Sending Money Overseas article discussion

arunadasi

morganlefay wrote: »

Sorry, idiot question since reading this thread has confused me. I need to send around 300 Euros to a friend in France who is adamant that she doesn't want a cheque. Looking on here most of the methods discussed seem too sophisticated, and in any case what she is demanding is crisp notes in her hand, not a pre-loaded card or any other cunning plan. I think my best option is to take a paperback, interleave some of the pages with Euro notes and post it.
Can anyone come up with a better solution for this sort of level of payment ?

I haven't read the whole thread so I don't know if this has been mentioned (surely it must have been!) but why not a simple account-to-account bank transfer? I do this all the time between Germany and England. I have bank accounts in both countries and often need to juggle money around. I do it through online banking -- you just add the IBAN number and SWIFT code on the online bank payment form and bingo!
From Germany to England the money is on the other bank account the next day.

innovate

How much do your bank(s) charge you for these transactions, and what exchange rate do you get?

I think the point of this thread is that there are a lot cheaper alternatives than using bank to bank transfer.

arunadasi

*** Edited to add: problem solved: see my next post.

Need some advice -- hopefully someone here can help!
I need to send money regularly to my mother in Guyana. When I was there recently she and I opened a joint account with a local bank, for which I have internet banking.
I live in Germany. I opened a moneybookers account (now called skrill) and it has been verified.
I am not sure as to the procedure -- it says the recipient needs an email account. So I opened a gmail account specifically as a "recipient" for the Guyanese bank account.

I then tried sending some money. I had read somewhere that I can send money "even if the recipient does not have a moneybookers account".

Well, this is what happened. I went through the process of uploading 170 EUR to moneybookers. And then I tried to send it. I entered the email address I had created just for this process, and my own name. I then got a screen saying that "The recipient is not registered. You can still send them money and we will open a temporary account until they are fully registered."

Now I am concerned. I do not want to open a moneybookers account for that bank account. For a start, I don't know if I can -- they need a lot of verification details which I probably don't have -- I can't give myself again with an address in Guyana, can I! And anyway, I don't have any verification for that address, except one letter from my bank there.

Have I made a big mistake? Can it be corrected?

Thanks in advance for any help!

joeatiyah

Not an expert, but having read around, as I understand it you can transfer to another moneybooker client account with an email address, or you can transfer to a non moneybooker bank account with the relevant bank details.
So you should be able to transfer direct to the account you want, after supplying details (IBAN etc)

arunadasi

Just to say I jave just done it. I registered with moneybookers in my mother's name (it was easy, no address verification needed), signed into her email account, did all the verifications needed, accepted the money on her account in moneybookers with SWIFT code and account number, and it has gone through. Pretty easy, and the fee was 0.50 Euros. The bank there will change that into Guyana dollars at their usual rate, I expect.

Not that it's done it will be very simple in future, and I'm glad to have found this method. I tried to do it through my local bank and the charges would have been almost as much as the amount sent!

So, moneybookers gets a recommendation from me.

EugeneB

I am the UK resident but came from Latvia where I also have a bank account.

Usually I use OpalTransfer to send money to my bank account in Latvia. There exchange rates are not the best but they have only flat £3 pounds fee.

They also have quite a selections of countries you can send money to, including: Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Baltic states, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Bulgaria.

innovate

arunadasi wrote: »

I registered with moneybookers in my mother's name (it was easy, no address verification needed),

I trust you did this because your mother asked you to help her?

You should expect account verification sooner or later - address verification is just part of Skrill's (/Moneybookers') verification procedures. You should be prepared to provide one or all of the following: proof of address (scan of utility bill, bank statement etc), proof of ID (scan of passport, DL etc), upload of funds from nominated bank account(s). Sometimes Skrill also ask for notarised versions of the above mentioned scans, and/or bank references. Without completed verification, your max amount of money you can send / receive / upload / withdraw is fairly low.

Sounds a lot of hoops to hoop through but if you want to use Skrill regularly, I would agree, it is well worth to get fully verified.

gglaze

hodman-29 wrote: »

Well the answer is CurrencyFair. They have set up a system where the basis of the transfer is by people in different countries...

Thanks so much for this, can't believe I've never heard of it before, but this looks absolutely brilliant! Is anyone else here using this service, and would many recommend it? Can anyone provide any experience specifically stacking this service up against xe.com?

I do monthly transfers in PLN to Poland, and also occasional (quarterly/bi-annual) transfers in USD to the US, and I've been using xe.com to do this for years. The fees aren't bad, but I'm always open to better options. Timing on xe.com is pretty good - I can generally get my money to Poland or USA in about 2-3 working days, from the time I initiate the transfer (although not as good in terms of timing as the near instantaneous transfers I can do using Citibank Global to my foreign Citibank accounts - but it's a tradeoff of best rates vs. best timing).. Also I find the xe.com website quite easy to use, but looks like CurrencyFair also has a pretty good site with instantly updating rates? Perhaps the best thing is to just give it a try unless anyone has some specific experience to share..

RetiredInThailand

EugeneB wrote: »

.There exchange rates are not the best but they have only flat £3 pounds fee.

The same problem as with most places that charge a low fee; they make all the money back (and more) on the lousy exchange rate.

Unless the sums you are sending are microscopic it's generally better value to pay a larger fee and get a better rate. The end result will benefit you.

gglaze

Hi guys,
Just wanted to follow up on this and relate my experience after having used CurrencyFair for a couple weeks. I signed up - the registration process was about as easy/similar to the registration for XE.com. And I've done 3 trades so far, 2 GBP to Euros and 1 GBP to PLN. The website is very simple and I'd say I prefer it a bit to XE.com. But more importantly, the rates I've gotten on the site have smashed every other alternative each time, including XE. On EUR I ended up with a market spread of about 0.72% after fees, compared to 2.09% with XE and 2.52% with Citi. This was on a small amount (1K) - I checked for a larger amount (10k), and it would have been 0.50% CurrencyFair, 0.87% XE, and still 2.52% Citi.

On the PLN transfer (4k) it was 0.53%, compared to 1.30% on XE and 4.09% on Citi.PL. This equated to about an extra 165 PLN received this way, compared to XE. Note that for PLN the fee is 10 PLN - fees are always in the local currency you are transferring out to.

So far transfers have been very quick - if I initiate in the morning today, and send the GBP funds via faster payment from my bank, they clear by the next morning and are available on the CurrencyFair site for exchange, and if I then complete my transfer that next morning, I've seen the EUR in my account by the end of that day - so apparently it is possible to get the entire thing done within 48 hours, which I believe is as good or perhaps better than XE.

In summary, I've only been using the service for a couple weeks and the verdict is still out until I've done a few more transfers - but my initial impression is very good, and I would highly recommend anyone using XE to look into CurrencyFair as a better alternative.