Sending Money Overseas article discussion

rob_2512

I want to make a small payment (£5-£10) to a company in Germany. They do not take credit or debit cards, but have supplied two alternative bank details (Postbank or Dresdner Bank).

My bank charges £9 for SEPA payments, which I presume this is.

Is there a better way to do this?
And how long will different alternatives take to get there?

NFH

rob_2512 wrote: »

I want to make a small payment (£5-£10) to a company in Germany. They do not take credit or debit cards, but have supplied two alternative bank details (Postbank or Dresdner Bank).

My bank charges £9 for SEPA payments, which I presume this is.

Is there a better way to do this?

If you complain to your UK bank that their fee is more than the transaction amount, and compares unfavourably with the fees charged elsewhere in Europe (e.g. usually free, EUR 0.20 in Ireland, CHF 0.30 in Switzerland), then they might waive the fee on an exceptional basis.

Alternatively, find someone with a normal euro account outside the UK who can send a SEPA payment at zero or little cost for you. There are plenty of such people in these forums.

knightstyle

rickybean, have you thought of loading a travel card and sending it to the person in Australia? They could send it back and you reload it to send again. Maybe even have two cards, post is quite quick and without the pin the card is useless to anyone else.

dzug1

Rob 2512 - Buy some cash, send it in the mail. Insured if you are paranoid but it's overkill for that sort of sum

Carlakoala

Hi, I have scanned the site but cannot as yet find a request like this -
I want to pay for a course. The parent co is in the USA so the obvious answer is credit card. But, how can I tell how much I will acutally be charged at the end of the day?
I know the exchange rate £:$ means the total should be around £500 but how can I know in advance how far off the mark that will be - how much will they charge and what exchange rate will they use?
ta

dzug1

You cant tell exactly

But if you use this site:

http://www.visaeurope.com/en/cardholders/exchange_rates.aspx

after finding out from the T&C of your card what loading they will apply then you won't be far off

The majority of cards charge between 2.75 and 3%.

Mastercard won't be significantly different

Carlakoala

update, Halifax - my bank - will do the transfer direct from my current account for only £1.50 and the exchange rate will be the universal one for that date. which doesnt sound bad to me. I guess though I loose the benefit of points on a credit card (such as they are) and the protection you get when you pay over £100 though.

Carlakoala

Thanks for the link Dzug1. Used it and found the Post office do a 0% for foreign transfers and 2.5% fee which aint that bad. I know it has been mentioned before but not until you need it do these things make sense.
ta

zaki+lina

many of my firends saying the money recev'd other side is not correct , inface it's 20-35% lower then expected.

no explainaton given. aviod please

lizzybradbury

I was glancing through this article and realised that the specialist currency brokers sections is missing a company - FTT Currency I have a friend who used these guys and said it was a really easy system to use and extremely efficient with the funds being transferred at any time of day!

Worth considering.