Elvira

From today's Independent - some possible ways of transmitting small sums of money from the UK to 'abroad':

http://money.independent.co.uk/perso...cle2214738.ece

For larger sums, of course, XE Trade can't be beaten. But I guess you already knew that

Richardowen

I'd be interested to know people's experience of paypal vs. XE !

What is defined as small ? For me anything lower than £500 would be considered small, but it's obviously relative, so where does paypal stop being better than XE ?

Rich./

BritGuyTN

i think xe is still cheaper

Elvira

Why don't you do a dummy trial run on XE? No need to actually press the button to activate the transaction, but you'll know how much it would cost.

BritGuyTN

actually the dummy run does not necessarily give you a true indication of the rate - you may get better or worse, every account has a different margin added to the mid rate - if you call cust serv for example and say, hey - i'm transferring $200k - you will get a better rate

BigDavyG

I think you'll find it does

Dan725

Yep - If you have a proper logon with XE, it does. If you just run through the open to all comers demo, the rate is a out of date.

BritGuyTN

sorry - I did mean the dummy run open to all comers - not going through a transaction and doing everything but pressing the button

Richardowen

Well I might just do that then.... I have an account as I was planning on doing one transfer to see what it cost as I need to but was thinking more like £3000 than £200 !

All I really know at this stage is that paypal is apparently better than XE for "small" amounts, however no one can quantify this...

At the risk of opening up a whole can of woop-ass on myself---- what does small mean ? and where's the line here between Paypal and XE ?

R./
I feel very warm and friendly today !

BigDavyG

Paypal would be faster, but I can't see it being any cheaper, not matter what the amount (ok, so I can't comment on 20 quid).
With the exchange rate at 1.96 last week xe quoted me less that 2.0 to ship some dollars back to the UK - it came to about 2% that I would have been paying over the spot rate - I challenge anyone to beat that on anything less than a million pound transaction.
In a few weeks for the first time I'll be using xe to wire the money to the UK (I usually take the draft option) and they only charge about $10 for that - absolute bargain imo.

Dan725

Just done the same thing Davy, in preparation for my UK trip next week - wired some into the UK, its actually more like $19, still cheap, but in hindsight and if you have the time and place to mail a cheque to, draft is the way to go.