Foreign cheque processing fee

amitski

Hello,

What bank offers the lowest foreign cheque processing fees please? I need to cash in a couple of US$ cheques.

Thanks a lot in advance!

jonesMUFCforever

What is the value of the cheques?
Banks won't just convert international cheques for brand new customers unless on a collection service ie more expensive to you and it may take weeks to get the money.

amitski

jonesMUFCforever, thanks for your reply!

The value is about US$1800. The problem is Nationwide, of which I've been a loyal customer for years, stopped processing foreign cheques as of 16 March this year.

Are there any ways to cash foreign cheques but to open a bank account?

agrinnall

Get the money sent electronically instead, even with the slightly archaic banking in the USA that's generally possible.

Ballard

amitski wrote: »

Are there any ways to cash foreign cheques but to open a bank account?

I assume that you mean not to open a bank account. I doubt it. KYC (Know Your Customer) rules are likely to make that too cumbersome for anyone to process.

grumbler

Are you saying that for UK cheques KYC rules are irrelevant? There are plenty of companies willing to process UK cheques.

Ballard

grumbler wrote: »

Are you saying that for UK cheques KYC rules are irrelevant? There are plenty of companies willing to process UK cheques.

Really? I didn't know that. I presume that they charge a fairly hefty fee then. Perhaps one of those would be able to process it. The cheque would have to be sent to The States for it to be cleared so there's no getting away from the wait.

One unlikely but possible route would be to check whether the drawers bank has a branch in London and contact them to see if they can clear it and send the funds to your account. I wouldn't hold out much hope with that but it's probably worth a try.

grumbler

http://www.cashconverters.co.uk/we-loan/cheque-cashing/

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cash+cheque

M0ney

amitski wrote: »

Hello,

What bank offers the lowest foreign cheque processing fees please? I need to cash in a couple of US$ cheques.

Thanks a lot in advance!

I opened a Barclay's e-saver specifically for this purpose, unlike you my cheques are of low value, I paid $10 USD in last week and got £6.57 I think I've heard that if the value of the cheque is more than $50 there is a 0.5% fee...

grumbler

E-saver?
Firstly, they pulled it.
Secondly, AFAIK it was possible to have it only linked to a current account, and the only allowed transfers were to and from the current account.

amitski

Thank for your replies!

I don't mind opening a new account as I will be getting more cheques from the US and the company I work with does not do bank transfers (someone needs to tell them it's 2015). The only other way they would do is PayPal and PayPal charges quite a hefty processing fee to receive money.

What I'm looking for now is a high street bank with the lowest international cheque handling fees., that is otherwise is nice enough to deal with too.

Any suggestions please?