My wife has been unable to deposit checks at BPI for several months from my USA bank account to her dollar account due to Covid19. My USA bank only has domestic wire transfers. Has anyone used another method such as an international money transfer company? What are the rates and safety? I am considering a transfer from my USA bank account to my wife's BPI peso account. Can this actually be cheaper because they give you the real exchange rate for the money that is transferred? Despite the fees, is the transfer cheaper because of the lack of the hidden exchange fees of the banks?
Transferwise is about as good as they get, I have used them for around 4yrs now and they have never let me down, you get the full going rate conversion and they take a commission from you, if I transfer £1000 they will take £7 from me, but now I do it in lots of £4K and it is cheaper to do that and costs me £20 in total, I guess the same applies, be it USD or Euro?, before using them I used Worldfirst, but was able cut my charges by half when I changed, great service and would recommend them.
Xoom is good if you need to send to someone who doesn't have a bank account, as they are linked to cash pickup spots available just about anywhere in the Philippines and the remittance is usually available instantly. But they clip you on the exchange rate. If sending to a verified bank account, I agree, I'd use Transferwise.
agreed. I still use xoom if I need to send to an individual who supplied a service, the main one is our internet guy to service our tower. He picks up the cash from Palawan Pawn Shop near his house. Their exchange rate is at least a peso, maybe a peso and half less than transfer wise. It may not sound like much, but it definitely adds up. Xoom is a lot faster, so sometimes the convenience is worth the couple extra bucks. Mainly now we use Transferwise as it is the cheapest so far, money gets there in about 2 business days, goes into an account that belongs to my wife and her sister. She will not take money without our approval first, which works great for us. Also when we are there, we can get money when we want and not worry about the current rates and having to go to an exchange shop.Otherwise I just use a no foreign transaction fee credit card and pay it on my US based account.
Transferwise will get money into a Philippine Bank Account within just a few hours, at this present time it no longer takes two days like it used to.
i maintain a dollar account at my bank in the phils. i periodically write a check and deposit it to my phils account. approximately 22 days later i have the money here, withdraw dollars as need, exchange them to my best advantage, and redeposit pesos to a peso account. it is the least expensive way i have found to transfer dollars to the phils from the US. the disadvantage is 22 working days before you have access to it
