How do I transfer money back to Canada [chealy and quickly]?

[Rory]

Greetings all. my first post here, as I have just found out I'm moving to Oz for a little while.

I'm looking for the cheapest and quickest way to transfer money back to Canada while in Oz. I need this, as I'm getting paid in AUD to an Oz account, but still have a mortgage, etc. back in Canada.

Any help would be appreciated.

[kene]

believe it or not. Paypal ends up being pretty reasonable. I'm not sure about getting the money from AU $ to Paypal, but i get paid via paypal, then used to transfer the money to my Can $$ account.

Maybe you can set up a joint Australian account with a family member in Canada, they can then use ATM to do a cash advance to get funds? I have my Dad linked into my online banking, and i can send him money instantly from my TD Canada trust account, into his TD Canada trust account, it's free and instant. But i still need to get the money into my CA account. But for some stuff, i just need someone in Canada to manage some of my affairs.

Wire Transfer (Swift Account) is expensive, but very easy, and reasonably fast. I've had money go both to my wifes account in Bangladesh, and my Canadian Bank (TD Canada trust). There are services that do money transfer, but i'm sceptical about most of them, if something goes wrong, they seem to be very hard to reach.

Finally - look into some of the 'international banks' and see what they can offer you in terms of relationships with one another. HSBC is in both Canada and Australia, and while you'll probably still need two accounts, they may offer you much less expensive services than trying to wire transfer money back and forth between different banks through swift.

for me, online banking has been my best friend, I get paid in US $, all my bills are in Canada in Can $$ and i live and do my work in Bangladesh on a Spousal visa, so i can't open a bank account here. I budget very carefully each month, and do two international transfers, both from US, one into my Canadian Bank (bank partnership between TD Bank North and TD Canada Trust, and then a cash advance through a VISA debit card at Standard Chartered bank.) fees suck, but are totally unavoidable, but with my current arrangement, they aren't killing me.

[Rory]

Thanks for your help!

Paypal: Minimum charge, from what I can tell, is 1.5%. so, $30 on $2k.

Joint accounts: 1.5% fee to withdraw in Canada (so, $30 on $2k) (and an additional $5 if you don't do it at a partner bank)

Swift Account: Even more expensive

Dual-nationality banks: I looked into ING and HSBC. ING doesn't do it at all, and HSBC charges ~$30 to send and $10 to receive unless you're a premiere account holder and then it's free (To get a premiere account, you need to deposit $150k into your account. lol)

So. all of these options suck. $30 for an electronic transfer is just highway robbery. I can email a friend in vancouver $10,000 for a $1.50 fee, but to get $2k from Oz to Canada, it costs me $30-100)?!?!?

[comet555]

Hvae you looked into Ozforex? We used them to transfer our money over to Oz, but it was a one time thing. They were definitely way better than using the banks.

I'm not sure how they would compare though if making regular transfers every month or so.

[Rory]

Ya, they look pretty good. At the moment, it's looking like citibank might be my best bet. They have some kind of Global Money Exchange that apparently is free if you have a Canadian-based account and an Oz-based account. I'm calling the OZ Citibank office now to make sure there are no catches.

[kene]

Thanks for your help!

Paypal: Minimum charge, from what I can tell, is 1.5%. so, $30 on $2k.

Paypal has two options, e-check and transfer from balance. If you e-check, you get a one time $5.00 fee, max. I get paid in paypal, my Boss always uses e-check to save me the 1.5 which was killing me.

[Rory]

I'll look into the e-cheque option w/Paypal, but I did confirm (on the phone) last night with both Citibank Canada and Citibank Australia that there are zero fees to transfer between your international Citibank accounts.

[iancanton]

the fee for sending money through paypal from another continent to canada appears to be 3.9% of the value. on $1,000, the fee will be $39.

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/websc ... countries=

the exchange rate is also 2.5% worse than the interbank rate.

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/websc ... es-outside

unless i'm mistaken, the total cost therefore looks like $64.

ian.