Best Way to Take Large Amount of Euros Abroad?

19lottie82

Not sure if this is the right forum, but here we go....


My OH's parents are taking £20,000 to Portugal to pay off the balance of a static home that they are buying.

What is their best option when it comes to taking the money over there? They don't want to take it in cash and if they pay using their debit card from their UK account, the exchange rate (GBP-EUR) will be terrible!

We were looking into those prepay foreign currency cards, but my OH says you can only load so much on to these due to money laudering regulations....

Any advice welcome, thanks.

simongregson

Get them to arrange a bank transfer from the UK to the owner's account, usually cheapest via a broker like fairfx (not the card, they can do currency transfer too).

Miss_Havisham

You could ask your bank for a draft in euros and drawn on a portuguese bank. This would be at your bank's exchange rate.

tamiami

Try UKForex, you get the current exchange rate and its just £7 per transfer. www.ukforex.co.uk.
I use them to transfer money to Florida.

benjus

If paying by debit card is actually an option, they could save some money by opening an account with a bank/BS that does not charge for overseas transactions (e.g. Metro Bank, Norwich & Peterborough BS) and paying with that debit card.

Otherwise, as mentioned previously an FX broker is the best way - you can see some examples here: http://www.fxcompared.com/Content/money-transfer-from-UK-Portugal-above-3000-amount-20000

I personally have experience with Halo Financial (http://www.halofinancial.com/) and The FX Firm (http://thefxfirm.co.uk/), both of which I've used successfully several times.

19lottie82

Great, thanks a lot. Seems to be what they are looking for, will pass on your advice!