Best Ways to Send Money Internationally

The international money market is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and is growing continuously. A major contribution to this is the Remittance. With an increasingly large number of people working in a country other than their home country, international money transfer is on a rise. While earlier, banks were a predominant source of transferring money, the past decade has seen online money transfer services coming up which are proving to be an excellent alternative to banks in terms of exchange rate and time to transfer.

The two dominant fees one might have to pay while transferring money internationally and should be looked upon are:

• Exchange Rate Markups: Most of the time Banks and MTOs have marked up exchange rates through which they try to make some profit. These can vary depending on the amount of money to be transferred and are different for each operator. One can compare the rates of all major MTOs here to go with the best exchange rate.
• Additional Fee: These range from being zero for large transfers and direct bank account transfers to a flat fee for smaller transfers. Operators might also charge some fee for using credit cards.

Money Transfer using Banks

The only reason one should opt for transferring via banks is if the amount of money is quite large. Banks have bad transfer rates. They also charge quite a lot of fees and the transfer time is in days. Although banks are secure and reliable and people tend to trust it more than the money operating services coming up online. Having multiple brick and mortar locations only helps in people trusting the banks more.

Money Transfer using Money Transfer Operators

Other than the banks, the internet has made it possible to transfer money using money transfer operators. While there are a dozen MTOs in operation and we will list out the pros of using them, the only two drawbacks are 1. Almost all of these services have a daily as well as a yearly limit. It is not possible to transfer a huge pile of money at once. 2. Most of them are safe to use, have valid licenses to be in the transfer business and have a great customer service but one does need to watch out for scamsters.

Pros: Great transfer rate, low fees, money can be transferred in seconds, easy to use online platform

Some of the best MTOs:

• Wise (formerly TransferWise): Wise is the only MTO which do not have a marked-up exchange rate. But it makes up for it by charging some fee for all the tranfers, even for larger amounts. Other services usually waive the transfer fee for transfering significant amount but have a marked up exchange rate.
• XE: XE charges a small fee for transfering smaller amount. Ideal for larger transfers, there is an exchange rate markup, the fee reduces with larger amount and is zero above certain amount.
• InstaRem: This Singapore based company is one of the recent entrants in this market. The exchange rate, which is usually marked-up and the fee can be looked up in the website without the need to sign-in. They do charge some fee for smaller transactions but there is none for larger transfers.