Hi Roger and All, http://www.xe.com/xetrade/ can be used to transfer any amount of money. While it can involve a wire transfer at the sending end and/or the receiving end, the attraction of the service between certain countries is that there is no fee and only a typical 1.5% margin on the mid-market rates displayed at:
http://www.xe.com Sending from Australia does not involve any wire transfer, because it is done via BPay into an account of a company which represents XE.com here. If the recipient is in a country with a similar arrangement, then there's no wire transfer fee - the payment is made as if from a bank in the same country. It is not a wire transfer at all. The exact amount you book should arrive. Richard Archer mentioned a $25 fee, but I think that is only if a wire transfer is involved. As far as I can tell, XE.com pioneered this, using a company called Custom House to do its connections with customers, including the quite rigorous registration process. I recall reading somewhere that in 2009 Western Union bought Custom House. Now Western Union offers a service which appears almost identical to XE.com's service, with a similar registration process, again using Custom House to do the work. The real-time exchange rates on offer are almost identical too. http://onlinefx.westernunion.com When I researched this in October 2012, Western Union offered the ACH/EFT system (local bank to local bank in the sending and recipient countrie, and therefore no need for a wire transfer) for delivering funds to recipients in a few additional countries compared to XE: Mexico, Denmark, Sweden and Hungary. Then, the list of countries both services could do this with was: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, UK, New Zealand and USA. I haven't looked at the lists recently. To register it is necessary to scan documents such as drivers licences, passports and utility bills. This takes a few days, in my experience. It is important, at least with the Western Union service, to nominate the account as for personal or business purposes, since they don't like what appears to be a business expense going through an account set up under a personal name. I guess this is all to do with anti-money-laundering regulations. The time to deliver money to the USA is about 3 business days. It is best, I recall, to book the transaction during weekdays when the international currency markets are functioning, rather than during he weekend. Over the weekend, the systems can't get a good fix on the exchange rate, so they quote a higher than 1.5% margin on the current estimate of mid-market rate. Since the final payment, without a wire transfer in the countries listed, does not go through as a wire transfer, but as a payment from a bank in that country, it may or will be necessary to provide the XE or Western Union service with recipient account details which are rather different from those required for a wire transfer. If you can use this service, I think it is far better than PayPal, which typically has a larger spread on the exchange rate and charges business recipients a ~3.4% fee. The banks have exchange rates which I think are now hardly better than PayPal's, and they charge an up-front fee, such as AUD$20 to $25, to do a wire transfer. That transfer could go through one or more intermediate banks and those banks take their cut. There's no way of finding out what these will be. The recipient bank normally charges a fee such as $5 to receive a wire transfer. So it is a bad deal all around. Some or many US banks, at least five or ten years ago, were incapable of transferring a value in any currency other than USD, so senders could not ensure that an actual amount of AUD$ would arrive in a recipient account here. By contrast, some or many European banks could ensure an actual amount would arrive, and also pay whatever fees the recipient bank charged if that is what the sender requested. I have only used XE a few times. After the registration process, the system is totally automated and appears to be efficient, with no gotchas. - Robin _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
