Withdrawing large sum abroad, how?

dunnaz

Hi,

I am currently travelling, and due to arrive in Australia next month. My funds are all based in a UK bank account at home, which is fine for the day to day stuff as I can just use an ATM (and my Halifax Clarity card, of course )

My issue is, I want to withdraw around $5000 AUD when I arrive to buy a vehicle. The ATM limit is around £200 a day, which would take too long to get to.

What are my best options to do this? I have looked at Western Union but can't seem to make sense of the costs involved, even the sign-up process appears to be broken at the moment! It would be ideal to be able to go to a counter and just get the money, subject to the correct ID being available, etc.

Any thoughts welcome! :beer:

Kernow666

I don't see a problem going to the counter and getting that sum with ID


failing that take sterling and change it when you get there

Neil49

Is the car purchase a private sale? Or to put it another way, would they take a credit card?

The Clarity card would give you a competitive exchange rate if you could do it that way and once you had made the purchase you could go online to your UK bank account to setup a transfer to clear the balance on your Clarity card account. This would then free up your card for further purchases.

Voyager2002

I would probably use Custom House (https://www.xe.com), which is owned by Western Union. They are good for transferring money between bank accounts in different countries. If you are absolutely certain that you can trust the vendor then you can use XE to transfer the money into the vendor's account, but then you would have very limited protection if things went wrong. Otherwise, you could open some kind of bank account there (perhaps a savings account) and in your own name and then fund it by bank transfer.

dunnaz

It would be a campervan... I am in Indonesia at the moment so can't get any sterling to take with me.

The issue I foresee is, the would be seller would also likely be a backpacker (as am I), so unlikely to accept a paypal payment, or have an Australian bank account, unless they would be OK with me transferring funds from my FD UK account to wherever theirs is in the world. In this scenario, it seems cash is king!

dunnaz

OK, now managed to sign up with Western Union (had to use IE rather than Chrome for some mad reason...), now awaiting ID verification! It seems the cost to send around £3500 to Australia is £20 and a fairly naff exchange rate, but it does mean I can get the cash easily from a WU shop....what can you do! Hopefully I will recoup some of the money when I sell the camper at the end of the trip.

Thanks all for the input!