I have to pay for a holiday for a group, and need to send some money abroad. Clearly my own (high street) bank will not be the cheapest way. Caxton FX advertise widely in the press - though I cannot find out how much they would charge from their website. Does anybody know of a good (i.e cheap!) company?
And yes, I have googled, but really a website is a website and you'd never know if it was in Nigeria...
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The only time I have been involved with money transfer was with Western Union.
The money was withdrawn by ?????? and I never saw it.
I went to collect it and it had already been " obtained by a. n other.
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I've used these for the last couple of years to move money from the UK to my Polish accounts.
www.hifx.co.uk/?gclid=CLDpvPqzr6YCFQzxzAodswxLaw
Actually, my wife does it so all I really know is that there has never been a problem. I think it takes 4 or 5 days.
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How much are you sending ?
£500 / £5000 / £20,000
If £500 it is not worth chasing around for a deal that is 2% cheaper i.e. £10
BUT if it is £5,000 say it is worth the effort.
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If I were in a similar position, I'd hop onto my internet banking facility and make a payment using the foreign bank's IBAN number and account number, costing me nothing.
Mapmaker is a bright chap so will have a good reason for not doing that, but it might be interesting to know what that reason is. Maybe not all banks offer this facility, or offer it for free?
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I'm just collecting some small amounts from abroad via IBAN and it seems NatWest are now charging for receiving money that way. £2 under £100 and £7 over £100 IIRC.
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Crankcase. It's all down to the meaning of "free".
The headline rate is currently 1.204 euros.
A bank will charge you a percentage commission fee, and also a percentage margin on the exchange rate.
The commission fee may well be 0%, but the margin might be 3% - so instead of 1.204 you would get 1.167%.
A website www.currenciesdirect.com which (claims - it's the internet, who knows...) to compare bank rates to its own rate, suggests that £2000 will give you €2,253 if you go through RBS, or a whopping €2,397 if you use them - a saving of £144, or 7% on the transaction.
www.Comparemoneytransfer.co.uk (which again, it's the internet, have you ever heard of them?) suggest that torfx.com (whoever they are, and their name is plastered all over comparemoneytransfer.co.uk's website, so they're clearly paying for the site) have a margin of 0.7% and no commission whereas "all" other internet based transfer companies charge 1% margin and no commission.
Hence my please for anybody who has already done the research - Caxton have a massive marketing budget so must be reasonably more expensive than competitors.
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Blimey. My bank has recently been taken over by Santander, and I've not had cause to use the IBAN system I mentioned for some time. I've just looked it up, and the fees for using it are now a bit eye watering. Just another bit of small print that seems to have changed in their favour rather than mine.
Thanks for pointing it out, Mapmaker, otherwise next time I'd have blithely clicked a few buttons without thinking much about it. Might even be time for me to look harder at which bank I'm with.
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>> Blimey. My bank has recently been taken over by Santander,
Blimey, you are lucky your account is working at all.
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Blimey, you're right.
Actually, it's been fine (so far), except the method of paying in a cheque has taken a turn for the worse.
Alliance and Leicester - put debit card in machine, press "pay in cheque", feed in cheque, gets scanned, it says amount, (never got it wrong) confirm, done. Walk back to office, money in account.
Santander - new machine, insert card, press pay in cheque, spits out blank form to hand write and put in envelope.... Then three days to clear.
A step backwards.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Mon 10 Jan 11 at 10:57
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>>Then three days to clear.
>>A step backwards.
Probably no difference. Although the money was "recorded" in your account, if you'd tried to take it out to spend, you'd have found you probably couldn't for 3 days.
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Santander - new machine, insert card, press pay in cheque, spits out blank form to hand write and put in envelope.... Then three days to clear.
>
>>>>i take mine to the local post office, girl stamps my stub, i hand over envelope to their internal to bootle santander postal operation, i go back to work
no up town parking fees
no infernal photocopying
no having to mix with all the chavs in town
sheer bliss for me
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www.investorschronicle.co.uk/Columnists/NoFreeLunch/article/20090909/0873f056-9d2e-11de-b65c-0015171400aa/When-segregation-is-good.jsp The thing about Crown is that they took your money today for delivering you euros in six months time... Of course you have to pay with debit card, the fee is only 20p or somesuch; a credit card would mean you had to pay an extra 2.75% to cover the fees... which would negate the whole point of it in the first place.
Compare company recommended by BBD
www.hifx.co.uk/~/media/PDFs/hifx_annual_report_year_end_30_june_2010.ashx
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I use currencies direct for both regular monthly transfers and occasional one offs when we've spent more than the background level.
The money comes out of Santander in GBP on debit card (so free) and comes to switzerland in CHF commission free about 3 days later.
Overall rates are good compared to the main banks, but you may be able to beat them by shopping around other internet brokers.
Ease of use is very good. All arranged over the phone/email, unlike Santander who wanted me to turn up in person at a branch for each transfer (not easy when I live here)
When we first checked the highest costs by far were by sending GBP here and then asking the swiss bank to change to CHF.
Dan
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I used to use crowncurrencyexchange for foreign exchange for holidays - they were always a few points above bank rates, especially if you bought well in advance, but they recently shut down (or went bust) for dubious accounting or somesuch. I'd be a bit wary of any forward dealing in currency with any of these places, as they would only take payment by debit card and apparently a lot of people lost significant sums as a result.
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Worldfirst.com
sending £5000 is free I think.
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We have signed up with Moneycorp & HiFx for the one-off transfer of our euros to GBP.
I was speaking to HiFX this morning about the nuts and bolts of transferring €€€ to their €€€ account for conversion; I asked what would be the rate if they actually had our money in their hands and the transaction was ready to go and the answer was that 1.2060 euros would buy £1, or about £0.829 per euro.
Rates fluctuate moment by moment, of course, so one cannot necessarily go by this example, but the interbank rate, according to their daily rate email to me, was 1.2025€ per GBP, or about £0.831, so their margin on over 100,000€ is fairly small, in the region of 200 to 300 quid depending on the exact amount to change.
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I don't understand the options here, but I'd be wanting my money to go through the hands of known financial institutions.
Santander might be universally regarded as poor, but at least your money would come through.
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I have used these guys to transfer £ to € into our French bank account:
www.4xcurrency.com/
You can see the rate you get vary on your screen second by second and click on the rate you think is best for you. Of course the bigger the amount the better the rate. You get a contract amount which you must settle in 48 Hours I think. I just do an internet bank transfer.
I've used them quite a few times but I don't think they're regulated like using a proper bank. Take care - we've since learned about that Cornish outfit - Crown.
Last edited by: Dulwich Estate on Mon 10 Jan 11 at 22:56
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Sending money abroad - henry k
