International payments

Just_Want_to_Live_Life

I am excited to have made a real estate purchase in the US. I am now trying to find out the best way of making payments to businesses within that country. I would be grateful of advice on the best way to make payments as to send an international payment with my bank (Halifax) is £9.50 a payment or the businesses have offered to send me a paypal invoice for which each payment would cost approx. £7. Are there any better options people are aware of ?

Many Thanks

agrinnall

It really depends on how many payments you need to make and for how much, but one option may be to open a US bank account and use a currency broker to transfer money into that account.

Just_Want_to_Live_Life

agrinnall wrote: »

It really depends on how many payments you need to make and for how much, but one option may be to open a US bank account and use a currency broker to transfer money into that account.

It will be one regular payment each month, then bills such as tax etc once billed. I looked at the option of opening a US account but then have the same issue of getting my funds from UK bank to US bank which is still classed as an international payment. Under £10 a month is not the end of the world it would just be nice to be able to do it free.

InsideInsurance

Just_Want_to_Live_Life wrote: »

It will be one regular payment each month, then bills such as tax etc once billed. I looked at the option of opening a US account but then have the same issue of getting my funds from UK bank to US bank which is still classed as an international payment. Under £10 a month is not the end of the world it would just be nice to be able to do it free.

There are some banks which allow free transfers to other accounts held by you (or others) if its within the same banking group - ie free transfer from HSBC UK to HSBC USA but I've never looked at their exchange rates to see if the fee is simply hidden in the rate. Citi Gold are the only ones that I know that allow fee free transfers to other banks

Given you've multiple payments going out and international transfers can be slow across to the US I'd certainly look at getting a US based account and doing a transfer to it and then redistributing to your different companies from there. Of cause if you could afford to then you could transfer only quarterly or such to the account if fees apply or the rates are particularly good at any point in time.

No one does anything truly for free as they've staff to pay, there are interbank charges etc. Make sure any "fee free" options arent just giving terrible exchange rates instead.

mgdavid

just use an FX broker like www.currencyfair.com (others are available) to convert your money into dollars and then pay direct into the recipient's bank account. The cost is minimal and it is all done online.

benjus

You need to weigh up the cost per transfer, the % cost (i.e. the loading on the exchange rate), and decide whether it's better to make frequent smaller transfers, or less frequent larger transfers to a USD account in your name, from which you can pay the bills in USD. Bear in mind that a USD account will probably have a monthly charge to pay.

http://www.fxcompared.com/ is useful for finding the cheapest way to send money to a particular country. It tells you how much will be received for a particular amount of currency sent, after taking into account fees and exchange rates (although it can't account for any fees imposed by the receiving bank, as these vary too much - in many cases they won't charge anything).

Just_Want_to_Live_Life

benjus wrote: »

You need to weigh up the cost per transfer, the % cost (i.e. the loading on the exchange rate), and decide whether it's better to make frequent smaller transfers, or less frequent larger transfers to a USD account in your name, from which you can pay the bills in USD. Bear in mind that a USD account will probably have a monthly charge to pay.

fxcompared is useful for finding the cheapest way to send money to a particular country. It tells you how much will be received for a particular amount of currency sent, after taking into account fees and exchange rates (although it can't account for any fees imposed by the receiving bank, as these vary too much - in many cases they won't charge anything).

Many Thanks, just had a look at the link. Transferwise will do it cheaper and with a much better exchange rate than any banks.

benjus

Just_Want_to_Live_Life wrote: »

Many Thanks, just had a look at the link. Transferwise will do it cheaper and with a much better exchange rate than any banks.

Transferwise is the service I generally use for foreign transfers.

pinkcloud

As I said on other threads here, I used Transferwise https://transferwise.com/ to send £80 to Portugal in Euros yesterday.

I found them totally excellent. They charged me only £1, the payment went through in only a few hours and they answered my email with a query straightaway.

Great service.

pinkcloud