money transfer

jockey joe

Hi there just looking for a bit of help I am going to canada the end of june and I was just wondering what is the best way to send money home to pay my morgage . Can I transfer it from a bank in canada to my aib account here .

m.j.w

Yea join rbc bank, it's 13.50 dollars to do a transfer with them if you use your online banking. Some of them charge 50 or 60 dollars to do it

iamstop

There are banks that offer 'new comer' accounts. Free banking for a year. Check those out and see if they cover money transfers. I'm with RBC (for now) and got 6 months free banking after I threatened to leave them (I'm still going to after the 6 months). Deffo shop around. Banks here have all types of crazy charges we don't get back home.

retalivity

I know a few people who use currencyfair to transfer money at better rates than the banks offer.

the problem with that in Canada is that it requires a transfer from your Canadian account to a Bank Of America account here first, which costs 20-30 dollars depending on what bank you're with.

otherwise, look at any newcomer offers that banks are running... I know that the cost of a wire transfer from td for a regular customer is $30, never mind what the irish banks deduct for receiving it

Against

Hi, I've used xetrade (on http://www.xe.com/) a couple of times and find it pretty good. You set up an account and send them some id docs to verify, then you'll be able to make payments by adding your accounts. You can give authorisation for them to debit accounts too so there's no fee to fund the xetrade account. Then you just pay the xetrade commission, 10 or 20 CAD I think.

It's a bit more effort than a bank I guess, but it's nice to be able to track the rate and book it so you know what you're getting.

vankano

TD Bank charge $30 a transfer I've done this a few times with them money usually arrives home 1-2 days later, goes straight from my Canadian account to my Irish account. Try to send larger amounts at a time as the fee is the same up to something like $5000

conorsheehan89

Hi Lads,

This helped me a lot. My brother was struggling in America to get cash and all the money I was putting into his account was costing both me and him a bomb to transfer. So I used this card. Its called the FX card from An Post. You basically top up in a post office in ireland and it goes straight into the account and it only costs like a dollar to take out. Might be handy if you wanna scrounge money off the rents. Its free!!

http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/GeneralTemplates/ProductsAndServicesForex.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRNODEGUID=%7BB8423F5F-D514-4306-8176-684BFD3C6C28%7D&NRORIGINALURL=%2Fanpost%2Fmaincontent%2Fpersonal%2Bcustomers%2Fmoney%2Bmatters%2Fforeign%2Bexchange%2F&NRCACHEHINT=Guest#PostFX

againstthetide

Looks like US or UK only sadly

COYVB

Transferred $5700 from AIB to TD 2 days ago and it only cost E22.50 iirc, with a conversion rate of $1.33 to the euro. Can't argue with that

MadsL

I use two Paypal accounts - one linked to my Irish account and one linked to my US bank account. Very cheap way to transfer money.

leggit

Currencyfair.com is by far the best way to transfer money to/from Canada.

Rates are usually 4-5c better than banks (probably 10-15c better than paypal/xetrade) and they charge a flat rate no matter how much you send (Think if sending to Ireland it's e3 and to Canada $4).

Couldn't recommend them enough

montreal2011

leggit wrote: »

Currencyfair.com is by far the best way to transfer money to/from Canada.

Rates are usually 4-5c better than banks (probably 10-15c better than paypal/xetrade) and they charge a flat rate no matter how much you send (Think if sending to Ireland it's e3 and to Canada $4).

Couldn't recommend them enough

According to COYB his bank, TD, on the 17th of this month, gave him a rate of 1.33 when the market rate was 1.35.

I get about the same rate, about 2cents under the market with Paypal.

Currencyfair.com do seem to be very close to the market rate;

CurrencyFair Rate:0.7233
Market Rate: 0.726732

They seem good; I'll check them out.

COYVB

MadsL wrote: »

I use two Paypal accounts - one linked to my Irish account and one linked to my US bank account. Very cheap way to transfer money.

I found it a lot more expensive than the bank actually. There would've been a 3 figure charge for sending $5700 through it, with an exchange rate of almost identical to the bank transfer I did

corcaigh07

COYVB wrote: »

I found it a lot more expensive than the bank actually. There would've been a 3 figure charge for sending $5700 through it, with an exchange rate of almost identical to the bank transfer I did

i was thinking of using PaypalCA to PaypalIE when I leave later this year but maybe it would be cheaper and safer to go via the Bank. Gonna talk to TD and ATB about it today (I have 2 accounts)

jank

Your crazy going with Paypal, they will screw you on the rates.

againstthetide

http://www.screw-paypal.com/horror_stories/horror_stories_9.html

mazi

jockey joe wrote: »

Hi there just looking for a bit of help I am going to canada the end of june and I was just wondering what is the best way to send money home to pay my morgage . Can I transfer it from a bank in canada to my aib account here .

Get a credit card and have one of your family back home as a 2nd card holder, that way you can lodge the money into this & they withdraw the other side, you only pay the normal fee for using the credit card & what ever exchange rate.(Much cheaper than going to the bank every month)

I've been doing this for months and cleared my loans and it is hassle free!

corcaigh07

jank wrote: »

Your crazy going with Paypal, they will screw you on the rates.

Seems like it alright, Paypal is good for sending small amounts, not your life savings!

NewsMeQuick

I know a lot of people in other threads said that they change the bulk of their money when they have set up a Canadian bank account, and simply connect it to their Irish one and transfer. This is very safe but has a problem.

Scotiabank seems to be very popular with imigrant Irish. I checked out their forex rates: http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/0,,1118,00.html

1.39? The rate with AIB is 1.43 and with CurrencyFair it's 1.44. Waiting to change it while in Canada via transfer from home at a rate of 1.39 looks terrible. I was uneasy about leaving a large some of money in CurrencyFair's hands with about 1k CAD on me, but at 1.44 it's far preferable to the transfer.

Any one find anything better?

fergusb

CurrencyFair is a much better rate and much cheaper fees than AIB to Scotiabank direct. When you transfer through CurrencyFair it gets transferred into CAD, so from Scotiabank point of view you are just transfer CAD into your Scotiabank. I don't see the problem of just transferring the large sum of money through CurrencyFair to Scotiabank, it will only be in CurrencyFairs hands for a few days and you will make a good bit more based on the exchange rate.

Also CurrencyFair is regulated by the Irish Central Bank so should be safe enough..... or not if history tells us anything!