the limit applies.
Many popular payment platforms, such as Wise, set limits around the amount of money that you can transfer. These limits are often generous and cover most users’ needs regardless of whether you’re a business or an individual.
However, it’s important to understand transfer limits in full, including the rules specific to your situation and the fact that limits can change at any time.
Below, we’ll explain how you can ensure you find a payment service with limits that meets your needs — and why you should consider using Payset, where users can send and receive funds without general limits in most cases.
How Do Transfer Limits Work?
Transfer limits set a cap on the amount of money that you can move, but there are a few different types of limits you might encounter:
- Inbound vs. outbound limits: Your payment service may set different limits based on whether you’re sending or receiving funds.
- Withdrawals and deposit limits: Your payment platform may restrict the amount you can withdraw or deposit on the service.
- Per-transaction limits: Some providers limit each transaction, possibly allowing larger totals to be spread across multiple transfers if there is no other cap.
- Currency limits: The currency involved in your transfer may affect the limit.
- Time-based limits: Your payment provider may reset your transfer limits after a certain amount of time, such as hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.
- External limits: Funds moved over an external payment rail (such as SWIFT, ACH, or SEPA) may face limits specific to that rail. Similarly, the bank or the payment platform on the other end of the transaction may set its own limits.
- Card payments: You may face limits on spending and ATM withdrawals if your payment service offers a prepaid card.
Protecting Your Payments From Transfer Caps
In this section, we’ll outline three simple rules to help your payments move smoothly even if you’re working within transfer limits.
1. Find a Limit That’s Right for You
Payment providers don’t arbitrarily impose transaction limits: they make decisions based on risk management and compliance, balanced with the needs of customers.
This means that you can generally expect sufficient transfer limits. Before you sign up for a service, ask if they can meet a transfer threshold of a certain size, and whether there are any conditions or time limits around that transfer cap.
There’s no single limit you should expect, so focus on finding a service that’s right for you — or better yet, choose a service with no general limits at all.
2. Know the Rules Before You Make a Transfer
Payments that go above a hard limit are often blocked by your payment platform before they’re initiated, but you should understand when other limits apply.
Limits aren’t just imposed by your payment platform: external payment channels and receiving banks may set their own limits. Your active transfer may be cancelled, and you may need to pay fees such as failed or reversed transaction costs.
Additionally, you should be aware of threshold-based pricing, such as variable fees based on the size of your transfers, or extra fees if you go above a limit.
3. Be Prepared for Changing Limits
Remember: your payment platform can change its payment rules at any time, and you might not find out about it until it happens.
If you are suddenly subject to a limit, it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. It’s a decision on the part of your payment provider. It may affect you individually, or it may be a broad policy decision that affects several users.
Payment services may have staff on hand to explain the reason for the change. In some cases, you can increase your limits through extra compliance and verification steps.
Does Wise Set Transfer Caps?
Yes. Like many payment platforms, Wise explicitly states that it sets sending limits: “There are limits for how much you can send with us. They depend on which currencies you send to and from, and how you pay.”
In general, its sending limits are high: £20 million per GBP transfer, €20 million per EUR transfer, and $1 million to $20 million per USD transfer depending on the method.
It also states that there is “no limit on how much you can receive to your account” for most currencies, though exceptions and compliance checks may apply.
Wise also has other important limits, including a 25,000 GBP withdrawal limit for certain European business accounts. This restricts how much affected businesses can withdraw or send money from their Wise currencies each month. Certain other types of account usage remain available under the rule.
The true impact of this rule is unclear, but it may prompt some users to seek out competing services that can be used alongside or instead of Wise.
Payset Transfers Are Limitless
At Payset, we don’t limit the amount of money that you can send or receive. We explain this policy in our support pages:
“… There are no transaction limits on Payset multi-currency accounts. However, higher-volume transactions may require additional compliance review.”
We may at times place thresholds on specific users and transactions for compliance reasons (per section 6.15 of our terms of service). You can always contact us for further information for your specific circumstance.
But short of specific transactions that require further compliance review, you’ll be able to move money with Payset freely, enjoying uncapped transfer amounts combined with competitive pricing. Plus, our account managers and support team are here to help you along the way.
Ready to get started? Contact our team to discuss your needs, including multi-currency IBAN accounts for high-volume businesses.
