Rateo: Currency converter

Most converters tell you a number nobody trades at. Rateo tells you what you
actually get.

The mid-market rate — the one you see on Google — is the midpoint between what
somebody will buy your money for and what they will sell it to you for. It is
a real number, and you will never be offered it. Rateo shows it, then shows you
the gap between it and the real world: what a bank counter is quoting, what a
transfer provider will actually deliver, and where the difference went.

REAL RATES, AND WE SAY WHERE THEY CAME FROM
Every figure names its source. Fiat rates come from the European Central Bank,
topped up with a broader open feed for the 130-odd currencies the ECB does not
publish. Coin prices come from CoinGecko. Nothing in this app is simulated,
estimated or filled in with a plausible-looking guess — when a rate is not
available, Rateo says so instead of inventing one.

202 CURRENCIES AND COINS
Every currency the world's central banks publish, from the euro and the dollar
to the Vietnamese dong, the West African CFA franc, the Kazakhstani tenge and
the Icelandic króna. Plus 35 cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum,
Solana and XRP. Search by currency, by code, or by country — type "Japan" and
you get the yen.

WHAT A TRANSFER REALLY COSTS
Sending money abroad? Rateo ranks providers by what actually lands in the other
account, not by whose fee looks smallest. A zero-fee provider with a fat spread
loses to one that charges a visible fee and a near-mid rate — because that is
what happens to your money. Every row breaks down the hidden markup and the
visible fee separately, so the arithmetic is yours to check.

BANK COUNTER RATES
For a growing set of corridors, Rateo pulls the actual buy and sell prices a
named institution is publishing right now, and shows the spread as a percentage.
No typical spreads, no industry averages — either a real counter is quoting it
or the row is not there.

BUILT FOR TRAVELLING
Rateo works out where you are and puts your home currency on the left, the local
one on the right. Point the camera at a price tag and it converts it. Split a
bill. And when a card terminal abroad offers to charge you in your own currency,
Rateo has already told you to decline — that is dynamic currency conversion, and
it is one of the most expensive buttons in travel.

CHARTS THAT ANSWER A QUESTION
A week, a month, a year. Drag across the chart to read any day. High, low and
average for the window. For fiat there is no intraday view, because central banks
publish once a working day and drawing a line between two of those points would
be a picture of nothing.

RATE ALERTS
Set the level you care about and get told when it arrives. Watch a pair without
opening the app twice a day.

WORKS ON A PLANE
Rates are cached, so the converter answers with the last known figures when you
have no signal — and tells you how old they are rather than pretending they are
current.

NO ACCOUNT, AND YOUR MONEY IS NOT THE PRODUCT
There is nothing to sign up for. Your conversion history, your alerts and
anything you point the camera at stay on your device — price tags are read on
the phone and never uploaded. Rateo records which features get used so we know
what is worth keeping, and the amounts in that are sent as broad bands only,
never as a figure. What you are moving is your business.

One small banner appears on Markets, Travel and Alerts. There is none on the
converter itself, because that is the screen you came for. In Europe you are
asked before any of it is personalised, and you can say no.

Some links to transfer providers are partner links. Your price is exactly the
same either way, and the ranking is calculated from the delivered amount — a partner cannot buy a better position.

Seventeen languages: English, Czech, German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Hungarian,
Indonesian, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak,
Turkish and Ukrainian.