International Wire Transfers

Online, and cheap?

[philbish]

I send quite a few international wire transfers, and I'm paying $40 for each one with an online bank.

The process is easy - no sitting in traffic, and waiting in line at the bank.

But $40 each time is really adding up. My bank said this is a non-negotiable fee.

-> Any ideas if there is a bank with more reasonable wire transfer fees? ... that lets me do it online.

[LifeinAsia]

We use CitiBank Business- costs us $20/transfer, can do everything online. If you often send money to the same accounts, setup a profile (forget the exact name they use) for them, then just change the amount to transfer each time. I can deplete our entire account and send it to our office in Korea in about 5 clicks. :)

For added security- they have a key fob that generates a unique security code that you need to enter in order to transfer money.

[corbing]

Sounds a little high, but not unreasonable. Wells Fargo charges us $25 (or is it $20?) for a foreign wire transfer. We only do four or five a year so I've never really had it shopped.

[rebelde]

Be careful with the banks. The $20-45 charge is only a small percent of what some of them make off of you. BofA often added 4% to the exchange rate. I have found that using a specialized currency service (advertised on leading currency converter websites) you get much better rates, and it is worth the trouble for larger transfers.

[LifeinAsia]

Good point about the currency exchange- I hadn't thought about that. I seem to remember CitiBank's rates are not very favorable. All our transfers are dollars to dollars, so it's a non-issue for us. I guess most of their customers don't have that luxury, so they make their profit on the rate conversion.

[philbish]

My bank only allows me to send currency in USD, but I imagine it get converted to RMB and GBP for China and Great Britain.

I haven't had any complaints from the people receiving the money. As far as I know, they are getting the full amount, or close to it.

Maybe $40 / wire transfer is not a big deal.

[sun818]

I pay $45 with BofA. So, I should look at CitiBank. I've been wanting online transfer capability for some time. Its kind of a hassle to fill out carbon forms, walk to the bank, and wait for the teller to do the transfer.

[idolw]

we have been fighting for lower charges in poland.
it used to be 25eur per transfer.
now for transfers under 1000eur the cost is 5eur what makes it better than letting someone charge company credit card and add 3% surcharge for card payment processing.
if you transfer small amounts why don't you ask contractor to charge your CC? it is faster.

[luckychucky]

Gotta concur about CitiBusiness. I send tons of international wires through their online interface at US$20.00 per. All of my payees request denomination in US dollars, and so far they all seem to have been satisfied with the currency exchange at their ends. Their satisfaction could evaporate, however, as the US dollar begins to crumble (because America's in debt over its eyeballs and manufactures/produces/exports virtually nil anymore) & the world's currency of choice turns to Euros, as many are forecasting...

[brandyace]

If you do lots, more than a thousand/mth, you can get for about 12 bucks per