Originally Posted by
factory81
Do you have any suggestions on how to avoid paying a decent mark-up? I am sure there are better financial services companies here to work with..
You can do better by buying euros in Europe instead of the US, but running an fx operation entails fixed costs that get passed on to customers, so it's almost never possible to get within 50 basis points of spot unless you are doing very large transactions. Countries where there is high demand for USD (think controlled and/or volatile currencies) are an exception to this rule.