World First Foreign Exchange - www.worldfirst.com

As a business we send money to different countries and in different currencies.

Now and again their compliance team stops a payment to ask some questions. After answering these questions you would expect the money would be transferred straight away. But no ! It took two weeks to transfer the money, in which case I had to go ahead and send money to our suppliers through my own bank. That meant after two weeks our suppliers got the payment again through World First.

Now again I have similar situation again, and this time after 20 days the money has not been paid or returned even though all questions have been answered.

They have not even informed me as when the payment will be made.

So for a business every day is important, and this is unacceptable.

I must add that I have never had this situation while sending money through our own bank.

So I would not recommend using World First for business customers.

Because I was due to holiday in France I set up the currency exchange with my bank in Australia. Just after Brexit I called World First whilst I was still in England, and made 4 transactions. I thought the whole thing was sorted until I got a telephone call whilst I was driving in France from the World First representative telling me that the money from Australia had not arrived. The next time they called, they told me that I would have to pay £1,300 expenses as the money still had not arrived. I explained that it could take as long as 5 days. They were then asking me for a further £3000!! I had to spend many hours on my mobile making calls to Australia, and battling with bad connections and 9 hour time changes, and heaps of worry and stress. I told them I did not have a further £300 to pay them!

When the money finally came into my bank, they sent their paperwork, and on their paperwork they did not even mention how they had repaid the £1,300 fine. They had just tacked it on to one of the payments. Furthermore, they did not fully explain, as by this time, the exchange rate would have been better for me, that I could cancel and start over. They just said that this would incur further fines and expenses.

I thought the whole experience was very shoddy,

I would definitely not use them again. I have further funds in Australia to transfer, I will find a more friendly company.

I started the registration process at 1 - clearly mentioning that I wanted to send funds to Uganda. After 4 hours of filling and sending a dozen scans I got the message that they can't send funds to Uganda ...

I used the referral system to send a link to my friend so that we could both use World First to pay people abroad.

My friend didn't use the specific link but it was clear to customer services that I had referred him. So I expected the £50 credit to my account when I carried out my transaction.

They then sent me an email saying because he did not use the link as per their policy then they would not credit my account. I told them they were a farce and closed my account.

Don't use them if you expect good customer services.

I was new to the online exchange. At first I did not know whether to trust and exchange however after many research through banks and directory - I made my decision to exchange with world first. The customer service excellent and they helped me through all the process swiftly. I will definitely recommend anyone that is interested in exchanging currency with them. Instant payment and instant customer service. Thank you very much Worldfirst.

It took them a few days to validate my identity, then things went forward pretty fast. I ordered Euros to be sent to my German bank account from my American bank account on a Thursday. I had to do a wire transfer to World First to pay them (in USD, in my case). On Friday I received an email that they had transferred the money to my German account already and that it might take a few days for my bank to process it but I had access to my money on that same Friday. By the way, consider that your bank might charge you for the wire transfer (mine charged me $30). Overall totally satisfied, would use again!

TL;DR: Identification verification might take a while, money transferred within a day from the US to Germany

The customer service at World Frist is excellent and the money transfer was successful eventually but it took ten days before World First credited my account with the funds sent to them and then another thirteen days before the deposit into the foreign Bank account was available. World First offers a good rate of exchange and low fees - better than other familiar names - but XE.com always has a better rate of exchange, will debit my Bank account directly, receive the funds within one day and the deposit in the foreign Bank is available within one week normally with no extra charge or fee for ACH/EFT and Draft transfer (and also has very good customer service). World First is good but not better than XE.com. Respectfully, E.R.M., W.V., U.S.A.

I've been using Citibank Global Transfers to transfer between my accounts in the US and UK for years, mainly due to the real-time transfer and no fee with Citigold account. The convenience of having a transfer completed in a matter of minutes is hard to beat, but the higher USD:GBP rates become noticeable with larger transfers, so I searched for alternatives and decided to try World First.

Setting up a new account online was very straight forward, and they followed up within minutes of submitting my app. to confirm setup. I initiated the trade after the weekend as I wanted to see live rates (very cool feature) before locking in my trade. I wired the USD funds that day, and the GBP was in my nominated UK account the next day.

They exceeded my expectations and the process was super smooth and easy, even for a first timer using their system. Happy to recommend and I will now use World FIrst for all future transfers except for those super urgent needs.

I'm very dissapointed. We are all in EU, and passports should be only a glimpse of the past...

I actually didn't get to the stage of transferring funds. I got impatient with them. I registered an account on the Tuesday and I was still quarrelling about identity verification on the Friday. Part of this was my fault because I thought a letter sent to me by WF with an I.D. code would be sufficient to proceed. It wasn't. You still have to send them passport/drivers license copy. But the client services support were hard work sending me ambiguous replies to my queries, it was a joke and it drove me mad. A company should lead by taking the customer by the hand until they get what they want/need, not make 'em feel left in the dark wondering what to do next. You're the supposed experts not us!

I signed up with Transferwise this afternoon (Fri) and the transaction was started in 5 minutes, and they didn't ask for any I.D either. Their website is much simpler to navigate than WF and rates are virtually identical. Transferwise was a breeze.

WF did offer to beat other rates by 0.45% as a good will gesture but by that point they'd lost me. Too many blips and delays.