Bank accounts

[DaveNot 55]

Currently I'm with Well-Fargo in the USA and Barclays in the UK. I've been wanting an international bank account and looking around and most seem to be near impossible to obtain unless you have substantial amounts of cash.

I want to be able to transfer money back and forth from the UK to USA without incurring charges and high percentages on each transfer and spending.

Barclays offers a chequeing facilities, but not a card.

I'm wondering what other people are doing?

[Nich-Nick 3,353]

People use xe.com and Transferwise and seem to think those are good ones for moving money between bank accounts.

Edited February 24, 2015 by Nich-Nick

[TheCaptain 67]

HSBC does have facilities which you are looking for and is available in both countries. The catch is that you are required to present yourself in person to open a HSBC account in the USA.

You will have two separate HSBC accounts and cards but will be able to transfer between the banks with very minimal fees.

Every account and international transaction will have some kind of fee's attached to it. This is due to exchange rates, paying intermediate banks, clearing houses and other fees which are incurred at each end of the transaction.

Most people do a single transfer of funds and eat the fees associated with the transfer. Find the best UK funds transfer company and go with them.

Good luck with your search.

[Pheebs1201 269]

I use transferwise or western union. I also have a post office travel money card that gets renewed every two years. I "load" UK money onto the card and then withdraw in dollars in the US. It doesn't work out too atrociously.

[mayfield 23]

Yeah HSBC has some great packages for this, would say have a look at them, then also you can check worldremit.com as well as those as the poster above mentioned you will always incur some kind of fees unless you open an account that is expensive or as you said requires you open with a large sum of cash.

Banking is a business, in some banks depending on your amount of transactions you could try and ask if your eligible for a concession and see where that gets you but I doubt you will be transferring such amounts (not to be rude).

I really feel going with HSBC is a very good option, only negative is I don't know how their presence is in every state.

Anyway let us know if you do find any great deal out their.

[DaveNot 55]

Will give those a look, thanks for the advice.

[nobbie 105]

I have both UK and US accounts with HSBC, works out fine although you have to get used to the somewhat antiquated banking system in the US compared to the UK. HSBC in the US now has chip and pin cards but nowhere has the machines to use them, it's still sign a bit of paper, they do have the little random code generators for online banking, which is good.

I had to drive about an hour to find my "local" branch that's the drawback, only 1 branch in the whole state

[mayfield 23]

Thats what I was saying about the locations in various states, a lot is quite odd here the way that they run each state like its own little country, miss my DVLA simple and straight forward,

[TheAff 5]

People use xe.com and Transferwise and seem to think those are good ones for moving money between bank accounts.

I second Nich-Nick with the suggestion of Transferwise. I've used their service a bunch of times. Money usually hits my US account about 2 days after sending, sometimes the next day (even though they tell you it'll take nearly a week). I think the most I've ever paid for a fee is around £5. They also use current exchange rates whereas most banks will use a most advantageous rate to them as well as charging a processing fee on top.

Edited February 26, 2015 by TheAff

[-PiLoT- 11]

i transfer cash to paypal account then send it to anorther paypal linked to american account

[mayfield 23]

i transfer cash to paypal account then send it to anorther paypal linked to american account

interesting, how do the exchange rates work out?

[-PiLoT- 11]

it varies. the fee is minimal though

[rjm_cmyk 75]

I use XE for all my transfers from the UK to USA. They're sticklers for ID details but that's money laundering regs for you. I wanted to change the UK bank I sent from as Santander can't cope with the concept of any of their customers actually living outside the UK. I had to jump through a few hoops to prove that I owned the other account but it was easy enough in the end. Wayyyy better rates than my banks too.

Keep an eye out for incoming bank charges with the likes of WF.