Receiving USD into UK Bank Account

liger

I'm about to receive a USD dollar payment of over £100 into a UK bank account and I checked all available current accounts I have to see the cheapest fees. 

Both Santander and Nationwide have zero fees to receive USD payments over £100.  Does anybody know which one will have better exchange rate from experience?

All other banks charge £6 or £7 for receiving.  Also Chase and Kroo Bank don't offer international services so cant use them.  

Marchitiello

We have covered this very subject few times and I think the better route would be for a wise account.

in terms of Chase, for reference, although they officially state not to support IBAN payments, I extrapolated my Swift/Iban numbers and used those to test an international payment that was indeed credited, however it was more than a year ago and not sure of the exchange rates applied .

liger

Ok thanks.  Without using a wise account does anybody know which is likely to have a better exchange rate Nationwide or Santander?

gt94sss2

If it's a one off payment, its not really worth opening a new account for.

If it's going to be a regular event or be for much larger amounts than that's different.

Marchitiello

Wise should be pretty easy to open, and can be there idle without any balance for years and/or could request a card to be used when travelling. 

In terms of what it is better, I would not know, but usually for  standard GBP accounts, if the exchange rate is good they charge something as a fee, if the exchange rate is bad, then there is no fee.  

Edit: Chase have just informed me to have suspended “unofficial” support for International payments until CHAPS is fully supported later in the year 

(edit: the statement at the beginning of this page, suggest that Nationwide’s inbound rate are different (certainly to account for the “no fee” being charged https://www.nationwide.co.uk/help/payments/foreign-exchange-rates/) 

Polyglotta17

Does anyone know if a Wise account is the best option when trying to transfer A few thousand dollars? My late mom had a USD account in Germany and now I need to transfer the funds across but want to avoid converting the USD to Euros first and then to my UK GBP account. The German bank have told me they cannot transfer USD to a GBP account for some reason. It would have to be to my Euro account in Germany or a USD account. Has anyone been in a similar position?

sausage_time

I'd say Wise would be a good fit for this.  Can the German account pay into Wise using ACH?  That should avoid any extra wire fees.