Updated advice on moving cash

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Phil E
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Updated advice on moving cash

Post by Phil E »

I know Currency Direct is one of the sponsors here. There is also transferwise and OFX. I will be moving money from the USA to France. I'm looking for the best experience/price ratio. Please let me know what has worked well and what has not worked so well for you.

Thanks in advance
Phil in Angoustrine
Allan
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Re: Updated advice on moving cash

Post by Allan »

Phil E wrote:I know Currency Direct is one of the sponsors here. There is also transferwise and OFX. I will be moving money from the USA to France. I'm looking for the best experience/price ratio. Please let me know what has worked well and what has not worked so well for you.

Thanks in advance
Phil in Angoustrine
There is no single answer to this, are you talking about a one-off transfer, a regular transfer or a future transfer at a guaranteed rate.?

If you are moving a sizeable sum then the bigger players will haggle. I usually use World First who have always matched anyone else’s rate and effect a same day transfer. If it is a more modest amount then Transferwise is well regarded.

You will probably find that most people here usually transfer GBP TO EUR, there may well be a plethora of companies that transfer USD that we aren’t aware of.
martyn94
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Re: Updated advice on moving cash

Post by martyn94 »

Phil E wrote:I know Currency Direct is one of the sponsors here. There is also transferwise and OFX. I will be moving money from the USA to France. I'm looking for the best experience/price ratio. Please let me know what has worked well and what has not worked so well for you.

Thanks in advance
Phil in Angoustrine
The experience is inevitably subjective. If you are comfortable with websites and apps, I have found Transferwise entirely satisfactory, and pretty quick and cheap, and entirely reliable. All the more so if you will need to do more than one transfer between the same payer/payees. You do need to be obsessively careful about entering the account details: but on the whole I’d rather do it myself than leave it to bank staff.

It’s impossible to guess how much you know about how FX transactions typically work. Transferwise are unusual in that they do the exchange at the middle-market rate: ie one at which they make no profit from the exchange. Everything they charge is in their explicit fee - currently 0.70 % from USD to euros. Almost everyone else makes most or all of their money by giving you a rate which is less (sometimes much less) than the middle-market rate.

You can compare anybody’s overall cost if you are prepared to do the research, and are confident about the maths, and you could get a better deal if you like haggling. You might save a few hundred bucks. Or pay a few thousand extra if you get it wrong.

At the risk of asking the obvious, do you have a bank account here for it to go to?
martyn94
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Re: Updated advice on moving cash

Post by martyn94 »

martyn94 wrote:
Phil E wrote:I know Currency Direct is one of the sponsors here. There is also transferwise and OFX. I will be moving money from the USA to France. I'm looking for the best experience/price ratio. Please let me know what has worked well and what has not worked so well for you.

Thanks in advance
Phil in Angoustrine
The experience is inevitably subjective. If you are comfortable with websites and apps, I have found Transferwise entirely satisfactory, and pretty quick and cheap, and entirely reliable. All the more so if you will need to do more than one transfer between the same payer/payees. You do need to be obsessively careful about entering the account details: but on the whole I’d rather do it myself than leave it to bank staff.

It’s impossible to guess how much you know about how FX transactions typically work. Transferwise are unusual in that they do the exchange at the middle-market rate: ie one at which they make no profit from the exchange. Everything they charge is in their explicit fee - currently 0.70 % from USD to euros. Almost everyone else makes most or all of their money by giving you a rate which is less (sometimes much less) than the middle-market rate.

You can compare anybody’s overall cost if you are prepared to do the research, and are confident about the maths, and you could get a better deal if you like haggling. You might save a few hundred bucks. Or pay a few thousand extra if you get it wrong.

At the risk of asking the obvious, do you have a bank account here for it to go to?
By way of afterthought, if you are transferring serious money (as I guess you are, given what you have told us of your plans), it might be worth transferring a nominal amount initially - say $100 - and seeing if it arrives safely. If it does, and the account details at both ends are set up with your FX dealer, subsequent transactions should also arrive safely.
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