Reasonably Priced Money Transfer to Bank

I don't know how this might work between the UK and the US, but I just today went to a place called Intercash, located on the 3rd floor of Elys Department Store in Wimbledon and managed to get them to send £100 directly to my bank account in Sweden, so I can get some standing bills paid.  The cost was £10.  I had asked at my bank, Barclays, and was told they would charge £45, I believe it was, and it was better if I transferred a larger amount since it would cost the same.

Me, I do NOT understand anyway the huge bank charges for things like this, both in the US and UK.  In the States, when I transferred money to my Swedish account when I moved there, they wanted $45.  Barclays (and I assume other UK banks are pretty much in line with charges) wants £45 to transfer money to another bank within the EU.  Yet when I moved here, my Swedish bank gave me all the information and should I need to transfer money from Sweden to my UK bank, the charge is 15 SEK, which is about £1.25, give or take.

We are not talking tiny unknown banks or building societies here and this is the computer age.  I know for a fact that they sit at their computers, push a few keys and bingo, the money appears on the other side of the world.  Sending my husband $400 from the US three years ago, it was in his account within a couple of hours.

Anyway, enough of my financial tirades, if you're in south London and want to send money at a reasonable rate, try Intercash, offices in Croydon and Wimbledon, open 7 days a week!

I send money via paypal.  It takes a couple of days, but I know when I need to send it, so its always worked fine for me.

Cost is NIL!

Small sums are best by Paypal, most of the UK banks charge £20, Idaho I'm guessing you were quoted for priority service default fee is shown here

http://barclays.metafaq.com/templates/barclays/main/answerPage?_mftvst:answerName_travel_international=%24payabroad

I'm surprised Paypal is free I thought they charged % of the transaction, making small sums more attractive.

Any problems give me a call.

I don't think PayPal will pay directly into bank accounts anyway, and I do not believe that PayPal and Sweden like each other anyway.

£20 sounds better than £45, but not as nice as £10 

I was going to give you or your "minion" a call this week anyway, as my husband's coming over on the 20th and I was going to see about getting him set up, either on my account or one of his own, so when we get him moved completely, he can just do a bank transfer at that time and also arrange for his pension to be paid into the bank as well.

With paypal you can withdraw money into your bank account, which is free.

Works for me.

Are paypal transfers really free?  I looked into transferring $ from the US into UK pounds and thought I saw there was a 3% fee.

I have US and UK paypal accts.

Are paypal transfers really free?  I looked into transferring $ from the US into UK pounds and thought I saw there was a 3% fee.

I have US and UK paypal accts.

the transfer is probably free but you're likely being charged for a currency transaction (from one currency to another) just like on credit cards/debit cards/etc.

My fiance and I have swapped large amounts of money from the UK to US and recently from the US to UK and never had too much of a problem. Because it's been to pay some of my bills we've used the MoneyGram International because it gets there almost immediately after he sends it and since I'm in Boston, MA is easy to pick up. It seems to take out some but for an instant transfer it's worth it.

However we did once try a check before he had a bank account and used a building society account. That SUCKED! Not only did they take a chunk out but it took forever to clear. I don't recommend that way.

If you don't mind waiting a couple days and want the lowest fee possible I would recommend Paypal as others have. From UK to US is quite quick and I find that when my fiance sends me money that way it goes into Paypal right away and transfers to my bank within a day or two. We just (this week) sent money from US to UK using Paypal and it took about 5 working days for him to get the money. It cleared from my bank account within 2 days but still took a couple days for his bank to process it.

Is it just me or do banks in the US seem to operate faster than the UK? Or maybe should I ask is it just me but if a bank GETS money it works faster than when it's sending it off? LOL

Ack just a note, Paypal is free to transfer HOWEVER you have to be careful because they do charge a small fee to convert the currency. It's never that noticeable though, only a few dollars usually. They do have a limit though on how much you can transfer which is why in the past we've had to do the MoneyGram because it ends up being over their limit.

LOL and one more minor thing for anyone who wants to do it you can just put in a debit card number if you want to but you should also note that the person on the receiving end needs to check their account and possibly change settings as that's considered to be a credit card and standard Paypal accounts don't come with this. I've gotten money from his sister's debit card and had to change some setting when the money came in so that I could actually accept the payment. Just thought I'd throw that out there too.

The problem was that I was wanting to transfer money to Sweden, where my husband is, and they don't have an agreement with PayPal.  However, I just found Payson, which is a Scandinavian PayPal and I'm trying to get that set up for transfers.  MUCH cheaper than any other method.

We transfer money to Sweden via Paypal every month without a problem. My ILs set up Paypal account using their Swedish bank account, no problem.

Have you tried this?  A lot of people have liked XE Trade.

http://talk.uk-yankee.com/index.php?topic=24183.0

If you don't mind waiting a couple days and want the lowest fee possible I would recommend Paypal as others have. From UK to US is quite quick and I find that when my fiance sends me money that way it goes into Paypal right away and transfers to my bank within a day or two. We just (this week) sent money from US to UK using Paypal and it took about 5 working days for him to get the money. It cleared from my bank account within 2 days but still took a couple days for his bank to process it.

If you don't mind, can I ask what you got for an exchange rate and the date you sent it?  I'm curious as to how close paypal gives to the true rate.

05/16/2007 is the day that I sent the money to my fiance.

Conversion From:    
   -$57.36 USD
Conversion To:    
   £28.20 GBP
Exchange Rate:    
   1 US Dollars = 0.491681 Pounds Sterling

As that was almost a week ago I don't know if that was any good or not.

05/16/2007 is the day that I sent the money to my fiance.

Conversion From:    
   -$57.36 USD
Conversion To:    
   £28.20 GBP
Exchange Rate:    
   1 US Dollars = 0.491681 Pounds Sterling

As that was almost a week ago I don't know if that was any good or not.

Thanks for that, I've always been curious.  According to x-rates.com the exchange rate on May 16 was .505715 so it looks like Paypal took another 2.8% profit in the given exchange rate vs the true exchange rate on top of charged fees.