roma1625

What is the best way to send money from Italy to the United States? This would an ongoing (possibly as often as monthly) need and could go on for years. It's for personal reasons (let's just say it's one individual paying off a personal loan to someone else).

I would hope there is something like xe.com. Xe.com itself isn't able to do it because apparently they're not licensed in Italy.

Not sure if this is the right forum to ask this, but if not, my apologies. I've been reading this forum for many years and know that the people here are very well informed about such things.

Thanks

LondonElite

Why don't you just wire it from your account to theirs? Most banks have account bolt-ons which allow international transfers for ca €10 per month.

roma1625

OK, thanks. I'm just trying to avoid paying any fee, if possible, as the amounts would be fairly small (a few hundred euros per month) and even a 10 euro or so fee would be a relatively large % of the amount being sent. Over a period of a few years, 10 euros a month adds up. Plus, doesn't the receiving bank also charge a fee? In addition, can I expect a decent exchange rate doing it that way?

Anyway, just trying to see if there's a fee-free service similar to xe.com that could be utilized.

hco

The likes of Citibank provides free global transfers Citi to Citi. But not available for Italy-US.

Any other US bank present in Italy with same service?

LondonElite

Have you checked the different options at your bank. For example, I have free transfers within the SEPA area, and I pay €6 per month for worldwide transfers. I don't think you're going to find anything cheaper than that.

roma1625

Just to clarify, I'm the receiving party. I'm just looking into this to try to make it easy on the person sending the money to me. They're not very savvy at doing things like this plus I would doubt that they would be willing to open a new bank account specifically for the purpose of sending me a few hundred euros per month to me.

Thanks

LondonElite

Ah, I see. I still think the best bet is to see what the sender's bank could do. Maybe you could do some on-line research? I'm assuming that your username reflects some proficiency in the Italian language ?

Tchiowa

How much money? I ask for 2 reasons. 1) If it is large sums then you are going to attract the attention of the IRS and they may start to annoy you for tax reasons. 2) If it is fairly small sums, open a bank account in Italy with one of the international banks that has an ATM agreement where you don't get slapped fees. Then send the ATM card to the person in the US so they can withdraw directly from the ATM account.

Box5

Whatever you do, consider the cost of the transfer, such as wire fees, and the exchange rate. There is a brisk business of Canadians transferring money from Canada to their own account in the U.S. Some banks do it free but the exchange rate is not too good.

Ameritrade, if you have an account that isn't too small, will wire money free. You can then wire it to the bank or broker that has the best exchange rate. Paypal might be able to transfer small amounts of money.

If the person is trustworthy, a larger amount transferred once or twice a year might be have less commission costs.

Palal

I've been using transferwise for this exact purpose. 0.5% commission, interbank rate. Very reasonable IMHO.
PM me for a referral link which will give you you're first transfer fee free.

Palal

Just FYI, for going the other way, if you can get yourself to Italy you can take out the money from your Schwab checking for free

LondonElite

YuropFlyer

You could always use services like https://www.currencyfair.com/ - should make for a MUCH better exchange rate (personally never used it myself, but heard it's working fine)

LondonElite

I think the problem has been solved, since the OP never came back after their second post seven months ago! Welcome to FT, florie41!

invisible

It is actually quite an interesting topic which I am also interested in. Not with US-Italy transfer but with third countries.

I've discovered that when there is transfer from CountryA to CountryB when neither of sender and receiver banks have presence in US, they are using corresponding accounts in US for money exchange. So the transfer looks like:
BankA->Corresponding account of BankA in US->Corresponding account of BankB in US->BankB.

Corresponding banks take their fee during the transfer, there are incoming and outgoing fees involved, plus there is double currency conversion (CurrencyA-US Dollar-CurrencyB). At the end it came out that it might be 3-5% of the transferred amount goes towards fees. No think that from $10K transfer fees have taken $500 and does not sound nice...

Unfortunately only few currencies are supported.