crissy33nicole

im sure this has been asked a million times but i cant find it anywhere. but what is the best (cheapest site) to transfer money from my UK bank account to my USA bank account? i assumed paypal, but people have also said XE.com, but ive also read bad reviews for that.

thanks guys!!

Noorah101

The Wiki Guide might help you: http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Catego..._UK_to_the_USA

Rene

lansbury

Firstly you will need to find a currency broker who is allowed to transfer money to the US. Some who did decided not to comply with the regulations when they changed. Some use XE, I use worldfirst.com Not sure cheapest is necessarily the best, but they are all mostly close in price. I changed to World First when the company I was using stopped dealing with the US. With World First if I time the transaction right so I can transfer the money from my UK bank to them straightaway, I have manged to get the money into my US bank in under 2 hours. Mostly allowing for the UK being 8 hours behind I can easily get the money the morning of the next day.

ian-mstm

If you make all your decisions based on bad reviews, you'll rot away and never do anything fun.

Ian

rpjs

Paypal is very easy to set up and use but it's very slow for international transfers (a couple of weeks IME) and quite expensive with a poor exchange rate plus fees. XE is a bit of a palaver to set up but is fairly easy to use and much better value with good rates and usually no fees. In my experience it usually takes about 3-5 days to transfer funds from the UK to the US, and about a week to 10 days in the other direction.

Bob

Paypal is shit. It's shit at the best of times, but it's doubly shit in this situation. On top of that, it's just shit.

As for the rest, they're all much of muchness with similar rate/fee structure.

Plenty of recommendations, xe is mentioned a lot, as have others.

If it's only a small amount of money and not going to be a regular thing, so you can't be arsed to set up an account, xoom.com is pretty good.

Mummy in the foothills

I just tried Xe for the first time last week, US to UK, very easy, It did take 5 days though, not sure what that's about, but no charges from the bank at either end.

Brit3964

XE.com are good. I've been transferring enough to buy a house here during this past month via them. Their rate was slightly better than my UK bank would give. If the amount is over $10k you have to send them additional information but it can all be done via email. In all but 2 cases, I found each transfer was completed every day. Order in the morning, after 8pm it's in the US account. Makes sure you use ACH for UK - US transfer. That way you'll pay no charges. In my case, wire transfers within the UK were free but that might be because both accounts happened to be Barclays. Unfortunately at the moment UK - US exchange rates are bad. The worst since 2009.

cranston

+1 for XE.

Been a customer for 6 years and very happy.

GeoffM

I'd be interested to know these bad reviews. Actually I did find some on reviewcentre.com but they mostly seemed related to transactions to/from Africa and problems creating an account (something which I thought was very easy).

Incidentally it got a 2.5 out of 5 rating; PayPal 1.5; Xoom 4. Not that it really means anything. Odd that PayPal only had 216 reviews but Xoom had 4558.

crissy33nicole

Yah I guess people had problems with not having a number to contact someone when their money has taken too long, things like that. But I think I'll definitely give it a try, thanks guys!

rpjs

They have a toll-free 1-877 number.

RICH

My old man sent me money for Christmas via xe.com. It arrived mid January, but that is apparently due to Dad's slow reindeers. He swears XE is the bestest, fastest for UK to US transfers, and he would have looked into it.

MRam

I suggest you shop around for currency transfer quotes and make sure that you are getting the best rate from an FSA authorised foreign exchange provider. Typically, a foreign exchange broker's rate can be up to 4% better than the banks.

Hope that helps

crissy33nicole

We went with XE, which ended up quite difficult with our uk bank, had to call them a few times, we didnt realise u had to wire money to XE then they wire it to US bank either. And ur tied in once u do first step so there's a penalty if u back out etc.