[LINK] RFI: Overseas Payments

[Roger Clarke]

At 17:47 +1300 18/3/14, Paul Bolger wrote:
>PayPal,  if you don't mind giving your business to reactionary Americans.
>Otherwise you could try giving a cc authorisation for that amount. 
>Car hire places seem to regard that as okay for security.

Leaving aside the question of the gouge involved in the PayPal 
yet-another-intermediary scheme, there are a great many people and 
small businesses around the world to whom people want to transfer 
money use bank accounts, and don't accept payments through credit 
cards.

Off-list, http://www.ozforex.com.au/ was suggested.  (Thanks!).

My impression was that it was more than 1.6% of the amount transferred.

(And of course it's always necessary to check the conversion rate, to 
make sure that the spread they're applying is in line with the 
market).

But $16 per $1000 is way better than $80 flat!

_________________________________________________________________________

On 18/03/2014 5:40 PM, "Roger Clarke" 
<<mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au>Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au> wrote:

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/>http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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 <http://about.me/roger.clarke>http://about.me/roger.clarke
mailto:<mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au>Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au 
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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University
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-- 
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