The local bank our small business works with has just changed its charging structure on bank charges for foreign deposits and they’ve managed to reduce their own paperwork at the same time as increasing our bank charges. Unbelievable!
Previously we had to go through a big drama whenever we wanted to deposit money into our account from an overseas check that was in a foreign currency. We had to fill out a deposit slip for each and every check that was presented and every single deposit slip that was in foreign currency had to be signed by the Director of the company. Crazy.
Now they’ve changed the rules again…
for the bank charges on foreign deposits so that we don’t have to fill out all the silly foreign check deposit forms, we only need to present it to the teller but they are going to charge us $5 for every different currency that’s deposited on that transaction.
So if there’s two checks in AUD and one check in GBP we’re still going to be charged $10 and they have less paperwork to do because there aren’t all the previous deposit slips. Criminal.
The best way out of this without question is to use an online currency transfer system. If we were receiving all of these payment through something like PayPal, we’d be able to do a single transfer that would cost a one-off fee once all of the money was already in the online wallet.
Make sure you have a look at how much your bank charges for foreign deposits to see if it’s worth while using either a an online wallet or a money transfer service like currency online from a different bank account.