Best Swift Tranfer

delpino

Hi all,

I have the bank details of a person residing in Barcelona. She gave me IBAN and BIC/SWIFT. Does that mean I'm forced to use SWIFT? SWIFT is really expensive. Our bank Nationwide charges 25 GBP. Any cheaper options? From my German bank account I can do IBAN/BIC transfers free (even though I need to fax the form to them). I guess being in the Eurozone has advantages.

System

Nationwide only offer expensive legacy SWIFT transfers of euro. Other UK banks offer modern Single European Payment Area Credit Transfers, but they typically charge about £10 for them.
The Single European Payment Area (SEPA) is all the EU countries (including the UK) plus a few others, including Switzerland. EC regulations require banks in the SEPA to charge the same for sending euro (and Swedish krona) cross-border (eg Hamburg to Barcelona) as they do locally (eg Hamburg to Berlin). As a result, banks (including the main UK banks) operate efficient pan-European clearing of euro.
The Blair government could have applied the regulations to transfers of GBP. It asked the banks whether they wanted that. The banks, of course, said no. So Brown said 'All right then, go on ripping off customers, no nasty EC regulations for you, diddums.'
The regulations do, in theory, apply to transfers of euro by UK banks. There used to be (free) domestic transfers of euro via BACS, not publicised, and little used. The regulations would therefore have required UK banks to offer free transfers of euro to other SEPA countries. So the banks abolished BACS euro transfers.
The result of this cosy conspiracy is that a UK bank can currently charge what it likes to transfer euro from Liverpool to Barcelona, provided that it charges the same to transfer euro from Liverpool to London.

delpino

Thanks Nick! I emailed Nationwide and they say they plan to be SEPA compliant by end of 2012. They take their sweet time.

opinions4u

If I understand rightly, free international transfers will be available from all banks in 2012, as required by the Payment Services Directive.

Of course, the bank receiving transfers in a foreign currency will retain the right to charge for such receipts.

Halifax charged me £9.50 for a recent online payment to Germany. It had to be set up over the phone first though. It hit the German bank the next day. Two days ahead of a payment I sent to a relative's UK bank account.

System

delpino wrote: »

Nationwide ... say they plan to be SEPA compliant by end of 2012.

Funny that. For much of 2009 they were telling me they planned to be SEPA-compliant by November 2009. Turned out they didn't know what SEPA-compliance is. I doubt if they know now. I think they would have to join the European Payments Council in their own name, rather than relying on HSBC to process international payments for them as they do now.
AFAIK, the Payment Services Directive will not force UK banks to make transfers of euro free (because there is no free domestic system for transferring euro). It would make international transfers of GBP (for conversion by the receiving bank) free, if the Big Con Lib coalition decided to apply the regulations to transfers in GPB (because UK Faster Payments are free).
Meanwhile my French pension arrives in my Citibank euro account in 24 hours by SEPA Credit Transfer, while a BACS Slower Payment within the UK still takes 48 hours.
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/crossborder/index_en.htm