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Exchange Market Review: Transfer Fees, Safety, Usability, and Monito's Verdict

Byron Mühlberg, writer at Monito.com
Monika Macur

Reviewer

May 25, 2023
Advertiser disclosure

Exchange Market is a decent money transfer service (7.8/10) recommended by Monito's experts, particularly for transfers between Switzerland and bordering countries in the Eurozone. Although a comparatively small and local transfer company that neither handles significant transfer volumes on an annual basis (6.3/10) nor receives a considerable amount of customer feedback, Exchange Market is nevertheless a true specialist in CHF/EUR currency exchange, offering some of the best exchange rates available for these transfers (10/10) on a clear and straightforward web platform (7/10).

What Monito Likes About Exchange Market

  • Backed by Zurich Cantonal Bank,
  • Good CHF/EUR exchange rates and no transfer fees,
  • Geared toward cross-border workers and SMEs doing business in Switzerland and the Eurozone.

What Monito Dislikes About Exchange Market

  • Exchange rate margins are not clearly displayed on the homepage,
  • Activation code for account registration arrives by post,
  • No mobile app,
  • Only two currencies (the Swiss franc and Euro) and one pay-in method (bank transfers) are supported,
  • Very little customer feedback to date.
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Exchange Market is especially well-suited for money transfers between Switzerland and the Eurozone generally, and Germany, France, Austria, and Italy in particular, as the platform tends to be especially competitive to these countries. If you'd like to transfer outside of the Eurozone or make sure you're getting the best deal of all, then we recommend running a search on Monito's real-time comparison engine to compare the market instead.

Who Is Exchange Market For?

Exchange Market is available to new registrants from Switzerland and countries in the Eurozone. The platform only supports international bank transfers between the Euro and the Swiss franc.

How Monito Reviewed Exchange Market's Services

As with all services reviewed by Monito, Exchange Market underwent a rigorous evaluation to assess the quality of its service. To begin with, our experts opened an Exchange Market account to test out its functionalities, including the ease of registration and speed of transferring money, which provided a well-rounded overview of the platform's strengths and limitations. Next, we weighed this score against several other key criteria, including customer reviews, percentage of fees constituted by exchange rate margins, pay-in options, access to customer service, as well as business and legal metrics such as volume transferred, appropriate authorization, and company size. Finally, we analyzed hundreds of thousands of searches on Monito's comparison engine to determine how often Exchange Market was the cheapest service and how often it was competitive against its rivals over the past three months, giving a reliable overview of its pricing in relation to the market. As with all Monito Scores, Exchange Market's score was peer-reviewed by at least one Monito expert.

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Exchange Market at a Glance

Category

Monito Score

Highlight

Trust & Credibility

6.3/10

A relatively small but very secure money transfer company.

Service Quality

7/10

Signing up can take time, but making a transfer is seamless.

Fees & Exchange Rates

10/10

Among the best fees and exchange rates from Switzerland.

Customer Satisfaction

4.9/10

A small number of customer reviews in total.

Last updated: 19/06/2021

Trust & Credibility

6.3

Background check

Exchange Market is duly registered by the Commercial Register of the Canton of Zurich, where the company is based, and authorised by the Swiss regulator FINMA.

Security & reliability

Exchange Market's platforms are fully secured and use top-notch security protocols, including HTTPS and segregated user accounts with Zurich Cantonal Bank.

Company size

A small and local Swiss transfer company, Exchange Market employs around 50 people and services some 20 thousand customers. It handles over CHF 500 million in transfers each year.

Transparent pricing

All of Exchange Market's fees are buried away in hidden exchange rate margins, meaning that the service is far from transparent regarding its pricing.

Can I Trust Exchange Market?

Yes, you can most certainly trust Exchange Market. While the company is local and rather small compared to big-name international providers, Exchange Market is nevertheless a trustworthy and credible money transfer service that handles more than CHF 500 million in transfers every year and boasts some 20 thousand customers and 50 employees.

Moreover, as a Swiss firm, Exchange Market adheres to some of the highest standards of financial services regulation on the globe. Not only is the company a licensed financial services provider that's duly authorized by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) and registered by the Commercial Register of the Canton of Zurich in Switzerland, but Exchange Market also adheres to the stringent MLA (Money Laundering Act) regulations imposed by FIMNA, meaning its transfers and business activities are subject to a high degree of regulatory scrutiny.

Is Exchange Market Safe?

Yes, Exchange Market is safe indeed. The company offers institutional-grade security for their platforms, including 256-bit SSL encryption with a 2048-bit signature, meaning that the exchangemarket.ch website is as safe as it gets when transacting over the internet.

Over and above a secure platform, Exchange Market also imposes several other security measures during registration. These include the full verification of a new customer’s identity when opening a full profile, including verification of bank account ownership.

Service & Quality

7.0

Opening an account

New registrants will be required to wait for a confirmation code to be delivered by post, adding time to the signup process.

Making a transfer

Once a new Exchange Market account has been opened, making a new bank transfer is a fast and straightforward process.

Contacting support

Finding help when needed is easy with Exchange Market, although no live chat option is available.

Exchange Market's Service Quality

Although opening a new account with Exchange Market can take some time due to the verification process and the requirement to wait for confirmation by post, overall, making a transfer and using the service is easy and fast.

Monito's Impressions During Our Test

Our reviewers found Exchange Market's web platform simple and clear all-around, if a little on the unintuitive side. During the registration process and on the user dashboard, for example, while our reviewers found explanations to be detailed and precise, we also noticed terms that might not be user-friendly or understandable to all customers. For instance, the dashboard uses the terms "Buy Euro" and "Sell Euro" when unifying these terms under the term "Send Money" and then allowing the user to specify which currency they'd like to send could be a more pragmatic and user-friendly solution. This aside, the platform as a whole was robust and speedy, and our test transfer was delivered well on time and without any hassle.

Fees & Exchange Rates

10

Transfers to a bank account

Very cheap transfers from the CHF.

Exchange Market's Fees & Exchange Rates

Exchange Market is frequently the cheapest bank transfer service between the Swiss franc and the Euro of all on relevant Monito comparisons, and on those transfers where it isn't, it's pretty much always highly competitive. The cost of sending money with Exchange Market can be understood as follows:

Exchange Market Transfer Fees

Many banks and international money transfer services charge a transfer fee (either in the form of a fixed fee, a commission, or both) on each transaction sent abroad. At Exchange Market, no such fees apply, and you can send any amount you like between EUR and CHF bank accounts without having to pay these types of fees.

Exchange Market Exchange Rates

Exchange Market makes its money on exchange rates, meaning it charges a built-in "fee" on each currency unit exchanged between EUR and CHF. This fee is an exchange rate margin formed when Exchange Market offers customers an ever-so-slightly poorer exchange rate than the mid-market exchange rate (i.e. the rate you'd see on Google) and pockets the difference as revenue.

Being a true specialist in CHF/EUR currency exchange, Exchange Market's exchange rate margins are very low and tend to be fixed between 0.40% and 0.50% worse than the mid-market exchange rate. This means that for every CHF1'000.00 you convert into Euros, you'll pay the built-in exchange rate fee of between CHF 4.00 and CHF 5.00.

Take a look at the table below to get a better picture of how this works:

Sent

Exchange Market Rate

Mid-Market Rate

Margin (%)

Margin

Received

CHF1,000.00

0.9141

0.91818161

0.0044

CHF4.45

914.1

1000

1.0839

1.0892229

0.0049

4.89

CHF1,083.90

Quoted: 15/06/2021 19:15 GMT +01:00

Compare fees & exchange rates:

How Exchange Market Works

  • Step 01

    Check Exchange Market's Rates

    Use Monito's comparison engine to see how Exchange Market’s fees and exchange rates weigh up against the rest and make sure they are indeed the cheapest option for your international money transfer. There, you'll be able to discover both the cheapest ways to fund your transfer and have the money received.

  • Step 02

    Register for an Exchange Market Account

    Register for an Exchange Market account by providing your email address and a password. You'll need to provide your full name, date of birth, nationality, preferred language, physical address, and basic occupational information on the next page. You'll also need to confirm that you are the legally defined beneficial owner of the money you exchange with the service and that you're not a "Politically Exposed Person" according to FIMNA AML regulations.

  • Step 03

    Wait For The Code By Post

    In the next step, you'll need to wait for a confirmation code to arrive by post so that your address can be confirmed. If you live in Switzerland, this process can take between one and three working days.

  • Step 04

    Add Bank Accounts

    Once your account is set up, you can add bank accounts to your Exchange Market dashboard. These include your own bank account(s) and those of your beneficiary(s). Information required to add a bank account includes the owner's physical address and full name, the bank account number, the account name, and the currency.

  • Step 05

    Set-up Your Transfer

    Start sending money by selecting either "Sell Euro" (used for sending EUR to a CHF bank account) or "Buy Euro" (used for sending CHF to a EUR bank account) in the user dashboard. Next, select which two previously-added bank accounts you'd like to transfer between and then click 'Confirm transaction' below.

  • Final step

    Review and Pay

    In the final step, you'll be given 20 seconds to review your transfer details (which includes the amount to be sent, received, and the exchange rate.) If all's in order, click 'Continue' and then make an ordinary SEPA bank transfer from your online banking profile to Exchange Market's banking details as instructed.

    Go To Exchange Market

Frequently Asked Questions About Exchange Market

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Swiss post image credit: Claudio Schwarz/Unsplash

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