No1champ

Hi

I am moving to Canada in a few weeks.

I was thinking of using currency fair for exchanging my £ into $. this may sound silly but will i have to physically wait until I am in Canada and have set up a Canadian bank account before I can transfer?

Or would it be better to send it to my partner who is already in Canada whilst i'm in the uk and she can transfer me the money once i've set up my bank account?

DandNHill

We sent ours through Halo Financial. They "held it" for up to a week to get the best exchange rate. You could see whether they can hold it from when you transfer it until you open then Canadian account which would be only a couple of days?

Collie

I guess it depends how urgently you need the $CAD! We opened a chequing account (which is what a current account is called over here) the day after we landed: it took all of 30 mins. We went with PC Financial as they don't charge you for 'normal' bank services. Then transferred mney into it with CurrencyFair, with no problem. In the interim we withdrew Canadian dollars from our UK bank account using our Visa Debit cards.

We try to avoid transferring money to and from each other - just i case we get audited by the Canadian tax authorities, and have the hassle of explaining that this large transfer from another person shouldn't be treated as income. But that might just be paranoia!

Almost Canadian

We set up a Canadian bank account while in the UK, from the UK. Then we transferred the money into that account with no issues.

We weren't able to make any withdrawals from the account until we had presented ourselves in Canada but, once we had done so, we could withdraw whatever we wanted to.

ryanh1988

I would use Transferwise, we have used it for a few transactions of around $1000 and the fee has been significantly lower than any other means. Give it a look.

Aviator

You have to have a bank account to send it to, whether it be yours or someone else's.

Most of the Fx houses are fine, bit of a hobsons choice. You'll get a multitude of suggestions on here. Pick one out of a hat. I use Western Union Business Solutions, Custom House (owned by WU) do retail Fx, as do many others. Pick a rate you are happy with and do the exchange. Sometimes I have got a better rate writing a cheque to myself in GBP and depositing it into my CAD account. Unless you have a long standing relaitonship with the bank, this could result in a short hold on the funds until they clear. Usually around 10 days.

ryanh1988

I would agree that most standard fx services are the same but there are some smarter systems that avoid sending your money across border by matching it up with a transaction from your target destination. You money goes to their recipient account in the U.K. and their money goes to your recipient account in Canada. It is very clever and saves you huge amounts. Transferwise charge as little as 0.5% as a fee and as you aren't sending the money cross border you recipient account receives the entire rate of exchange

Aviator

Transferwise compare themselves to banks, not Fx houses. What counts is not how much you are charged, but how much you get in your account at the end of the transactions. Savvy traders will check all this out to transfer the most cost effective way, on occasion negotiating with the institution.

Transferwise, as with banks and other institutions are out to make money. For profit organisations look at the bottom line and try to find innovative ways to market their services.

Out of interest, I did a sample calculation on the their website, it was not as good as the rate I could get from my financial institution.

They are all out to make money, the banks will get it one way or another. If they lose on one division, charges go up in another.

Engineer_abroad

I've recently done a transfer via paypal. I have a Canadian paypal account linked to my RBC and a UK paypal account linked to my Barclays (you will need two email addresses). In all paypal charge 2% fee plus the rate is a little lower. All in all I worked out it cost 4% and took 3 days. Transferwise looks good as well for £ to CAD (havn't used it yet but looks good) but cant yet do CAD to £. When I worked it out though for any amounts over around 1,200 the bank was the better deal despite the seemingly expensive fees (they gave a much better rate)

williamceri

Could you say what bank you used. We have tried a couple who were not interested, including HSBC, who really do not make the process easy and charge £50 for the privilege. Would like to know which bank you went to. Many thanks.

Pulaski

Ouch! That's a bit pricy - the last time I checked xe.com worked out around 2%. 1% is quite achievable, and one exchanger/remitter (maybe Transferwise?) I hear charges only 0.5% (aggregate spread + fee).

anglogerman

Monthly income is paid into my German bank account from my freelance translation work for clients there (many of them refuse to consider any other option). Transferwise works fine for my monthly transfers to my Canadian checking account. PayPal is horribly pricey, and Skrill (Moneybookers) little better. Only minor complaint about Transferwise is the time it takes to complete a transaction.

Engineer_abroad

Seems transfer wise is the way to go for £ to CAD. Anyone got any tips for otherway round?

Almost Canadian

TD Canada Trust

bobby.scott

Hi,

We are moving to Canada in a few weeks and we have learnt about "Xend Pay" which featured in the press recently. You pay Xend Pay what you feel their service is worth to you for transferring your money across. So if you dont like it pay nothing!

I have benchmarked them against many of the banks, post office, John Lewis Money, FXs etc all on the same day, made sure that i included all charges at both ends and exchange rates and they continuously work out cheaper. If you are moving a large amount of money, they will have a conversation and improve the rate as well.

Worth looking at certainly.