Transferred €100 to Spanish Santander account and only €55 arrived?

Christyt

Hi all - not sure if this is the best place to ask, but I'm trying to find out what happened to €45 of €100 I transferred from my UK First Direct account to a Spanish Santander account (by way of deposit for a holiday booking).

The recipient isn't helping, apart from showing me a receipt of what they received.

I called First Direct a week ago who said they'd investigate - I subsequently got an auto email saying they are waiving transfer charges (they said there weren't any  over the phone) - but they've not got back to me.

I can't find any concrete info online about Santander Spain's incoming charges - just some stuff about intermediaries making deductions.

So anyway - I just wondered if there was a way to transfer money to avoid this? If it's being taken by Santander - it won't matter who I send it from at my end I'm guessing?

If anyone knows I'd be really grateful!

Marchitiello

How did you send the money? Did you send the GBP equivalent from First Direct and asked FD to convert? Did you send it in GBP directly to Santander Spain and expected them to convert? All these scenarios involve one of the banks taking fees for currency conversion and / or fee for sending/receiving international payments.

So how would you avoid this? With a multi-currency account that have functionality to convert currency at close to best rate and then send it to the Spanish bank via SEPA.

I personally have few options set up:

Fineco UK - Multicurrency account: Pro- great rates and conversion within your currency pot, sending to EU banks via SEPA at no extra fees. Cons- quite slow, it may take a day to clear the converted funds within the pot and few days for the SEPA payment to reach the wanted destination 

HSBC Global Money account (require a main UK GBP account first).

can first convert currencies at no extra charges within the currency pots and then send it via SEPA to the EU bank. Recent testing on this forum have shown evidence that rates are best when converting less than £1000.

edit to add:

Starling also offers a Euro account alongside the GBP but conversions carry a fee. I believe Monzo may also do this.

aside of the main banks, there are options like Wise (formerly transferwise) and Revolut but they do not hold a Uk banking license and thus you would not be protected under the deposit protection scheme. 

grumbler

Marchitiello said:

How did you send the money? Did you send the GBP equivalent from First Direct and asked FD to convert? Did you send it in GBP directly to Santander Spain and expected them to convert? All these scenarios involve one of the banks taking fees for currency conversion and / or fee for sending/receiving international payments.

No way can these fees explain 45% loss. 

Vortigern

If I couldn't pay a holiday deposit by credit card, I'd be looking for a different holiday.

Why? Perfect exchange rate with no fee, and section 75 protection for my purchase.

This doesn't really help the OP, sorry.

boingy

grumbler said:

Marchitiello said:

How did you send the money? Did you send the GBP equivalent from First Direct and asked FD to convert? Did you send it in GBP directly to Santander Spain and expected them to convert? All these scenarios involve one of the banks taking fees for currency conversion and / or fee for sending/receiving international payments.

No way can these fees explain 45% loss. 

I'm wondering if somewhere along the way there have been a couple of fixed fees along the lines of "we charge x%, minimum 15 euro".

Marchitiello

grumbler said:

Marchitiello said:

How did you send the money? Did you send the GBP equivalent from First Direct and asked FD to convert? Did you send it in GBP directly to Santander Spain and expected them to convert? All these scenarios involve one of the banks taking fees for currency conversion and / or fee for sending/receiving international payments.

No way can these fees explain 45% loss. 

A couple of fix fees, bad exchange rates etc typical of “traditional” international transactions, could have easily added up to €45..

it may be 45% out of 100€ but could be easily become low single digits percentages in larger amounts being exchanged /transferred, a bit of historic experience with these type of transaction would have made you see this easily 

grumbler

There are no fixed fees for currency exchange. Sometimes intermediary banks have their cut (fixed amount) from international transfers, but not for Europe (SEPA). I don't think it's different for transfers from UK to EU.

https://www.firstdirect.com/travel-and-international/international-payments/

Euro payment within the EEA (European Economic Area) - No fee.

However, they do say

When making a payment within the EEA, the payment may incur intermediary and agency bank charges. You cannot cover these fees for the payee, and they will be deducted from the amount that arrives.

- that is surprising for FD (=HSBC).

wmb194

@ OP: Are you certain that you translated €100? How much was debited from your FD account in sterling?

Marchitiello

grumbler said:

There are no fixed fees for currency exchange. Sometimes intermediary banks have their cut (fixed amount) from international transfers, but not for Europe (SEPA). I don't think it's different for transfers from UK to EU.

https://www.firstdirect.com/travel-and-international/international-payments/

Euro payment within the EEA (European Economic Area) - No fee.

However, they do say

When making a payment within the EEA, the payment may incur intermediary and agency bank charges. You cannot cover these fees for the payee, and they will be deducted from the amount that arrives.

- that is surprising for FD (=HSBC).

The OP has not clarified how he exactly made the transaction.. if he sent GBP
”equivalent” to Santander Spain, the receiving bank could have applied those fix fees and bad exchange rate, not sure why you insist on this line really.. 

grumbler

Yes, flat fees of the receiving (or/and an intermediary) bank can explain this.
I insisted mainly that it's not currency exchange fees that are normally within 3%.

retiredbanker1

To me it seems that the transfer was NOT made as a SEPA transfer but an International Money transfer using SWIFT and somewhere down the line it would appear that there must be a CHAPS fee in there somewhere.
SEPA would require a full and accurate IBAN number - if this was entered incorrectly or not in the correct format I can easily see half the money being lost in charges.

Perhaps the OP could update us on this?