Transferring money from southern Ireland to UK

pineapplesherbet

Hi there, can anyone give advice please? My friend and I have started a small business from a facebook page selling clothes. Lots of our customers are in Southern Ireland and are used to paying for things with postal orders or phone top ups on the online buy and sell pages. Obviously that's no good for us. We have managed to get a few to use Paypal but many don't think they have the right bank cards or find it complicated. Does anyone know of a simpler way, can you do bank transfers from there? Any suggestions would be very gratefully received as we are losing business because of it. Sorry if this is in the wrong part of the forum, wasn't sure where to post. Ta in advance x:beer:

jonesMUFCforever

Two different currencies so it is an International payment unless you set yourself up properly as a business and can take visa and mastercard cards.

grumbler

Do you want the buyers to pay you by a bank transfer? Personally I wouldn't touch with a bargepole any company asking this.

That said, simple bank transfers from ROI to UK will be prohibitively expensive for small amounts.
If you insist on bank transfers, you can try opening a bank account in Ireland for accepting local transfers and then transferring money to UK:
For cheaper alternatives see http://www.mycurrencytransfer.com/money-transfer-to-UK/1000-EUR

guesswho2000

grumbler wrote: »

...That said, simple bank transfers from ROI to UK will be prohibitively expensive for small amounts...

Apparently not, I have an ROI account with Ulster Bank which has been dormant with a small amount in it for ages; got an email yesterday saying they'll soon be charging a monthly fee for it, so went into online baking and sent the balance to my UK account with the princely fee of nothing, much to my surprise (in € though, so my UK account will probably screw me on the exchange rate).

I was ready to write the balance off, but thought what they hey, may as well try!

As for opening a ROI account, that's a good suggestion for someone regularly using it, I got mine for fee free eurozone transactions, but stopped using it when the likes of Halifax Clarity became a better option - was easy to open, I strolled into a Dublin branch with my passport and driving licence - not sure if it could be opened from the UK though.

pineapplesherbet

grumbler wrote: »

Do you want the buyers to pay you by a bank transfer? Personally I wouldn't touch with a bargepole any company asking this.

That said, simple bank transfers from ROI to UK will be prohibitively expensive for small amounts.
If you insist on bank transfers, you can try opening a bank account in Ireland for accepting local transfers and then transferring money to UK:
For cheaper alternatives see http://www.mycurrencytransfer.com/money-transfer-to-UK/1000-EUR

Hi, no we don't insist on them, just can't currently find any other solutions. We've built up trust with our customers and the people in southern ireland seem to live much simpler lives and are used to doing things that way. Does anyone know how difficult it is to set up and maintain a debit/credit card payment system? Many thanks

grumbler

Ask on Small Biz & Charities' MoneySaving board.

macman

I can't imagine anything simpler than Paypal, though of course the fees are excessive. If they're buying or selling on ebay, then they should be able to use Paypal.
PS: I hope you don't refer to ROI as 'Southern Ireland' to your customers!

pineapplesherbet

macman wrote: »

I can't imagine anything simpler than Paypal, though of course the fees are excessive. If they're buying or selling on ebay, then they should be able to use Paypal.
PS: I hope you don't refer to ROI as 'Southern Ireland' to your customers!

Ha, funny you should say that as I did say that first of all, soon realised best not too. The problem they seem to find with paypal (aside from it being new to many of them) is that is apparently doesn't allow lazer cards to be used. Thanks again for ll the help xxx:beer:

maninthestreet

Sorry, but how is Paypal too complicated for people from Eire to use?