Best Way to Transfer Euros to Pounds

moniker_2

Toe-Jam wrote: »

Thanks for the reply, but that doesn't help. There is no problem sending money from UK to Euro, loads of places will do that Caxton, FairFx etc but finding somewhere to do the reverse is the headache.

To buy sterling from those sites you have to wire your payment to their bank account which is in the UK, and therefore its outside Eurozone and a nice £25 charge for the Swifts transfer. so that takes the shine of the great rates.

Whether the UK is within the eurozone or not is irrelevant. It is within the EU so the PSD applies. Make the payment in euro as a 'SHA' payment (sending party should only pay its own costs) to the BIC and IBAN of the UK bank account. The UK bank should not levy a charge to receive the payment and perform an automatic currency conversion. The exchange rate will then be listed on your bank account statement.

Overall, to make payments between two EU countries, even if none of them are within the eurozone, making the payment in euro will still attract the lowest charges and the best exchange rates as exchange rates within the EU are usually triangulated using euro as the intermediary.

If you make the cross-border payment in any other currency than euro, then the full international payment charges will usually apply for both the sending and the receiving end.

dazza.mk

moniker wrote: »

If you make the cross-border payment in any other currency than euro, then the full international payment charges will usually apply for both the sending and the receiving end.

With the execption of Swedish Krona, the Swedes opted in so the Krona was covered by the same legislation, however we didn't

moniker_2

dazza.mk wrote: »

With the execption of Swedish Krona, the Swedes opted in so the Krona was covered by the same legislation, however we didn't

The opt-in only applies to payments made in the country's own currency. Payments received in euro are always 'in' within the EU.

System

Not quite. The opt-in bites if there is a domestic equivalent. So a Swedish bank has to charge the same to send krona from Stockholm to London as it does from Stockholm to Malmo - that, is (I guess) little or nothing. If (which it might?) Denmark has a domestic system for sending Swedish krona within Denmark, then Danish banks have to charge the same for sending krona from Copenhagen to Stockholm as they do for sending krona from Copenhagen to Aarhus.

Currently, the UK does have a domestic system for sending euro from Liverpool to Manchester: BACS euro. But it's being phased out. AFAIK, there will then be no domestic method of transfering euro, except for a legacy SWIFT transfer (which would be a mad way of transfering money between two UK bank accounts). Citi already only offers a SEPA transfer as a means of transfering euro within the UK. The European Central Bank intends that SEPA transfers should become the only way of transfering euro (and krona) within EU countries. At least France and Germany are headed that way, on the good argument that it is wasteful to maintain the domestic credit transfer system in parallel with Pan European clearing houses. Once domestic equivalents disappear, the current EC regulations will become irrelevant. Presumably custom and market forces will keep prices low, except in rip-off UK.

moniker_2

That is not how I understand that it works. I happen to have a Swedish bank account and while it costs me nothing to send Swedish krona between banks in Sweden the bank will charge close to £20 for sending the same amount in Swedish krona from Sweden to a Sterling account in the UK. However if I make the payment to the UK in euro rather than in Swedish krona, the payment is free of charge at both ends and I also gain from a better exchange rate, even though there are two currency conversions involved.

The Faster Payments system does have the technical ability to transfer money in euro but that facility has not (yet) been activated.

lsc1980

i've had a similar problem so i'd like to share my (negative!) experience with Barclays Wealth...which was not even a cross-border transfer, but they still tried to rip me off on the exchange rate.

I recently had a shocking experience of trying to exchange Euros into Pounds and, “thanks” to a mis-adventure, started to scratch the surface and to realise how much money Banks are still allowed to rip customers off on currency exchange.

I have 2 accounts with Barclays Wealth: a Euro account and a Sterling account, both in my name.
I moved a significant sum from my Euro to my Sterling account a few weeks ago, effectively exchanging Euros into Sterling in order to purchase my flat. (as an aside, I’d also like to say that I was pressured into doing this a few weeks ago because the Barclays Wealth experts thought that the Pound was going to strengthen… and whilst I accept that predicting exchange rates is a bit of a dark art, I trusted the “expert advice” but instead the exchange rate has gone into the other direction and I lost quite a bit of money… maybe the Barclays Wealth experts aren’t so expert after all…)

I was offered a “preferential rate” at the time and, given that I am a customer as well as Barclays employee, I (silly me!!) trusted them blindly and didn’t do my research.
Last week I then had to exchange a further sum and the exchange rate I was offered was not “preferential” this time...there was effectively a whole 4% difference between the quote and the "real" rate (which incidentally in my case equated to being ripped off by €900, which I wasn’t willing to accept!)

In the end I contacted First Direct who is now going to converting my euros into sterling at a rate pretty close to the “real” exchange rate, so I thought I'd rather do that (and have some money left for a bed and a closet) than effectively paying a commission of €900 to Barclays for a simple currency exchange.

I dare not think about how many more beds and closets I could have bought by doing the exchange with First Direct in the first place...

Bottom line:

• This was the last time Barclays has seen my custom
• First Direct are absolute stars!

System

moniker wrote: »

while it costs me nothing to send Swedish krona between banks in Sweden the bank will charge close to £20 for sending the same amount in Swedish krona from Sweden to a Sterling account in the UK.

I'm not surprised to hear that Swedish banks try it on. But this charge is illegal under the EC regulations on cross-border transfers. The Swedish government elected to make these regulations apply to transactions in krona exactly as they do to transactions in euro.