Sending Money Overseas article discussion

sagara · 8 January 2010 at 5:53PM

Anyone know the best way to send £30k from China to the UK - from a relative to my bank account in the UK?

System · 9 January 2010 at 7:20PM

osmosis_dave wrote: »

Am soon hopefully to be taking employement abroad and my employer is also a non UK company ... Any advice greatly received

Which country? And are you going to be living there for months/years, or what? If you are going to be living in (for example) Germany, probably simplest to open an account in Germany. If you will work from the UK for a foreign employer who pays you in euro, you could consider a Citibank euro current account. No monthly fee, and you a get a VISA debit card which you can use to withdraw euro from VISA ATMs in the eurozone. Customer service is a pain in my own experience, but others find it acceptable. Once you have a Citibank euro account, you might also want a Citibank GBP account. It is then easy to transfer euro from the euro account to the GBP account, and Citi convert at a reasonable rate.

kubilay123 · 16 January 2010 at 5:22PM

Hi....just looking for some advice as to the best way of transferring money from turkey to the UK....The sums involved are 5-6 figure amounts. It is currently held in a turkish bank account. Is it best to go direct from Turkish bank to UK bank or through currency brokers. Thanks in advance

CarefulS · 23 February 2010 at 4:36PM

Hi

Has anyone else found bits of their money go missing during the transfer?

I am doing a long stay in the US and my money is back home in UK bank accounts. So I used MSE to get ideas of online brokers to send money accross to a US bank account. I signed up with CurrencyDirect, MoneyCorp and am part way through with HiFX. Other newbies might find it useful to know that although they all made it sound as though you could register and be trading in a few minutes, it actually took weeks for me (eg you may have to wait for them to post you a letter to the address you gave). If you plan to move house or go travelling, do make sure you get all this set-up well in advance - having just moved made getting my address verified a lot more tricky.

The other thing I found is that although many companies claim no fees, it isn't so simple. When not all my money appeared, I followed up and was told by CurrencyDirect that it's only in Europe that they can ensure no fees apply and that for transfers outside Europe, some inbetween bank can mysteriously charge a fee without them knowing. I was astonished so I asked Moneycorp and they said pretty much the same. CD did refund the charge this time as a good will gesture but say they can make no guarantees of whether this will happen in future transfers. My US bank of course charges to receive a wire (US$12), but it is the mystery fee that is a pain - if I lose US$25 on £1000 transfer, it makes having shopped around for a rate a bit pointless. And I wonder if more would disappear on a larger amount? I wondered if other people doing transfers outside Europe have also found bits of money going missing?

dave1470 · 23 February 2010 at 7:08PM

CarefulS, I find this happens a lot with the US and Canada, the reason for this is because the routing bank take a fee to receive and forward the funds to the final bank.

For example: Currencies Direct bank (Barclays) sends USD to their correspondent in the USA (JP Morgan Chase), and they then send the funds on to the final bank.
Chase will probably take a 25 USD charge for their services.

Unless the remitting bank has a direct correspondence with the final bank, there will nearly always be a charge.

Hope this makes sense.

moneymel · 9 March 2010 at 9:50AM

innovate wrote: »

If you want to transfer money from your UK account to someone else's Euro bank account, procedure is similar to above. Both people need to have their own Moneybookers accounts, with their respective bank accounts registered and verified. Then
you upload money to your Moneybookers account, as above

you send money to the other person from within Moneybookers - just specify the email address of the other person. A charge of 48p is levied, regardless of amount sent. The recipient gets an automated email, advising that the money has arrived (it's instantly transferred, and transfer is irreversible).

the other person then withdraws to their bank account, similar to above

Again, this also works the other way round, i.e. someone else can send you money that way.

Hope this clarifies the procedure - I think you will find it's easier to do than to describe how to do it.

Unfortunately I disagree with this last sentence. I recently tried to send money to my sister in South Africa to pay for my dad's 70th birthday bash... what a disaster!

The moneybookers process for verifying her bank account was lengthy and in the end didn't work. To verify her account she had to make a very small withdrawal which ended up costing her as much in fees as the amount she withdrew. Then she was supposed to enter the reference number that appeared with the transaction to verify the account. It wasn't valid!! Then they asked her to send them a copy of her bank statement (with all of her personal details on it!) showing the transaction and their reference number - which she again had to pay for and only to find out that the reference number doesn't even appear on the statement!!

More than two weeks later after a lot of phonecalls between moneybookers, my sister and I, and numerous emails, she sent the money back to me via her moneybookers account so that I could transfer it back to my bank account ( which also takes several days) and that whole process (not incl. phonecalls!) cost £30.

Would have been cheaper, quicker, easier and less stressful to pay a bit more and send it via bank transfer.

Thank goodness someone else stepped in and helped and the party went ahead!

Eenymeeny · 20 April 2010 at 8:13AM

Hi, I wonder if anyone can advise on sending money to my son in New Zealand please? We've tried Paypal and had so much bother with them that son closed account and refuses to open a new one! Long phone calls to their customer service in USA from NZ didn't help, son used to work in a bank and wasn't impressed at all. They kept saying that his details were wrong although we'd used the service previously with the same details.
Anyway, now we are looking for a different service please? It's usually amounts of £100 or so for birthdays etc. Bank's charges are approx £20, £40 if in a hurry. Moneygram can only be used in Christchurch, 5 hours drive away! (Please check, if anyone is thinking of using it, not all Post Offices there are agents)
Thanks for any advice:) (I have all of his bank details for transfer and would prefer not to open another bank account here)

blueberrypie · 20 April 2010 at 9:03AM

Eenymeeny wrote: »

Hi, I wonder if anyone can advise on sending money to my son in New Zealand please? We've tried Paypal and had so much bother with them that son closed account and refuses to open a new one! Long phone calls to their customer service in USA from NZ didn't help, son used to work in a bank and wasn't impressed at all. They kept saying that his details were wrong although we'd used the service previously with the same details.
Anyway, now we are looking for a different service please? It's usually amounts of £100 or so for birthdays etc. Bank's charges are approx £20, £40 if in a hurry. Moneygram can only be used in Christchurch, 5 hours drive away! (Please check, if anyone is thinking of using it, not all Post Offices there are agents)
Thanks for any advice:) (I have all of his bank details for transfer and would prefer not to open another bank account here)

If you're sending money regularly, you'd find it easier to have an account with one of the foreign exchange services. As mentioned earlier in the thread, I've used xe.com for years and have never failed to be impressed. You do have to go through the process of opening an account, so will have to provide (probably by fax/email) copies of ID etc, but once done, you just log into xe.com and tell it where to take the money from and where to send it to - it goes from your bank account to xe, they do the currency exchange bit and deliver it straight to the recipient's bank account.

heloid · 20 April 2010 at 9:16AM

Eenymeeny wrote: »

Hi, I wonder if anyone can advise on sending money to my son in New Zealand please? We've tried Paypal and had so much bother with them that son closed account and refuses to open a new one! Long phone calls to their customer service in USA from NZ didn't help, son used to work in a bank and wasn't impressed at all. They kept saying that his details were wrong although we'd used the service previously with the same details.
Anyway, now we are looking for a different service please? It's usually amounts of £100 or so for birthdays etc. Bank's charges are approx £20, £40 if in a hurry. Moneygram can only be used in Christchurch, 5 hours drive away! (Please check, if anyone is thinking of using it, not all Post Offices there are agents)
Thanks for any advice:) (I have all of his bank details for transfer and would prefer not to open another bank account here)

I use HSBC for smaller transfers but unfortunately Westpac charge $25 on their end every time so it's not so cost effective. When I can I use hifx.co.uk to send straight to my NZ bank account. They pay for all fees but they do have a £250 minimum.
So I send back £250 when I do and kept the excess sitting in my NZ savings account. Hifx get my 2 thumbs up. (That's about $520 at the moment.)
I wouldn't bother looking at smaller currency exchanges companies for less than £250 so try at xe, moneybookers or your bank etc

Eenymeeny · 20 April 2010 at 10:06AM

blueberrypie wrote: »

If you're sending money regularly, you'd find it easier to have an account with one of the foreign exchange services. As mentioned earlier in the thread, I've used xe.com for years and have never failed to be impressed. You do have to go through the process of opening an account, so will have to provide (probably by fax/email) copies of ID etc, but once done, you just log into xe.com and tell it where to take the money from and where to send it to - it goes from your bank account to xe, they do the currency exchange bit and deliver it straight to the recipient's bank account.

Thanks Blueberry, xe looks good but I'm a bit confused over transfer options. Would you mind advising me please? I understand that BACS will take a few days but that wouldn't be a problem. FPS is faster but I know that Lloyds charged me £40 once for sending it quickly. Am a bit confused about EFT, Bpay, Internet and Payanyone. Am I right in thinking that EFT/ACH is probably the best option for me? Thanks again:)

Sending Money Overseas article discussion

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