Pandorica

kevntrace

There are several posts about this topic if you search the forum.

Must admit I was old school until fairly recently, I was having my in-laws deposit a check from my US bank account into my UK bank account to cover my UK mortgage and other expenses, but this was never more than $5k. The downside to this approach is the exchange rate is crappy, so definitely not recommended for large sums.

I just recently discovered Xoom, now part of Paypal, and I have been using them to send my money to the UK instead of checks deposited by the in-laws. But I think other folks on here use TransferWise (or something like that).

Hotscot

MidAtlantic

Take a look here for options, although as someone recently pointed out, the fees for Transferwise are over stated. This is useful in helping to understand that you have to consider fees and the exchange rate to determine the best value.

https://www.mycurrencytransfer.com/m...o-USA/5000-GBP

Pulaski

Try to find anyone who posts here who doesn't use an on-line FX broker- remitter!

That said for the sort of sums that result from the sale of houses, (say £50,000 up), you need to go to your bank and ask them for a "dealing desk rate" (use those words), and you will get a real-time rate comparable with the rate that corporations get, and you'll likely only a minute or two at most to decide if you want to exchange at that rate. The rate will he comparable with the on-line FX brokers, and may even be better.

Pandorica

SpeshK

I've been using Circle recently. It's similar to TransferWise but no fees. Only issue is that you're limited in how much you can send a week. If you can plan accordingly, worth a look.

Hotscot

No fees? How do they make their money?

You've indicated that they're far cheaper than Transferwise. That's interesting.

Pulaski

They're a "crypto-finance company" and the Wikipedia article is rather hard to summarize, but they apparently have grand plans. What they seem to have done so far is consume a lot of venture capital.

SpeshK

Agree. They're probably burning through cash but it's worked for me. I just spread my transfers out to work within their limits. I did apply (successfully) to have my limit raised too.

That said, even pricing things at a very tight spread is likely to make them money if they have enough users. It may appear close to a wholesale mid rate but it's not so there's still money for them to make there.

vespucci

I haven't used them and don't know anything about them, but either what you're saying now is correct, or what you said before, it can't be both.

SpeshK

Pulaski

Agreed. Banks, bureau de change, and on-line FX brokers all have to make their money some how, and it is through one or more of (i) fixed fee, (ii) percentage fee (iii) buy-sell spread (i.e. buy at less than the mid rate, sell at more than the mid rate).

Providers of exchange services often have a habit of trying to mislead the public by bragging that one or two of the ways of extracting their revenue is low or zero , and hoping that the customer doesn't notice that they're being screwed on the third type of charge - with the classic one being "we charge no commission", but the spread is enough for them to get their share. In truth no provider of FX services can truly charge no fees and exchange at the mid rate*, other wise they have no revenue and can't stay in business.

* There are some rare examples where this might be possible in one direction (e.g. sell but not buy) and/or where there are government exchange controls and the FX service is taking advantage of people looking to trade at unofficial rates and/or transfer money out of a currency of out of a country illegally, where customers wanting to exchange in one direction will accept an artificially poor exchange rate, so there is a buy-sell spread, but it just isn't centered on the official mid-rate.

Pulaski

Mid is mid, there's either spread, or their isn't, and if they are hiding behind "rounding" then they are guilty of pretending that there is no spread, while actually charging a spread, albeit perhaps a small one …. See my post above!

SpeshK