This is mainly directed at the Americans on this forum: Does anyone know of a bank or financial institution that has an office in Chicago, IL that is has NO FEES for incoming and outgoing wire transfers? I have contacted 15 different banks so far, and EACH ONE charge anywhere from $10 to $30 to RECEIVE MONEY!! This is a very unusual practise, as in Australia it is completely free to send and receive money to any bank and from any bank, any time and any amount (at least I have not hit any hurdles!). I am starting to think this is a USA specific issue that can not be avoided. But am wondering if someone has found a way around it...
If you want to transfer funds between Australia and the USA, have you considered a FX service like OzForex (banner advertiser) rather than using a bank? I recently used them for an overseas transfer, and was very pleased with their service. Rather than a wire transfer, you deposit funds into their account here, once cleared, they pay the recipient from their foreign account. Your statement that "... in Australia it is completely free to send and receive money to any bank and from any bank ..." is only true for domestic transfers using Electronic Funds Transfers (EFT); sending money to an overseas bank will most likely incur a wire transfer fee - e.g. my bank charges $20 for an international wire transfer (and warn that intermediate/receiving banks may also charge fees).
I should have been more clear in what I wanted to know... I was referring to domestic wire transfers rather than international wire transfers. It seems the norm for USA banks is to charge for all domestic bank wires and transfers. Is there such a bank in USA that does not charge for domestic incoming and outgoing bank wire transfers?
There's your problem (in bold). If you wanted to wire funds from one Australian bank account to another, I suspect you'd be in for some fees as well. The reason it's "free" here I suspect is that you're comparing this to something similar to a BPAY/Pay Anyone online banking transfer?
I was under the impression that a "Pay Anyone" was the same as a bank wire. What is the difference? Both methods are a means of moving funds from one bank to another digitally.
Pay Anyone (Australian system) is an electronic funds transfer system similar to ACH payments (U.S. system). Both systems process transactions periodically in batches. Wire transfers are processed immediately thought a Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) processor such as FedWire (U.S. System). They're actually very different systems. In a nutshell, RTGS systems are expensive and reasonably safe whereas batch processing is cheap-n-cheerful but comes with additional settlement risk.
Good to know. Thanks for that - didn't fully understand the difference, but that makes sense. Bank wire is instantaneous and secure, so it costs. Have to keep that in mind when moving funds between banks...
