Your Real Fintech Reporter took this pic two days ago - citizen journalism in action.
This is a real receipt, from an ATM in London. I live in Switzerland so it was converting from CHF to GBP.
I always knew I was getting hosed in these transactions. As a geeky fintechie I actually knew almost exactly how much I was getting hosed. A few years ago I did the same transaction and took a pic of the screen, noted the time and looked up the FX interbank rate at that precise time.
About 99.999% of the world won’t do that, a fact that banks have use to mint money in the FX market.
Now that same data is printed for me in simple language - see that 8% markup printed in the receipt. The no fees pitch is marketing BS, the money is in the markup.
I met somebody after this ATM visit who l confirmed what I suspected - the only reason banks display this damning data is because regulators demand it.
Yep, those bad old regulators maybe doing JoeQPublic and Upstarts a big favor. If consumers see that 8% markup a few times, then the ads for Revolut, Transferwise etc will resonate.
