Paying for a foreign wedding

taffybigbelly

I need to pay for my wedding which we are having in France. The owner of the farmhouse accepts payment by card or bank transfer to his French account. It is going to be around 5000euro so would like to find the best rate and method of paying.
I have found the company bestforeignexchange.com who seem to have a great rate but was not sure if they were trustworthy/reliable.
Has anyone used this company?
Does anyone have any advice?
Would appreciate anyones help. Thanks

ferf1223

they seem to be owned by Thomas Exchange Global which is a well known player in the industry.

Depending on when you need to make the payment, if you could organize one of the better credit cards for foreign transactions that would be my choice...may be additional protection there that you wouldn't get if you make a transfer via a 3rd party foreign exchange firm.

benjus

If you're not in a huge hurry to pay, I would get a Halifax Clarity credit card and use that. It's completely free to use in foreign currencies and should give you Section 75 protection if anything goes wrong. The only caveat is that you would need to ensure that your initial credit limit is at least the GBP equivalent of 5000 EUR - attempting to pre-load the card with the full sum and pay it in one go would be against the T&Cs. If the owner is prepared to accept payment in several installments, you could do this with a lower credit limit, paying off the card straight after each installment.

If you are in more of a hurry and you can get to central London easily, you could open a Metro Bank current account, transfer the money into it and pay the owner with the debit card. The cards are issued on the spot and the account accepts incoming Faster Payments, so it could be done very quickly - although accounts can only be opened in branch.

There are various other cheap cards for foreign currency payments described here: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-travel-money

If you want to go down the bank transfer route, I make regular transfers to France and I have used Halo Financial and The FX Firm. Both offer decent rates and have worked very smoothly for me.