[LINK] RFI: Overseas Payments

[Roger Clarke]

What are linkers' experiences with making payments overseas?

I paid 50% of a 10-day rental in France recently.

Suncorp took AUD 20 off me for starters.
Then it arrived EUR 38 short.

That mirrors the experience with a payment to an Austrian bank last year.

Despite the invention of SWIFT 40 years ago, it appears that 
Australian banks aren't big enough or organised enough to be able to 
pay directly to mainstream banks overseas.

Instead, unnecessary intermediaries are used.  Suncorp, and I gather 
banks generally, protect themslelves by saying 'there may be fees'. 
But you can't know in advance what they are.  I'm looking for someone 
to threaten litigation, in order to force basic consumer rights to be 
reinstated.

In this case, Suncorp wrote an unapologetic letter back to me, 
pointed to their Terms, and offered to send the missing EUR 38 on to 
the French bank as a one-time-only favour.

I agreed, partly to get the EUR 38 back, partly to solve the 
immediate problem of the short-payment, but mainly to establish that 
they can indeed achieve payment of a nominated amount to a distant 
account.  Precisely EUR 38 arrived.  So they're bare-faced liars for 
saying that they can't do it!


In the meantime, I need to make a further 50% payment to the French bank.

Does anyone know of a way to transfer funds that costs less than AUD 
80 per transaction??!!

(With the largely-automated systems that are in place, somewhere 
closer to AUD 0.80 seems like a fair price.  Currency conversion is a 
separate transaction of course, with its own 'spread', i.e. fees, 
plus commission).


[I'll claim this isn't Off-Topic, on the basis that, like SCADA, some 
part of the international transfer system probably now uses the 
Internet - one hopes, using a VPN ...]


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 6916                        http://about.me/roger.clarke
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University