Money transfers between US, EU and Asia

   Money transfers have always been a comfortable service for international money operations, business abroad or immigration/emigration. But, as some of you may know when dealing with banks that do international money transfers you must have both sender and receiver bank account information for you to get the funds from one account to another, no matter if you use Transfermate or do a private bank transfer. So basically you get to the point of completing some documents and applications for the particular transaction and you may run onto details that actually are different for banks in the United States, in Europe (EU - European Union) and in Asia. The differences actually come from the specific bank systems worldwide and namely the European the American and the Australian.
   Here are the main specific details for those three bank account identification systems, or in other words the numbers you'll need to fill in money transfer applications to/from Australian, American and/or European banks.
   Regarding the US system of wire transfers the main thing you should know is that they do not use the same numbers for identification like in Europe and AU. The main bank account id number is called there Routing Transit Number (RTN), and is being used in the States for almost 70 years (which acutally does not speak well for the system by anyway..). So that is the most important number for you to fill in in order to identify which bank account you are using (no matter for sending or receiving money in/to it). This number (the RTN) is a nine-digit code representing the information as it follows:

    XXXXYYYYC
    XXXX - Federal Reserve Routing symbol
    YYYY - Financial institution identifier (in brief Bank ID)
    C - Check Digit
    So as you can see this number has a lot of disadvantages compared to the ISBN code, and may     be because of its age it actually does not include any personal account identifier or whatsoever.

   The IBAN money transfer bank code. This code shortened after International Bank Account Number and it is mainly used in Europe and some other countries identifying the country, the swift code the bank account number and the district the bank is at.
The code scheme is like this:

    kk BBBB SSSS CCCC CCCC CCCC

  With:
     - the country abreviation (e.g. EN for England, AU for Austria)
    kk - a number prefix for the discrict area
    BBBB - Particular bank transfer code
    SSSS - Sort code
    CCCC CCCC CCCC - Account number


   BSB (Bank State branch) code is the code that you'll need when filling a money transfer form for Australian bank account information. The system in AU uses only this code when making international transactions to or from the Oz.

   The format of the code is as follows:
First two digits specify the parent financial institution.
Third digit specifies the state where the branch is located
Fourth, fifth and sixth digits specify the branch

    For example, the BSB "033088" actually breaks down to the following:
   03 = Westpac Banking Corporation
   3 = Victoria
   088 = 383 Chapel Street, Prahran

Offshore finance countries in and near Europe

    Recently we had discussion with some investors willing to develop financial money services in the EU and got to the point talking about where the head finance accounts should be set up. Some of the investors had the thought that any small country no matter in EU or outside it which is currently developing its economy and infrastructure is an offshore zone for money to be stored in without tax issues, along with high confidentiality. Well do not get confused like them, in Europe (European Union) there are no countries that have this status allowing them to hide bank account information and to protect money transfers from taxes. The only countries that have this feature are not in Europe, but are bordering the EU. Those are Switzerland, Monaco, Malta, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Cyprus. Of course there are some others near Europe that just provide some eases for commersial and corporate financial needs, but those are just the best usually used for high-definiton money export.
    We will only focus on the most appropriate and developed offshore banking zones in which money are more than secure and money transfers go without any problems along with the symbolically low taxes rates.
    Money and finances in Gyprus (offshore banking). Cyprus is know to be a separated to two parts contry, with a main characteristic of each sides - Greek influence for one of the sides, and a Turkish for the other. As you may already suppose, the Greek part is considered and know to be the better developed in economical and infrastructure terms. That is the part where actually Banks offer conditions and requirements which suit the money storage of large companies that want to avoid high tax rates. Money transfers to and from banks in this Cyprus part are noticed to have diminutive fees and because of the high international influance, they have great relationships with all the money transfer insitutions all over the world.
   Swiss banking and money transfers. Switzerland does not need an introduction, as it is widely famous with its Banks and offshore finances stored in Swiss bank accounts. Fore some of you Switzerland may seem an overestimated zone, but facts are facts. They really offer the highest confidentiallity for your money and private bank account information, and they avoid being in the European Union which gives them the opportunity not to be ruled by laws that otherwise oblige high tax rates. That is why the taxes that comply in Switzerland does not oblige your finances and you are not supposed to pay the high amount of money that you would otherwise pay in e.g UK, US, Australia, etc. Swiss government holds the position that privacy is fundamental for any financial or money transfer service, and supports the firm policy of any of the Banks situated there.
    Well for now that information would be enough for you if you decide to export your money to an offshore banking zone like Switzerland or Cyprus. If you have any additional questions or want to know specific details mail us and we will do our best to get the info for you.

USD versus EUR and Wire versus Cash

   Recently a huge turmoil has been in progress as most of you noticed on the foreign exchange markets, stock markets and in global economical view. So for the others that do not know the exact reason of that money-chaos situation, it is the US Dollar and US economy that changed and slowed the world financial growth. The thing is that for an year or so, USD is constantly falling in almost every FX pair (USD/EUR, USD/JPY, USD/AUD, etc) and that is for sure not normaly but is kind of aftermath of the bloodbaths America used to make around the world and the position of the Oil with respect to the U.S positions overseas. Anyway most of you could say, OK, the dollar is going down but it won't wound me because I am trading in EUR and I am in Europe, so me and my finances will remain untouched and unharmed. Well, almost true - in any case whatever financial moves you make with money overseas, the smartest thing to do is to use EUR or at least JPY because of their stable position right now and even in a long-term prediction forecast. But, there is almost no chance for your finances to remain unharmed in a long-term view because of the 100% sure opinion of economical experts that this USD crisis will surely slow the global growth and in any case "the party is over". But, again, please use EUR, GBP, JPY or whatever you like and do not get involved in deals which USD is a main currency.

   Another thing that cannot be easily noticed if you are not dealing with corporate finance or large money operations overseas is the change of some money transfer companies' Terms and Conditions because of never seen before amount of Fraud worldwide. And this information by the way was not public, as I happened to reach it through several head central subagent executives dealing with opening new branches of Western Union. According to them, as internal reports show, the amount of fraudalent money transfers to the Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa exceeds the percentage of legal ones. That is the reason for Money transfer companies to tighten up the requirements and rules for international money transfers to insure that illegal money-laundering activities are not being done via their services, and of course for the security of legal money transactions overseas. A new tracking system is know to be developed in order for the money sender and/or receiver to be able to track the money from their source to their destination. There are of course other new things around the money transactions but we will all get informed as soon as they will make them public.

Work or Study overseas money transfer explanation

     We have always popularized the different specific services for both private or corporate money transactions we offer in Transfermate, but we have never explained in details what are they all about and in which cases you should use a particular specific service among our 7: for the private customers - Work/Study overseas, Propery overseas, Regular transfers, Salary/Pension transfer; and for the corporate clients - General payments, Flexi transfer contracts and Forward flexi contracts.
     Speaking about a specific service we should start with the Work and Study overseas money transfer opition you can use. Here's the thing, many people, or in other words many of you plan to emigrate and move to another country with the intention to work for a higher salary and get more money for the job you've been doing in your home country. First, since there is no way for you to travel with more than e.g EUR2000/USD3000 - EUR3000/USD4000, you need a way to get your initial kick-off money abroad for your easy start in the foreign land. Now here's the choice for you! First you surely will need a bank account in the country you are going to not only for transferring funds but for getting your salary in it, paying your health and social insurance and other taxes. So the thing you can do is to open a bank account for example by using the services of Traveltowork - offshore bank accounts. Now, let's say you've already did that job and you want to get your money into the bank account abroad. Then comes the specific service offered by Transfermate called Work/Study overseas which you can use sending your money to the offshore account in advance, so that you won't have problems in your start there. The services is prepared especially for emigrants with preferential rates and price when going international. Of course, once you already have a job anywhere in the world and want to send money home, the same service is the most appropriate for this need. So that is an example of working abroad and transferring money with a particular private money transfer provided by TM.
     Now, other example of the use of Work/Study overseas money transfer could be if you are a prospective student looking forward to get your education abroad no matter if it would be in an University, College, High-school or whatever education institution you choose, and you need to get money from your home land potentially from your parents to support you financially during your study period. That is why you will need a service to receive money overseas from your ancestors in order to live abroad, especially if you do not have the time or chance to work along with the lectures. In that case, and because of those needs we created the Work/Study overseas money transactions, and again like in the case above you just have to click and fill in the application in order to get your money from the parents bank account to the student one. Again, you can use the offshore banking services of Traveltowork to get your bank accounts set up.
    We hove we were helpful with this post for people working or studying or looking forward to do that abroad.

Transferring your money to a secure bank account

   Many people have different sources of money earnings and different types of expenses, but in any case all of us need to pay taxes in order to avoid problems with the IRS, and tax declarations may cause you headache sometimes. That is why, along with the long-term saving plans, people like to store their money in secure bank accounts internationally. A preferable location for this purpose is Switzerland, due to the country polices which do not allow any institutions to have access to the banks customers info, balances and details. So many of our clients issued questions regarding the process of wire transfer to Switzerland.
   The thing is that there is nothing different in this case, just like you make any other standard international money transfer through Transfermate. You wire transfer the money to a 3rd party TM bank account given to you in the beginning of your process (upon registration), and Transfermate takes care to load your overseas bank account with the money you want to transact, no matter if the bank is Swiss, US, UK, or whatever it may be.

3 tips for international wire transfers

   See, when it comes to making a wire transfer many people make the same mistakes again and again, and I am not talking about misspelling the receivers bank account information, but for expenses you can avoid, and time you can save, if you know how.

   1. If you have to make regular payments overseas, for example corporate money transfers from one firm's bank account to another abroad, you surely have to do the following things. If you have a bank account in currency other than the one used in the receiver's account, and yours is in a bank other than receivers' please I beg you make a bank account in the local branch of the receivers' one in the same currency. That way you first will avoid taxes paid for bank2bank transactions and you will save time by not having to wait the delay usually persisting when money are being transferred between two institutions.

   2. Use online banking for money transactions. Nowadays almost all banks have the service online banking and deliver to you the chance to make banking operations directly from your computer connected to the Internet. When you make a wire money transfer over online banking you avoid the service of employees of your bank and time is saved by you not having to go to any office, to wait on a line, to fill in paper applications or so on. For online money transaction to occur you can use the TAN/PIN codes provided from the bank to you with your internet banking.

   3. Use all the fields in the money-send application in the offline/internet banking. That way you will surely use the IBAN and Swift systems considered to be the fastest fund transaction systems in the world as well as having the highest possible security on Earth in terms of wire transfers.


FYI you can open Offshore bank accounts here.

Did you know?

   Did you know that when passing many international borders it is illegal to carry an amount of money greater than defined for the specific Customs between the two countries? Yes it is. That is why you should, you must transfer the money in advance somewhere you've decided to use them abroad, especially if you are traveling on purpose to make some business payments in real-time.
   Of course there is a chance for you to pass the border with cash that exceeds the limit allowed, but be sure that tons of declarations and documents will follow for you to fill in and explain where do you have the money from, what are you planning to do with them (and therefore to pay taxes on what you're planning to do with the funds).
   Contrasting on the "cash&carry" method to move funds across international borders, the bank transfer overseas differs with the huge huge limits which require some declaration on the use of the money and the avoidance of the annoying Customs, trying to make a criminal out of you, cause if you have e.g more than EUR2000 on the German or the British border, forget to pass in or out without providing the 'nice' Customs staff all the information proving exactly where the sum is coming from and where to it is going. So, please, think reasonably, let the money fly by the wire transfer.

An impressive recovery of USD against EUR but for a while

These days there was an impressive rise of the USD against the EUR currency compensating maybe one sixth of the whole fall of the Dollar in the last 1 year. That all came as a consequence after the statement of the financial adviser Yves Mersch who stated that the economy in Europe is about to stall for a while in the next month or two or even first half of the year, but that is just a potential analysis that is not guaranteed. Anyway, the levels of the EUR in NY last week were great for the USD as it first fell from 1.4833 to 1.4755 and finally to 1.4697. But after all we are expecting a general tendency of constant fall for the USD in the next 1-2 weeks as there are many important financial events in the United States and all trader's and transferrer's attention is there.

A whole bunch of new fund transfer types (insecure and expensive).

   Reading through the latest improvements and innovations in the field of money transactions I ran onto a whole bunch of innovative types of money transfers - some of them unpractical and useless (insecure, slow or expensive) and some of them very nice theoretically speaking.
   The first new type that caught my eye is the Mobile phone money transfer which sound ridiculous at first glance or hearing but makes some little sense after reading the explanation and understanding the whole idea. See, it is not that easy(and it cannot be, shouldn't be) to make international money transfer as it is to write an SMS, and as expected it involves some additional requirements. The system invented by WU requires everyone who wants to use it to have Mobile Wallet - an application interconnected with your bank account(through the very 'secure' mobile phone) and connected with the servers of WU in order to send or respectively receive money operating from your mobile phone. It is necessary to say that such application is supported only by the very-high class phones, you need to pay for the iNet used mobile, for the application that costs thousands of dollars and of course to pay the charges for the transaction. One, two, tree and you have paid one, two, three things more than if operating with your normal online banking or doing a wire/bank transfer.
   The second interesting type of transferring funds that some very 'smart' people have invented is about doing it from a Credit card machine along with your normal cash operations. Now see, here is the thing now a thief not only can get EUR/USD100-200-500 when you CC is being stolen, now he has the chance to transfer 10 times more into his/her bank account or CC. Nice?
   Our advice to you is to use the best conventional and cheap method when making money transfers - and it is Bank/wire method. First - it is cheap, as it does not involve many employees in the institutions. Second - it is fast - as it relies on point-to-point computer netwoks, And third - it is still the most secure method - as your money have insurance on them, and the fields of data guarantee that there cannot be mismatch in the bank accounts. So... enjoy with Transfermate.

Happy New Year , happy new transfers!

   Merry Christmas or merry whatever celebration you may had depending on your beliefs over the past 3 weeks along with the New Year we all celebrated. It is very very significant that Christmas brought a bunch of international money transfers with Transfermate. We have noticed that You, our great clients have raised the percentage of transfers made in December with 40% in comparison with previous months. We, the staff of the company, hope that we were helpful and serviced your need as completely as possible in order for the money to be sent or be received wherever you wanted them.
   As you may have noticed, we have inserted in the website a script making a banner floating over the site, offering a live chat help regarding the transfer services offered by our company. Whatever question comes up, that has not been answered in the FAQ section, an employee of ours will be glad to answer it and provide you with the information needed. Again, thank you for using TransferMate and feel free to make money transfers in 2008 too as you did in 2007.

Wire money transfer fee prices estimates in different currencies!

   As always we have decided to provide our customers and mainly the new ones that have not used our transfer services before with additional information. We find it useful for You to have all detailed information you need when deciding to make an international money transfer. So here we have extracted the exact prices of wire transfers with Transfermate converted in the different currencies we support:

For Outgoing Wires In...	Wire Cost
Australia Dollars	20.09 AUD
Canada Dollars	18.85 CAD
Denmark Kroner	123.00 DKK
Euros	17.00 EUR
Hong Kong Dollars	156.00 HKD
Japan Yen	2,244.00 JPY
Mexico Pesos	218.00 MXN
New Zealand Dollars	28.00 NZD
Norway Kroner	133.00 NOK
Singapore Dollars	31.00 SGD
South Africa Rand	146.00 ZAR
Sweden Kronor	155.00 SEK
Switzerland Francs	22.06 CHF
United Kingdom Pounds	12.00 GBP
United States Dollars	21.00 USD

We have reached a progress of over 500% for the last 3 months!

   It may be a little bit off topic, not relevant to the finances news we usually post, but I cannot ignore this fact and I think those numbers should be available in public. After all it is more or less an advertisement. So last three days I made a balance between our expenses for advertising and the actual number of clients that have used our financial services. So it seems that we have not spent more money than we used to 2 months ago, but the totals of users that have sent money through us or have made some type of money transfer has grown more than 4 times. And the exact percentage is 540% growth without any additional Euro spent.
   I consider this fact normal having in mind that we carefully reviewed all the feedback regarding the money transactions people have made with TransferMate and had in consideration every opinion, question, trouble and testimonial from every customer. After all the Currency-select we added is a product of customers suggestions about this field in the money transfer application form. After adding this field I notice a 4% raise of the registrations for transactions. So, great work TransferMate and great work all our users. Thank you, really for the feedback and everything else! Enjoy using our financial services.

Make money when others call you skype-to-skype and use TransferMate

Sounds abstract? Yes, but only sounds like fiction. It is actually true, you can make money by receiving calls skype-to-skype with the new service launched - Skype prime. At first you would say what this has to do with finances and money transfers. You all know what it has to do with finances so I will add the spice for money transfers. After the start of this new service many questions came up and probably you'll find most of the answers on the Skype home page, but social opinion has been rising up. "Why Skype prime does not support payments by MoneyGram / MoneyBookers". Acutally it is very clear that a serious company like this does not want to do anything with such insecure cash transfers. So, unfortunately for those wanting this type of payments and fortunately for all others, including TransferMate's clients, Skype Prime does support bank-to-bank payments and you can receive your money made by incoming skype-prime calls using transfermate and other bank-to-bank transfer providers. So, Cheers, mates!

New way to contact our financial staff

Recently, if you have not noticed we decided to add one more way to contact our Transfer Mate staff regarding all money transfer/currency exchange/questionable topics and you can do this by just leaving your contact details and eventually the issue you want to get consulted about. There is no chance to miss this button, it is actually one of the two big orange buttons under the introduction of TransferMate global international money transfer services.

International Bank Transfers versus Cash Transfers: Round2

Looking through the last article in our Newsvine section about how wire transfers overseas beat the conventional cash transfers, I could not resist writing a defensive-to-offensive article about what better sides cash transfers DO have and why there could not be a competition between the two types of transaction services.

    First, let us not think of the different money transfer services like just two equal opportunities, one should choose between when needing to send money overseas. There are actually very stable purposes for each of the types one can transfer funds to exist and serve along with any other.
    1. I would say that there are different money senders with different needs. Here is a simple example. You are abroad, let us say China, you have no access to your bank account, you have no internet connection available, but you are in a desperate need to send 1500eu to the UK. So what do you do? You cannot give up, and you cannot ask for a bank branch to be opened immediately, SO here comes the abstract company "EasternUnited" with their Bureau right in front of you offering cash transfer services internationally. And that makes them the perfect and the only choice you have to get those 1500eu sent to your.. spouse in the UK. So through this first point of view "EU" gives you the freedom to make a money transfer without any formalities, which usually occur when doing a bank transfer. I guess I don't need to repeat that even you wanted to go through those formalities for a wire transaction, you cannot, just because in many cases you cannot (e.g. lack of bank branch, lack of internet, lack of terminals supporting your CC or the services you need, etc). So in this first case we have no competition too, we just have only one alternative and we use it, and we should be thankful it exists.
    2. Not only regarding clients sending money, but also concerned in this whole process of money transfer are people receiving money abroad. After all those funds must arrive somewhere? They cannot be just magically thrown in one's pocket. And okay, you will say receivers have Bank accounts and there is no problem for them to get money received there. Yes, but No. Think of you in the same situation as I described it above. Same location (China), same conditions, but this time you have to receive your 1500eu from the UK. And what do you do? Open a bank account immediately? I think not. Even if you would like to, you cannot, because opening a bank account overseas has its requirements and, in the most cases when a person is on a business trip, believe me, he does not cover them. So what you should do is go the same Bureau of the "EeasternUnited" you went in the previous section and take your money send from the UK just 5 minutes ago. Isn't it great?
    I have a few more points to discuss about this, but I would rather save them if there are/is another/more Rounds of this blog/news fight about what type of money transfers one should use.

Regards to all the "wirers",
Ivo

International Bank Transfers versus Cash Transfers

It seems the guys using our services are not sleeping and have the opinion of their own about their preference when sending money abroad or respectively receiving them. In our section where anybody can send us testimonials and impressions from his experience with using TransferMate, a guy wrote a comparison between the conventional cash transfers he used to make (those transfers that involve you giving cash money in a Bureau, and the receiver taking them by hand the same way) and the international wire transfers he makes now with our company and what actually are the benefits when doing it our way. You can read the whole article about making wire transfer VS sending cash

But in my bare opinion there are different clients for the different money transfer services. In some cases it may be better to use cash transfer provider rather then making a bank transfer, just because sometimes you have no opportunity to make use of the bank services or our services.
Apart from this I personally prefer international bank transfer. I just cannot image giving my money to some people without any guarantee and clearness what , why , etc.

New FAQ pages with all the Qs and As about our services

It is a pleasure to present the new FAQ section of Transfermate with information about our services and answers to all of your questions that might come up when deciding if you will use Transfer Mate as your international money transfer company. This sections includes information on subjects like how long does a transfer take, what are the costs, which destinations are supported and whatever you may think of asking us. If you have additional suggestions about issues you want included in this section or just want to express your opinion about this, please feel free to leave a comment here and our team will respond in any way immediately. Thank you for using TransferMate in advance!

Our Services

We provide high quality cheap fast money transactions to thousands of people sending and receiving money internationally every single day. We also have specific services for our private and corporate clients. Our transfer services include regular money transfers for those working or emigrating abroad, also overseas property payments, for people living overseas who want to receive their pensions or salaries from their home country or vice versa we have the pension/salary - transfer service. Being a world leader in the money transaction field TransferMate has the additional corporate money transfers: money transfers for exporters and importers. We also provide an option in order for your company regularly to send or receive payments from overseas with our general corporate transfer service.

Fresh new blog about the Transfer-Money services

Just created blogger and I am glad to represent the blog-space of the wide-known to almost everybody Transaction-services provider TransferMate. Here you can get up to date with the latest buzzes and news from the Finances world.