UKC

I am hoping for a little advice. I want to transfer 1000 euros from my German bank account to my English one. Whats the cheapest way to do this? Would it be better to take the money over to the uk with me and convert it or to simply transfer it from one bank to the other?

In reply to Jiduvah: I don't know about German -> England, but between our particular US and UK accounts we found PayPal to be the cheapest option.

In reply to Jiduvah:
Germany -> UK should be pretty easy with IBAN details of UK account.

In reply to elsewhere: Yeah I have no doubt it would be easy, but I was thinking about cheapest.

In reply to Jiduvah:
From a bank in Germany to any bank in Europe the transfer costs the same as a normal transfer in Europe (using IBAN and BIC)). This has been so for some years now.
You will need to hold a Euro account in England or it will be automatically converted to pounds at the current rate plus a commision charge which only your bank can tell you, not UKC.

In reply to jimtitt: Ah ok, thats what I was looking for I think. Thanks. The account in England is not a euro account. I was assuming there would be some charge for the actual transfer as well.

In reply to Jiduvah: Worth noting that the exchange rate your bank is offering might well be significantly below the actual exchange rate!

In reply to Jiduvah: oanda.com is the cheapest in terms of currency spread (difference btw inter-bank FX rate and the rate offered to the retail customer when converting EUR into Pounds). I have also used ukforex.co.uk in the past.
I'm assuming that by "cheapest" you mean both the transfer fees, as well as the exchange rate spread. As the sum of these two is the real cost of money transfer between currencies and countries.

In reply to Jiduvah: your cheapest option would be to find someone in England that wants to swap pounds to euros to pay for a holiday etc, win win situation fair exchange rate and no commission for either.

In reply to Jiduvah:

in which case you will definitly be stung by your bank on both the fees and the excahnge rate, use one of the online forex services who will give you a much better rate and cheaper (or no) fees, worth shopping around to, as on anyone day there can be a quite big range

In reply to Jiduvah:

Mrs Blue and I have moved similar amounts to and from Holland. The cheapest way we found was withdraw cash, convert at the post office commission free, take to new country and pay in.

Gareth

In reply to Jiduvah:

I'm also interested in this thread, as we are selling our house in Finland and will be moving the money to the UK. In our case differences in the exchange rate will mean quite a big difference in the amount of pounds we get.

It certainly looks like the foreign exchange brokers offer much better rates. It's quite hard to know who to trust with our life savings. Has anyone had any experience with either the FX firm or TorFX?

Thank you, Tony

In reply to TonyB:
Has anyone had any experience with either the FX firm or TorFX?

I have. You need to look at the possible conversion deals from both ends.

I transferred a lot of cash to buy a house in the Czech Republic and for renovation costs. UK banks were not good and I used FC Exchange, a specialist FX dealer, in the end. Their service was very good and I saved a lot of money compared with using UK banks. You can also use strategies to protect against market volatility like "forward contracts".

But and it's a big but! I have discovered I can convert sterling to CZK at better rates through my ordinary internet banking in CR than I could get with the FX specialists in UK. My conclusion is UK money companies are greedy compared with ordinary banks here. So, my advice would be to look very closely at what you can get locally before assuming you can get a better deal in the UK.

Good luck and don't get too obsessed by small movements of the exchange rate! And for most of the people who will contribute here - it's a completely different matter to looking for a few more euros for your next trip to Spain.

In reply to Jiduvah:

Have a look at www.currencyfair.com

A very clever principle (no curency exchange is involved, you effectively trade with your own currency only). This makes it very cost effective. I recently used it to transfer £3k to Australia, it was secure, I achieved a great exchange rate and fees were around £4.

Mr A in UK wants to send £2,000 to Mr B in Australia
Mr C in Australia wants to send £2,000 to Mr D in UK

The site puts together numerous such prospective transfers but in my simplified example, Mr A (in the UK) simply gives £2,000 to Mr D (in the UK). No currency exchange takes place

In reply to Jiduvah: I have a rented holiday property and get a lot of european guests. IBAN transfer is expensive and slow. If you are transferring the same currency then Paypal is easily the cheapest (£2 or £3 transfer charge) but.. to get this you have to have the money in a paypal account before you transfer it, they will stick you for hefty credit card charges if you use a credit card top up the account you are paying from. Also you must make the transfer by checking the personal payment box - if they think it is a business payment they will also stiff you with charges.

Not sure how it works if you want to send euros and receive pounds (which paypal will do) - you would need to find out the exchange rate they are offering.