Any advice on the best way to transfer money between a US bank and my UK bank?

DougWeller

I know I can use PayPal with my US bank to transfer money to my wife's PayPal, and there seems to be something now called Xoom that PayPal uses to transfer money from US to UK banks. It looks like that is expensive.
I'm talking about maybe 20000 USD. 
Thanks.
Doug

SiliconChip

Use a money transfer service for the best rates and lowest fees, I've used WISE several times but Monito will compare several services for you.

https://wise.com/ 

https://www.monito.com/

sausage_time

I use Wise frequently to transfer from my US bank.  No charge to send to Wise (via ACH - not by wire which will cost).  Typically next day. Then ~0.5% or less to convert and send to a bank account in the UK.  More or less immediate. 

stillEuropean

I've also used WISE many times over the years but I believe they only transfer $10000 at a time, so you may have to make two transfers if you go this route.

eDicky

Definitely avoid using PayPal for such a purpose, their conversion rates are dire.

Emily_Joy

I appreciate for 20K USD it may not be a good idea, but has anyone tried transferring funds from a US account to Revolut, by any chance?

DougWeller

WISE wants me to go to my bank and set up a wire transfer. Took me an hour to get to that message, mainly problems with selfie. Complete waste of time, I thought it would be easier than asking my bank to do it, which I guess I will.

sausage_time

DougWeller said:

WISE wants me to go to my bank and set up a wire transfer. Took me an hour to get to that message, mainly problems with selfie. Complete waste of time, I thought it would be easier than asking my bank to do it, which I guess I will.

I don't understand what Wise asked you to do?  When opened, you should be able to send GBP to Wise via faster payments.

eDicky

sausage_time said:

DougWeller said:

WISE wants me to go to my bank and set up a wire transfer. Took me an hour to get to that message, mainly problems with selfie. Complete waste of time, I thought it would be easier than asking my bank to do it, which I guess I will.

I don't understand what Wise asked you to do?  When opened, you should be able to send GBP to Wise via faster payments.

It's USD that Doug needs to send to Wise for making the transfer to his UK bank, but a wire transfer should not be the best option so that's the mystery. I have the full Wise account and a range of options are given for adding to my USD, the cheapest by far using ACH instant transfer.

wmb194

DougWeller said:

WISE wants me to go to my bank and set up a wire transfer. Took me an hour to get to that message, mainly problems with selfie. Complete waste of time, I thought it would be easier than asking my bank to do it, which I guess I will.

So you weren't able to open an account with Wise?

DougWeller

I was able to. Taking a selfie to match my passport photo took forever. But as Wise asked me to get the bank to set up a wire transfer (yes, makes little sense to me) I decided it's easier to just get ask my bank to wire it to me directly (which last time I found difficult, too many hoops. I can't even access my US bank online because it requires the software to phone my mobile and it can't cope with a UK number. Stupid.