Help with international transfers

abisan777

I'm utterly confused by intrnational money transfers.:(

I've been trying to make a payment with Halifax to the US. I've been given a 'recipient' bank details with an ABA number (no account number) and the 'beneficiary' bank details with the account number and SWIFT code of the person who I want it to go to. I'm told that if I give the beneficiary details the payment may be delayed or rejected and it must go through the recipient bank. Halifax will only let me give one set of details and the staff at the branch have no idea which set I should be using or how to make it work. Help?!

Flobberchops

Do you have both a SWIFT and IBAN number for the recipient? The account details are contained within the IBAN.

The Halifax staff should be able to instantly recognise which details to use since an incorrect format would surely not be possible to enter in their systems!?

grumbler

AFAIK, USA banks don't use IBAN.

Finefoot

Use Paypal. Or world remit. The US banks make things convoluted

eDicky

abisan777 wrote: »

I've been given a 'recipient' bank details with an ABA number (no account number) and the 'beneficiary' bank details with the account number and SWIFT code of the person who I want it to go to.

Given by whom?

The 'beneficiary' is the person receiving the funds, not a bank.

The ABA is the routing code that US banks use.

The SWIFT code identifies the bank, not the person and their account.

It sounds like you have plenty of details, but neither you nor Halifax staff know what to do with it. The bank name and address may be needed.

You would save a lot of money and receive proper advice by using a service such as TransferWise, instead of paying Halifax for their ignorance and possible problems.

Ben8282

What is the purpose of this transfer? Why are you sending money to this person?

Ballard

I concur with previous posters:

US Bank accounts don't have IBANs
The 9 digit ABA code is a routing code (also known as the Fedwire)

To pay the beneficiary you will need to provide their name, address, account number, their bank's Swift & (optional) ABA code. A reference is optional. If you're paying Sterling then Halifax may ask for the beneficiary bank's GBP correspondent (in London) but more often than not they'll be able to look it up.

As has also been pointed out, it's cheaper to use a specialist company to transfer but I've no experience of this.

eDicky

I was still half asleep at 6am and have since realised that Halifax may be unable to enter both the ABA and SWIFT in the order, and in their ignorance are asking you to decide which. Use the SWIFT code, this is for international payments. The ABA is mainly for domestic US transfers, you don't need it in this case when you have the SWIFT. For sure you will need to give the beneficiary's name and address. You may have to give the reason for the payment.

Haffiana

I have come across this - some smaller US banks use a bigger bank as an intermediary for international payments. It will be a UK Bank for GBP payments. I believe that the idea is that you send the money to the intermediary bank with an instruction to them to send it on to the recipient's bank and account.

You can probably do this by ringing the intermediary, but I confess I just gave up when trying to do this online from a Barclays Business bank account. There were no fields for the intermediary instruction details. We ended up using Paypal...

Ballard

eDicky wrote: »

Halifax may be unable to enter both the ABA and SWIFT in the order.

There is a place for both the ABA (or any other routing code) and the Swift code on the required field of the payment so both can be used.

ERICS_MUM

In theory you shouldn't need to supply the intermediary, that should be determined by Halifax. Their international payment system should contain a mass of routing details and combinations and as long as it knows the final beneficiary's banking details so their bank & branch can be identified, the payment system should 'build' the payment routing automatically.