Foreign Bank Transfers

Kaybe_2

Hello moneysavers,

I'm not sure if this is the best thread for this but here we go!

I am often making bank transfers overseas (mostly from UK to France). I use Halifax and they charge me £18 flat rate per transfer. My transfers are usually only a couple of hundred pounds or less, so I thought there must be a better way to do this (£18 a month is ridiculous - you can sponsor a child in Africa for that price!).

Does anybody know a bank that doesn't charge such a large amount to transfer your money overseas?

hortense

I use www.moneybookers.com for this purpose. Basically you upload funds from your British bank account to your Moneybookers account - this usually takes 3-4 working days and they convert it into euros at an exchange rate that is as good or better than most banks. They email me when the funds are in my account. I then withdraw the euros to my French bank account which costs the princely sum of 1.8 euros. My French bank (Credit Agricole) do not charge anything and the money takes 2-3 days to arrive in my account. I have been doing this regularly for about 4years now(since I bought myself a ruin over there) and they haven't let me down yet.

full-stop

Get a Paypal account and get the recipient to do likewise. Its free to open an account. You may already have one for your ebay purchases.

You can do this one of two ways

1. Open a Normal Paypal account

2. Open a Personal Paypal acount

Bottom line if both you and the recipient open a Normal account, the recipient will have to pay about 3% to receive funds. As the sender you can send in various currencies but subject to paypal exchange rate which is not bad at all. With Normal Paypal account you can also receive credit / debit card payments.

Opening a Personal accounts means that the recipient will not pay the 3% but there are limitations to monthly receipt amounts (£250) and the recipient cannot accept cc / dc payments. You would therefore have to credit your Paypal account and then send cleared funds to counterparty.

I use it infrequently for such purposes and it is a great. No going to the bank and filling out forms and hanging around. Can all be done and dusted in 5 mins and at very reasonable cost.

Good Luck

Nala

I just transferred some funds from an Italian bank. The charges were 0.9 euros. Checked with Nationwide and if I want to send any funds back they charge £20. Hmmmmm only a 'slight' difference in charges then!

Hortense - thanks for that link. Shall bookmark it.

neilsj_2

Kaybe wrote: »

Does anybody know a bank that doesn't charge such a large amount to transfer your money overseas?

HSBC - £9 per transaction (via Worldpay). Takes 3-4 days to get to France. Limit of £2k per transaction. If you have online banking, you can set up and manage transfers yourself..