Transferring money to Australia

Kitty2010_2

Hello

I am a UK citizen currently in Australia for 12 months. I need to pay for a procedure while I am here using money from my UK account and need advice as to which alternative would be the most cost effective. Should I;

a) use my British visa card to pay for it directly

b) transfer the cash from my uk account to my aus account and pay the bank fees

c) use a broker in the UK to transfer the money to my aus account

d) other options?

Can anyone help?

SG_Guy

a) this option would work assuming your card does not charge any foreign-exchange loading and fees and the service provider does not impose charges for using a credit card. Currently, the only credit cards that do not charge any fees or loading for usage outside the EU are the Santander Zero Card and the Post Office credit card - but both are MasterCard cards, not Visa. If you have a Visa debit card, then there will be charges and fees unless you have a NationWide current account debit card (but even then there is a 1% fee that they pass on from Visa)
b & c) This is a good option but only if you use a good currency broker. Banks will give you a rubbish exchange rate and add fees up to £30 for transferring. A good currency broker will give you a rate that is close to the wholesale rate (i.e. much smaller mark-up compared to a bank) and if you transfer a minimum amount of money (usually £3,000 or more), then there will be no fees to pay (although the receiving bank in Australia might charge a fee to receive the money). A good currency broker is UKForex.

Toe-Jam

Depending on how much it is https://www.xe.com/fx might be good for you. I use it to transfer Euros.

today £1000 would get you 1721.47 AUD if you used that service.

1000 GBP = 1721.47 AUD
1 GBP = 1.7215 AUD
1 AUD = 0.5809 GBP
Rates may vary at time of booking.
Quick Quote as of Jun 06, 10 4:43:39 GMT -07:00

You also havn't said how much money your talking about. if its not 10's of thousands of pounds, a fairfx anywhere card might be a good choice. https://www.fairfx.com

you add the funds to a pre paid mastercard with your debit card. then pay with the mastercard at a rate of interbank + 1.5%

so that would be

1 British Pound = 1.752907 Australian Dollar

1000.00 British Pound = 1752.907 Australian Dollar