Transfers to a foreign bank account

JohnBravo

Hi All,

I hope you are well.

I have an objective to transfer some bigger sum of money ~£4000 abroad to my foreign bank account.
This is an account in EU zone but the currency is not in Euro.

The question I have is should I just transfer it e.g. from Revolut to the destination bank and they do the conversion or should I use transfer brokers e.g. Global Reach, OFX or FairFX?

I have not done many transfers in the past and I think they will charge me a lot more if I do it without a broker, right?

eskbanker

Compare rates here:

Money transfer: compare ways to send money online with Monito

Ayr_Rage

Try WISE

Wise: the international account | Money without borders

eDicky

If you're using Revolut the funds can be converted to the destination currency and sent directly, no need to involve another service.

If not, then use Wise or other as above, avoid having the conversion made by any bank.

subjecttocontract

I send money (approx £3K) to my Spanish bank a/c a few times a year. I use Currencies Direct, have done for a few years and am very happy with them. They convert the £'s into euros and send them. You can check the exchange rate first.

eDicky

subjecttocontract said:

I send money (approx £3K) to my Spanish bank a/c a few times a year. I use Currencies Direct, have done for a few years and am very happy with them. They convert the £'s into euros and send them. You can check the exchange rate first.

Apparently not, for a quote of their rates, without giving your name and contact details. I did in fact sign up with them a few years ago but did not proceed, other options were preferable and with more transparent rates.

PRAISETHESUN

I'd personally avoid Revolut. If anything goes wrong then good luck getting through to anyone in customer service who can actually help you!

The general idea stands though. You want to manage the currency conversion yourself using a specialist service. Don't let the sending or receiving bank do it for you as they will rip you off with fees and/or poor exchange rates.

I'd also recommend Wise personally - you transfer GBP to your Wise GBP balance, convert it to your currency of choice within Wise, and then send directly in that currency to its destination.

JohnBravo

PRAISETHESUN said:

I'd personally avoid Revolut. If anything goes wrong then good luck getting through to anyone in customer service who can actually help you!

The general idea stands though. You want to manage the currency conversion yourself using a specialist service. Don't let the sending or receiving bank do it for you as they will rip you off with fees and/or poor exchange rates.

I'd also recommend Wise personally - you transfer GBP to your Wise GBP balance, convert it to your currency of choice within Wise, and then send directly in that currency to its destination.

I have made a test transfer from Revolut and it did succeed without issues the following day as they have stated.
For the equivalent of $50 I sent they charged me under $2 but I think it was the intermediate bank that took this $2 off while transferring. $48 at the receiving account basically

JohnBravo

eskbanker said:

Compare rates here:

Money transfer: compare ways to send money online with Monito

I compared for about £3k and Atlantic Money turned as the best deal then Wise is second about £10 less at the receiving bank.
Thank you

DoboChopSueyBar

PRAISETHESUN said:

I'd personally avoid Revolut. If anything goes wrong then good luck getting through to anyone in customer service who can actually help you!

The general idea stands though. You want to manage the currency conversion yourself using a specialist service. Don't let the sending or receiving bank do it for you as they will rip you off with fees and/or poor exchange rates.

I'd also recommend Wise personally - you transfer GBP to your Wise GBP balance, convert it to your currency of choice within Wise, and then send directly in that currency to its destination.

I've found Wise customer support is quite poor as well - no better or worse than Revolut. Also when Wise/Transferwise were first launched, they had fairly low commission charges typically around 0.5%, now they're charging anything up to 4% on certain currencies (AED) and coupled with their poor support, there are far better options avilable. Even my local bank in UAE works out cheaper than Wise for converting AED to GBP.

JohnBravo

Perhaps I should start a separate topic for that but do you know any bank that has more relaxed rules for bank transfers? I think this issue relates to high street banks.

I attempted to transfer under £5k to a currency broker in UK, I have done it using Internet banking, I have a card reader as another security measure. It looks like the transfer went through fine.

The following day after 11am I got an email from the bank that they need to speak to me. I already have an answered call, a voicemail and some text messages from them.

At my break I call them waste 30minutes on the phone, transferred 3 times to realize they simply prevent me from using my own money and invigilate me.
The guy on the phone is asking private questions because apparently it's out of character to have a UK bank account and study abroad. The guy on the phone asks the questions and I can hear he repeats it while typing it into the system. They don't know what TransferGo is, I had to explain it.

In any case I was not transferring to my foreign bank account (on my name) but to a UK broker.

They pretend it's to do with security and to prevent fraud but to me it feels like they just want to make these international transfers via brokers harder than ever.
All the security features on the bank account are enabled (+ a card reader) but they don't care and still block my Internet banking (the second time in the span of 1 year). Not that often but it's because I don't do it often.