Difference Between

Wire Transfer vs EFT

Wire transfer and EFT (electronic fund transfer) are related with each other. Both mainly involves the transferring of money and/or funds from a person/business to the other. These two systems are used daily in different establishments around the world like in hotels, airplanes, ticket booths, restaurants and many more others.

Wire transfer

Wire transfer is a kind of electronic transfer wherein you don’t have to go to the bank and fill-up those withdrawal slips or deposit slips. All the transaction in a wire transfer is done electronically; hence it is called wire transfer. For example, in credit cards, the moment someone swipes the card in the retailer’s terminal, they are authorizing the bank to wire transfer funds to the retailer’s bank account.

EFT or Electronic Fund Transfer

The process wherein funds (money) are transferred electronically via a computer system is called EFT or Electronic Fund Transfer. Common examples of EFT that you may have encountered already are credit cards, debit cards, ATM cards and online bank accounts. What’s great in EFT is that when you’re transferring money to other country, the currency is automatically calculated and converted.

Difference between Wire Transfer and EFT

Wire transfer is like transferring funds virtually since it doesn’t involve the actual money itself and EFT is the process when someone uses wire transfer. For better understanding, imagine yourself that you are watering a plant. The moment you water the plant you are doing wire transfer. And the process of watering it which is gardening is EFT. Wire transfer is not called wire transfer if it doesn’t involve electronics or a computer system; the same way goes to EFT. EFT is more suitable to use domestically while wire transfer is suited for international payments via bank-to-bank.

If you are dealing with large amount of money and have some security doubts and fears, then you better use EFT or wire transfer. It just not eliminates security fears but also lessens the time and hassle of going personally to the bank.