Online Money Transfer
Bank Charges for Foreign Deposits
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…
Discussions on MoneyGram
After the previous post about a MoneyGram Review I had been reading I thought it would be worth looking through another site that discusses MoneyGram in depth and allows reviews of its money transfer service.
Reviewcentre.com has a MoneyGram page that currently gives the transfer service a score of 2.6 out of 5 stars from 11 reviews. The site allows reviewing by stars in different sub-categories.
Here is how MoneyGram was rated;
Wire Transfer Methods
It’s interesting to have a read through the Wikipedia entry for Wire Transfer as it shows up what the obvious methods of a wire transfer are although it does look like the wiki article has more than a little bit of spam in it, probably from interested people who want others to know about their own wire transfer methods or ways of using their product to transfer money online.
Money Transfer you can Trust
One of the difficult things with finding the right money transfer service online is making sure it’s one that you can trust will give you good service and help you out if something goes wrong.
If you take a service like Currency Online, they are working hard let people know that there are real people with quality teams trading money behind the scenes, all working hard to make sure you can trust their money transfer service along with working to bring you the best possible client service that they can for an online business.
MoneyGram Review
I’ve been having a look around different specific review websites and am surprised by the amount of people who are writing bad reviews for the MoneyGram Money Transfer Service.
The reviews for MoneyGram have ranged from some saying they have received the “worst” service from this company that they have ever received from any company online to others who have said that MoneyGram were trying to overcharge them for a speedy money delivery when it never happened.
There were a couple that were positive e.g. one said “I am satisfied with their service.” and I guess it’s pretty easy to take a shot at a company online when you’ve just had a bit of bad customer service so I’ll continue doing some research into what the real reviews about MoneyGram are saying.
Money Transfer with Xoom
I just came across a video from the CEO of Xoom, John Kunze.
In the video, John talks a lot about Xoom.com being the safe way to send money online. He uses a piece of paper with someone’s personal details on it to represent how they encrypt personal information.
It’s a nicely done piece of marketing covering what is probably the largest barrier to transferring money online being the worry about identity theft and personal information theft from the organisation that’s transferring the money.
Here’s the video if you want to watch it for yourself;
Currency exchange in airports after customs
I’m in an airport at the moment waiting for a flight to open for check-in. It’s interesting that from here I can see into the after customs area of the airport and there is a currency exchange booth in there.
After customs currency exhange would probably be the most expensive option that I can think of for exchanging money into a different currency.
Foreign ATM charges
ATM charges from foreign countries can be a lot larger than you might expect and there’s not usually any advanced warning on how much the ATM charge is going to be.
I just withdrew $100 AUD from an ATM in Brisbane as I needed cash and only had my cards on me. I knew it would cost me a fee for using the ATM to withdraw foreign cash but after checking my account online today I was shocked to see that I had been charged $11 just to make the withdraw!
That’s daylight robbery.
If the ATM had a sign on it saying that any foreign currency ATM charges would amount to 11% of the currency withdrawn I don’t think a single tourist would use it.
History of iKobo
Having just done some research on iKobo it is pretty easy to find a fair bit online about when the company went through a difficult period in November 2008 and was temporarily shut down, then bought out and re-opened by M2-Group.
There are a large number of comments, quite a few of them very positive about the iKobo service available for example this one on the TechCrunch article about the original iKobo shutdown;
Put me down for No Complaints about Ikobo. I used them for 4 different recipients in 3 different countries, for almost 3 years. Thousands of dollars transferred, instantly; never a mischarge, never a hassle delivering the original or replacement debit cards, and professional customer service that did what I needed of them quickly after verifying my identity.
Bank Charges on TT Payments
Banks have a particularly bad habit of making telegraphic transfer (TT) payments very difficut and far too expensive.
This regular over charging coming from what was once a close to monopoly situation (particularly in smaller countries) is one of the main reasons that the online money transfer market exists at all.
Recently the business I look after received funds from an off-shore account where the advertiser was booking a small amount of online advertising and were paying the in invoice through telegraphic transfer. The payment received was $25 short on the expected amount so we assumed the client had done the wrong thing and ticked a box saying that the money transfer charges should be paid out of our account not theirs.