3S Money Review

The company offers access to over 65 currencies and batch payments.

Better exchange rates and more IBAN account support are available based on the amount of spend per month.

The account is tiered, and the pricing model lends itself better to bigger businesses and enterprises.

Overview

3S Money multi-currency account offering

3S Money offers a business multi-currency account with over 65 currencies in over 190 countries and 3 local accounts (UK, NL, and LU).

This is more or less the average offering across similar cross-border platforms but is still slightly behind top companies.

For example, Wise business account offers 10 local accounts but fewer currencies (40), while Airwallex comes with 130 currencies and 12 local accounts, and Sokin offers 4 local accounts and over 75 currencies.

Use the table below for a full list of supported currencies.

Similar to many other platforms, each business will get a dedicated account manager with 3S Money (they call them Dedicated Relationship Managers).

Their job is to ensure your financial needs are taken care of, that you have all the answers to the questions, and to provide any support you need.

Again, this is a fairly standard offering and most platforms come with it, but 3S Money managers get a ton of positive recognition online.

One advantage of 3S Money over other platforms is that they accept non-residents. In many cases, you will need to submit residency verification as part of the registration process. This makes 3S Money a good choice for those running a business from a different country.

Payment systems & networks

When payments are made abroad, they run through various systems depending on the transfer destination, deposit method, amounts, and currencies involved.

3S Money supports 3 major transfer systems, namely:

• SWIFT (global payment system)

• SEPA (mostly a European payment system with a few non-EU countries)

• Faster Payments System (only used in the UK)

As you can see, they fill in the regional gaps with the SWIFT transfers, which are costly and can be slow. Whereas platforms like Payset can send money over 7 networks including CHAPS, ACH, BACS, and RTGS.

This means that 3S Money is decent for making payments mainly to the EU and the UK, however, for anything else (including the US) we’d recommend finding an alternative.

Batch payments

Batch payments let you upload a CSV file of payments you need to make and the system will take care of the rest, the system in this case is 3S Money.

Essentially, batch payments let businesses pay multiple clients simultaneously.

With 3S Money batch payments, you can either upload new payments to be made or use your existing ERP to export and upload the payments.

Now here’s the catch. Batch payments are not unlimited, there is always a limit (it can be based on the amount or number of rows).

3S Money doesn’t explicitly state their limits, and only references “1000+” payments, which to us, means they are very likely to be limited to 1000 payments per batch.

However, by integrating batch payments through 3S Money API, you can build a custom solution to process more payments.

If you need to make more right out of the box, have a look at Sokin who offers a 5000 payments limit and no cap on the amount, and Multipass who is uncapped on rows but limited to $15,000 per batch.

Fees and what's included per account

3S Money has a tiered account system costing from $25 to $300 per month. This is not necessarily bad since it gives your business an ability to scale up or down as needed.

It is a bit pricey compared to platforms like Revolut Business or Wise Business who offer a free account (ultimately with fewer features) but still cheaper than many others like Payset and Genome for example.

Although 3S Money charges for the account subscription, the fees are lower compared to other companies with subscriptions. For example, Genome EUR account opening fee is €100.

3S Money payment charges

There are set fees for using 3S Money for making payments - these are PER transfer:

Then on top of this, based on where the money is going, there may also be a second charge:

The Areas of these charges are:

Transfer speed and limits

With 3S Money there are no transfer limits and you can hold as much as your business needs in the multi-currency account.

This is true to a degree, but also depends on the network being used.

For example, FPS transfers are capped at £1,000,000 so there is no way more can be sent, which means any larger transfer will go over SEPA or SWIFT, which is more expensive and slower.

3S Money claims that most of the transfers will arrive within the same day, but that is usually an optimistic timeframe (unless you’re sending to the UK through the FPS system, which is almost instant).

This is because a lot of transfers, especially large ones, are delayed by the transfer network used:

Taking this into account, 3S Money is a good solution for quick transfers to the UK under £1 million, and for larger transfers to the EEA (including UK and Switzerland).

Legitimacy

3S Money was founded in 2018 and is based in London. It is not a publicly traded company and has not partnered with any industry giants.

However, it did go through 6 rounds of investments from various venture capitalists and raised over £8m, which gives it a bit more credibility.

It’s also important to know that 3S Money is not a bank and has no banking license, meaning any money in the account or that is being processed is NOT FCSC-protected.

Instead, 3S Money holds an e-money license and is regulated by CSSF in Luxemburg (W00000016), FCA in the UK (900918), and DFSA in Dubai (F007004).

This gives them enough authority to handle payments and store money while safeguarding it (splitting client money from their money into different accounts).

Eligibility

3S Money API

3S Money also offers API access to streamline part of cross-border financial management.

Products offered by 3S Money

Integrations

At the moment, 3S Money only offers one integration and that is with Xero. It is free to use and available to all 3S Money users. This would help your business accounting and automate the reconciliation process.

In comparison to other platforms, this is better than nothing, but still behind companies like Payoneer with over 2000 integrations or Currenxie with their marketplace integrations.

Signing up for 3S Money

Companies using 3S Money

3S Money has optimized its offering to specific industries, including:

• E-commerce

• Travel

• Maritime

• Import/export

• Construction

• IT

Below is a quick overview of how 3S Money solves many financial challenges in these sectors.

If you want to know more about how cross border payment solutions can help your business, have a look at the following use cases:

The alternatives

Equals Money

Multipass

Sokin

Payset

Genome

Currenxie

Revolut

Zen

Payoneer

Airwallex

Wise Business