3745 u.k to italy money transfers

hi there :)

I'm using the Online Foreign Exchange System from xe.com. URL: [url]https://www.xe.com/fx/login/[/url]

basically you have to sign up and set up an account, and then you specify beneficiaries (i.e. foreign account holders). I've got one in Germany and one in Italy. The rates are very competitive and the fees are something like £6 or £8 pounds per transaction and they don't charge any other commission. I'm very happy with them and have used them exclusively for all my money transfers when I bought the property. Also, it's completely online, and that's the way I prefer doing stuff anyway. Would definitely recommend them!

Lenina

Nightmare with Natwest to my account here. First you have to write a letter (no fax or email), then they have to write back as they need some further info to verify you are who you say you are - but send the letter second class so it takes two weeks to arrive. If you need money urgently, and balk at paying £25 for a "quick" transfer, then Natwest is not the way to go.

It is good to register with one or two as the rates can see-saw.. That said I used to use HiFX but a friend recommended Custom House who are excellent. The rate usually is around .01 off the interbank rate depending on the transaction amount e.g. I recently exchanged £11k at a time when the interbank rate was 1.463 and got 1.4525. They also give one free transfer per exchange to an overseas destination as part of the service. I believe they may have a minimum limit of around £5k per transaction but I am not sure about that as to save costs I usually transfer in blocks of not less than £5k.
Never ever use the high street banks the rates are not much better than tourist rates and they charge for the transfer.
All of the exchange companies will require you to register and usually ask for passport ID etc. to prevent money laundering etc. Once it is done though it is simple. I just monitor the rate s and when they look good I just phone my own trader at Custom House and agree a rate and the deal is done. Alternatively you can agree a trigger rate at which point they will make the deal at the rate you have requested (good if you are not in a hurry and the rates are on the rise)You have 48 hours to get the money to them and if you are making a regular payment to a particular destination account you just confirm the IBAN number andthe job is done. The money usually arrives in the account within 2-3 days.

We used [URL="http://www.moneycorp.com"]www.moneycorp.com[/URL] and everything was fine. ;)

Naturally most of us know now that the high street banks are not the place to automatically go to transfer funds for your deposit or final payment for house purchase but I struggled to find somewhere that would transfer small amounts to our Italian bank account without huge fees.

The big currency dealers like HiFX weren't really interested in amounts of £100-£300 unless done on a regular twelve month basis. LloydsTSB wanted £15 regardless of the amount plus further charges to be levied by MPS in Italy on receipt.

So I picked up a tip from moneysavingexpert which thought I'd share only because I've tried it and it works.

First is to set up an account with moneybookers. I did a transfer of just £40 for less than £2 fee. You need about a week to get through their registration process but the funds were in our italian bank account just three days after request and no receiving fee.

Second is to transfer using paypal, connected to ebay. Again did a trial transfer of just |£10 and got charged about £1 and again funds are received via Bank of America in just three or so days with no receiving fee.

For those of you lucky enough not to have mortgage payments to make from your italian bank but just the occasional bill etc. this may be useful.

Both services worked really well for me and sure if anyone has contrary experiences they can add to this post.

Hi,
We used Currencies Direct three weeks ago, .1 below market rate which =1.481. Very lucky to exchange at a 52week high. No fee from them and no fuss. Check how much your Italian bank will charge to receive though.
Good luck, Val.
ps We complete on our property in December. What a great Christmas it will be.

When we were buying and needed to transfer the money over, our greatest problem was our UK bank. Nat West again!

In the end we negotiated a future exchange rate with HIFX and then drip-fed the money to them in the amounts that Nat West would allow.

As it happened the exchange rate went through the floor but HIFX honoured the rate they had agreed and it saved us loads.

We have used both Caxton Fx and HIFX - both were absolutely fine nothing between them really and both offered rates well above the High Street banks.
We have been told that if you transfer E12,500 or less in a lump sum you cannot be charged by the receiving bank. If you need to transfer more than this amount both companies are prepared to break the total amount down into small sums to keep each one under the E12,500.

I used my UK bank (Alliance and Leicester) 'overseas transfer' dept. Their exchange rates were always 'tourist rates'. But with the help of the small village branch of my Italian bank I was able to choose whether it would be a transfer in €'s or £'s. My builder and the other people involved were sufficiently flexible to allow me to hang on and strike while the rates were good. Often I would xfer in sterling and my bank here would watch the rate and when it was good would give me a call and say 'Now is the time'! (The rates here, if you bank with them are invariably [I]better[/I] than the UK tourist rates (those offered by UK banks).

The transfer fee of £35 for [I]every[/I] xfer made it sensible to wait until it was a larger sum needed.

However - I'm now seriously thinking of closing my A&L account and moving my business to my Nationwide account. It seems that for people who live here but retain an address in the UK, [I]their[/I] accounts are far less costly than many other banks.

About 4 years ago I used HSBC for transferring the house purchase cash to my Italian bank Account.

They gave the Bank of England exchange rate - rather than a Tourist rate and the fee was not excessive for largish sums - from memory it was about £25 for Euro100.000. Transfer was effected on the day I wanted, but it did take the Italian bank a few days to acknowledge receipt [No surprise there then.

My advice - shop around and get several quotes.

[quote=Brownie]
So I picked up a tip from moneysavingexpert which thought I'd share only because I've tried it and it works.

First is to set up an account with moneybookers. I did a transfer of just £40 for less than £2 fee. You need about a week to get through their registration process but the funds were in our italian bank account just three days after request and no receiving fee.
[/quote][LEFT]

This one is new to me and I had a quick look on the moneybookers site, but I must admit I couldn't work out how it works. We are past the point of needing to send very large sums - well, unless we suddenly need to replace the roof or something - so are looking for a way to send over smaller sums, below the £5k threshold that HIFX stipulates.

Our italian bank has always charged us a receiving fee so far, despite the fact that the money arrives in Euros so I am interested to read that there is no receiving fee using Moneybookers. Can you walk me through the end bit of the process again, please? What confuses is me is how they say you can transfer between people with emails. I don't correspond with my italian bank by email.
[/LEFT]

We`ve been using Currencies 4 less and found them to be very good. I don`t know if there`s a minimum amount you can transfer, as we normally transfer quite a bit at a time. But the rates are good and we pay a small amount (might be around £10 or less) in order to avoid having to pay our bank here to receive the money. I`ve no idea how that works but it seems to be saving us bucket loads of money so is well worth it. I`d definitely recommend them.
[url]www.currencies4less.co.uk[/url]

My experience with a small amount to buy a second-hand car was that the TIPANET system was so slow at this end using my Bancoposta account that it would have been quicker and cheaper getting €250 out of the hole in the wall every day. For everyday transfers I do just that.

In the past I've used XEtrade and would use them again if I ever bought over here.

We always use the Nationwide, It's a great service and a reasonable charge, You can do it from your home PC.

Yorky

Are you sure, Yorky? I didn't use my Nationwide account for the very reason that they wanted a confirmatory letter.. Maybe once you've done in once you can do it on-line. In retrospect it certainly couldn't have been any slower!

[QUOTE=Licciana][LEFT]

Our italian bank has always charged us a receiving fee so far, despite the fact that the money arrives in Euros so I am interested to read that there is no receiving fee using Moneybookers. Can you walk me through the end bit of the process again, please? What confuses is me is how they say you can transfer between people with emails. I don't correspond with my italian bank by email.
[/LEFT][/QUOTE]

I confess that Moneybookers looks a bit complicated. Reason we used it is because we don't live in Italy permanently so every now and again we need to top up the Paschi di Siena account with some cash to cover bills and their charges (mostly their charges). This is how it worked for us.

Moneybookers is a system for sending money from one person to another via email. Each person registers their bank details so the person wanting to send uploads their funds, moneybookers transfers the funds to the receiving person's "moneybookers" account which they then transfer into their proper bank account. There are no emails to the banks themselves.

So we set ourselves up twice, me as the UK end with my UK account and my wife with her Italian account registered. I "sent" money to her moneybookers account. She gets an email from Moneybookers saying "money has arrived what do you want to do" and she logs into Moneybookers and says, send it to my italian bank account and it goes.

Moneybookers say you can send to anyone with an email address but what they really mean is that if the person receiving is not already registered with Moneybookers, they'll need to do so before they can get their hands on the money.

Not sure Moneybookers was set up for this purpose but it worked just fine, if you can get your head around it. MPdiSiena didn't charge even though they happily charged for every transfer from LloydsTSB. The Paypal system works in a similar way. Trust that explains a bit, it is complicated at first but once it's all set up, you can effectively do the whole transfer online in minutes and I see no reason why you can't transfer the other way either if you wanted to.

Thanks Brownie, that made perfect sense - ingenious even! We'll try it next time we need to transfer money.