Sending Money Overseas article discussion

m5rcc

koru wrote: »

I'm just wondering if the following advice in the article is still valid:

"Sending larger amounts (£5,000+)

When the amount you wish to transfer jumps to the 'serious' level, the only players able to give a good rate are specialised foreign exchange brokers. "

From what I can see, the peer-to-peer options, TransferWise and CurrencyFair, offer better rates than brokers, even for big amounts.

Correct and always have done...

Archi_Bald

Never trust any poster whose only two posts are promoting the same company.

Reported Ilyas23 for spamming

DStu

Rather than sending money from the UK, I need to get some money to the UK.

To be more specific, my OH is from Australia and she has some money (a couple of thousand or so) that we’d like to get into a UK bank. We’ve looked around a bit, and come up with opening a Citibank account in Australia for her to move the money into for free, and transferring it free and instantly to a Citibank account in the UK which I will open.

This appears to be a free option, and I think the exchange rates look ok. But just wanted to see if anyone else has had any experience in such a matter, or whether I’m missing anything glaringly obvious?

grumbler

DStu wrote: »

... I think the exchange rates look ok. ...

How do you know? Are you sure it's better than you can see at
http://www.mycurrencytransfer.com/money-transfer-to-UK/4000-AUD
http://www.fxcompared.com/Content/money-transfer-from-Australia-UK-above-3000-amount-4000

jem16

Looking for some help here and have read the last couple of pages with the excellent links to My Currency Transfer and FX Compared.

My son wants to transfer about £60k over to Canada in the not too distant future. He has used Currency Fair before but is a little anxious about using them for such a large amount.

My Currency Transfer lists Moneycorp as the best to use. FX Transfer says The FX firm.

Taking into consideration the safety aspect of moving such a large amount, would either of these places be suitable and is one better than the other?

Or indeed is there anyone else he should consider?

Archi_Bald

NS&I have very recently launched a currency transfer service but it only works for transfers to an account owned by the transferrer, and only out from the UK, not in. They don't charge and say their exchange rate is competitive, so this might be an alternative for sending really big sums.

http://www.nsandi.com/international-payments-service?ccd=NASMAA

jem16

Archi_Bald wrote: »

NS&I have very recently launched a currency transfer service but it only works for transfers to an account owned by the transferrer, and only out from the UK, not in. They don't charge and say their exchange rate is competitive, so this might be an alternative for sending really big sums.

http://www.nsandi.com/international-payments-service?ccd=NASMAA

Thanks. I had a look at this and the rate seems to be 1.7996CAD as opposed to 1.8265CAD from Moneycorp. That's about 1614CAD difference - quite a bit.

MaudA

I am wondering if it is also a relatively cheap option to use paypal to transfer funds from one currency/country to another. I have a paypal set up in both England and Germany and would like to know if anyone has experience of sending money from one paypal account to the other. Direction is from Euros back to pounds for me.

Thanks in advance!

grumbler

https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/cross-border-and-conversion-fees#currencyconversion

Don't stop on "Fees for Cross Border Personal Payments" (1%+€0.35), and scroll down to "Currency conversion fee" (3.5%).

Paypal is worse than banks.

too_fast

Archi_Bald wrote: »

NS&I have very recently launched a currency transfer service but it only works for transfers to an account owned by the transferrer, and only out from the UK, not in. They don't charge and say their exchange rate is competitive, so this might be an alternative for sending really big sums.

http://www.nsandi.com/international-payments-service?ccd=NASMAA

I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with them yesterday talking to them about their 'fee free' service.

After eventually finding someone who had heard of their new service, I managed to work-out that they charge 2% off the market rate for currency exchanges. They hide the charges, and don't even mention them in their Terms & Conditions, and don't have any live rates on the site.

2% is pretty poor, and you can do much better with XE.com or my favourate OzForex.co.uk