Best way to send money to Italy

andrewprouse

Hi there,

I've recently started my own business and have a supplier in Italy. I'm now sending this supplier fairly substantial amounts of money and need to find the most economical way of getting it there.

I'm currently using PayPal which charges me 3.5% to convert the money from GBP to EUR. So on today's transaction of £2750 I ended up paying PayPal £96.25 in charges. Although PayPal actually gets the money there same day, the process is very expensive.

I've taked with my bank (Lloyds), and the best they can offer me is a £19 charge for a 1-3 day transaction, but I have to use their exchange rates.

XE.com Exchange Rate - GBP 1 = EUR 1.189
PayPal Exchange Rate - GBP 1 = EUR 1.148
Lloyds Exchange Rate - GBP 1 = EUR 1.160

The way I've worked it out is that payments up to £2100 are cheaper to send via PayPal, then payments over £2100 are cheaper to send via Lloyds.

There must be a better (cheaper) way to send money to Italy (preferably same/next day)

Any ideas?

Cheers, Andy

benjus

I have accounts with Halo Financial (http://www.halofinancial.co.uk/) and The FX Firm (http://www.thefxfirm.co.uk/) - they both offer very good exchange rates and pretty low fees, although Halo is slightly faster.

This site is good for comparing different providers, although Halo isn't on it: http://www.fxcompared.com/Content/money-transfer-from-UK-Italy-below-3000-amount-2750

andrewprouse

Thank you very much for those links, I'll have a good look into both of those options early next week.

Thank you

andrewprouse

Absolutely fantastic, thank you very much.

Unfortunately Halo aren't able to help me as the amounts of money I'll be transfering aren't high enough (£2000 once per month). The FX Firm however look really good. Today's comparison is as follows:


The current exchange rate (XE.com) is: GBP 1000 = EUR 1190
Sending GBP 1000 through PayPal = EUR 1147 arrives at the other end
Sending GBP 1000 through FX Firm = EUR 1170 arrives at the other end

PayPal = 3.6% charge (£36.13 on a £1000 transaction)
FX Firm = 1.66% charge (£16.55 on a £1000 transaction).

Brilliant, thanks