Bank Wire Transfers via SWIFT to another country

iandv

I hope this is in the correct forum here ?

A web development company based in eastern Europe who will be building my website, have asked for payment (small deposit first) via Bank to Bank wire transfer via SWIFT.

Any help / advice on this - all sound ok ? I have searched wikipedia for SWIFT and wire transfer and as long as it is bank to bank this should be ok/safe I am led to believe.

Can all UK banks carry out SWIFT transfers i.e. Nationwide?

The deposit payment will be in USD to a bank in Eastern Europe via an Intermeditary bank in the USA, I have the name of the bank and address in eastern europe which shows up in Google ok as a proper bank.

But when I run the SWIFT/BIC Code here http://www.swift.com/biconline/index.cfm this shows that the USD correspondent of the bank are American Express Bank Ltd based in the USA for payments made in USD. Is this because it will be used as an intermediatary bank because the payment is in USD ?

Does this seem ok for USD payments to another country? Am I just being paranoid ?

YorkshireBoy

iandv wrote: »

Can all UK banks carry out SWIFT transfers i.e. Nationwide?

https://nationwide.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nationwide.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php?p_search_text=swift&p_sid=&p_lva=43&p_li=1&p_page=1&p_new_search=1

(Can't help with the rest - sorry. )