Making a payment to a French bank account

Victor_Delta

M_Thomson wrote:

The fact that you have to pay a fee is because the Euro is a foreign currency like any other.

I think you will find that this is only a relatively small part of the charge.

After all, you still have to pay quite handsomely to make a CHAPS or telegraphic transfer between any two accounts - irrespectively of the currencies involved eg between two British £££ accounts, British Euro account and French Euro account etc.

V

Waldir

Victor_Delta wrote:

After all, you still have to pay quite handsomely to make a CHAPS or telegraphic transfer between any two accounts - irrespectively of the currencies involved eg between two British £££ accounts, British Euro account and French Euro account etc.

Unfortunately true... IMO it should even go under these "unfair bank charges" section. Anyway...

Last time I recommended moneybookers, noting that it was a bit slow to send money through.
Another site I experimented with is XEtrade: https://www.xe.com
Very easy to use, fast to send money, and still very good rates (not as good as moneybookers though, but by a small margin).
The problem: there's a flat £8 fee to send the money by TT from XEtrade to the destination. (They also offer a free Bank Draft option instead of TT, but my French bank charged me ~£20 to cash it )
Also, in case your decide to use it, they provide 2 means of sending the money to them: CHAPS or BACS, with 2 different account numbers. Strangely enough, my Halifax branch only knew how to make CHAPS transfers at £20 each... they didn't know what to do with the BACS account number. Luckily they were very nice and spent 15 minutes trying to fit the numbers in the various boxes of their computer system until it worked for free. It appears that this free BACS transfer is the same as the online transfer, and you can therefore do it from home.

Waldir

Hazzanet

regularsaver1 wrote:

CHAPS is UK only

I managed to send a CHAPS payment to a Finnish bank account a week ago. The funds are Chaps'ed to the European "Target" network, and appear in the recipient bank account by the close of business that day. Did cost £25 tho.

My Grandad used to live in Spain, and he had his pension paid into a UK account. He used to write a Barclays cheque out to himself and pay it into the spanish bank. They used to charge him £3 for the privilege. Dunno if the same works for French bank account though.

Hazza.

kenshaz

try https://www.moneycorp.co.uk

mitzycat

I want to move a few 000's euros held in a french post office account to the UK. Have found that most systems are designed for situations such as "gap year student runs out of money", or small internet sales. They either have a ceiling or would be very expensive for larger sums. Has any one any idea on the best way to go about it, w.r.t rates & fees, speed, ceilings etc?

regularsaver1

CHAPS costs £25 at the bank I work at whereas a Telegraphic Transfer (TT) costs £17.50 - so would not use a chaps to send to Finland as TT would be cheaper

there is a way of doing a BACS in this country - but you have to wait the 3-5 working days to clear, whereas CHAPS you pay to have it cleared quicker

bengal-stripe

regularsaver1 wrote:

Telegraphic Transfer (TT) costs £17.50

I like telegraphic transfers. I presume they are still transmitted by Morse code and delivered by messengers on motorcycles?
How romantic!

regularsaver1

what you on about? :S

Hazzanet

regularsaver1 wrote:

CHAPS costs £25 at the bank I work at whereas a Telegraphic Transfer (TT) costs £17.50 - so would not use a chaps to send to Finland as TT would be cheaper

Regrettably, time was of the essence, and this was an immediate solution to an immediate problem.

My bank gives the following options:

TIPANET / 5 Wkg Days / £8.00 (not to Finland!)
Structured Payment / 5 Wkg Days / £8.00 (foreign bank charges may apply)
SWIFT / 5-7 Wkg Days / 0.25% of payment, Min £13.00, Max £35.00
Euro CHAPS / Same day, but occasionally up to 2 Wkg Days / £25.00

Chaps, unfortunately fit the bill at the time :rolleyes2