Transferring Money Abroad - Advice needed.

Talk to your bank. If you put it to them, they may give you a better deal. Especially if you threaten to take your business elsewhere. But I sympathise with you - UK retail banking for the average punter is just appalling.

One trap I fell into a few years back is the receiving banks' charges. It is often hard to know what this will be, and if you don't transfer enough to cover it, then you will be short at the other end (I was). Not big money, but annoying and required an additional transfer. I argued with my bank that they should provide this advice as part of the service I was paying for. They conceded and allowed the top-up transfer free of charge.

Not sure what 'not very big' is to some people 

My wife and I have accounts in UK and France and we can either use a free service through our Bank  (HSBC) or we use HiFX. HiFX are more cash efficient but a lot slower (better rate but more faff beforehand) so for big money we use HiFX and for amounts below E10,000 we use the bank. I also have a Lloyds account but they are not as good as HSBC on international dealings so I just keep that a/c for UK cheques and paying my one remaining UK credit card. We are Premier customers with HSBC so that may make direct comparison with your circumstances difficult. For your situation a rolling contract with HiFX may be the best option (or one of its competitors)

Good luck, I know Uk money won't go far in Norway!

Is Paypal a possibility? Just a guess, but it might be worth a look.

I have used PayPal on a weekly basis for 3 years and I've never had any problems. 

+1 for paypal. I'd stay away from money transfer services. They are bottom feeders.

Not sure what you're paying, or who, but a credit card with no international currency surcharge also works great - and you can process that through paypal online for about 3% fee.  But, if you need a secure, international transfer, a real wire (with real wire fees) sometimes is worth it. If there's any mistake on the other end, your bank will be able to get it back, and its 100% traceable. If you're just sending to Norway, try a Norwegian bank, you might be able to make an internal transfer with no fee to account at their bank.  there must one with an office in the UK.

Interesting topic. In the next few weeks i need to bring a large sum of money(euros).a check and get it into my UK bank. Anybody any ideas how i can get the best rate?

Mista H

We live abroad, so need to transfer pounds  from the UK into euros regularly. We've found that HiFx is the best way to do it for us.

Thanks Chaps,

That's two for HiFX, who according to the link above, charge £9 transfer fee. Does that seem about right chaps?

I had not considered PayPal, I will check them out too.

Jason.

For transfers between the UK and Norway, use a SEPA transfer. The transfer cost will be the same as if itwas between two British banks. They can only charge you currency transaction fees to convert from GBP to Kroner. Al you need is an IBAN account.

You can do what the kids are doing... use Bitcoins.  It is almost free to transfer any amount.

Except that SEPA is for transfer of Euros.

Hi Pepsican,

Yes, the SEPA transfer method is the quoted £15 from Barclays.

At the moment there seems to be many companies, including PayPal that will transfer your money way cheaper than the high street banks. Some require a min to transfer and some have a max, based on their reserves I guess. Some will even allow you to fix the exchange rate in advance, but you need to be on a contract for these types of packages. 

Anyway, thanks for all the advice thus far, I am still researching..intermittently. Hmmm, Bitcoins....now theres a thought...and there it goes.

I cant get excited about Bitcoins just yet.

Jason.

You can transfer cash from your bank to a friend via PayPal for free.

I would definitely steer clear of bitcoin; while I love the idea of a currency not controlled by the banking cabal, and there are those who have made small fortunes in it, no one really knows the end game for it; you are not speculating but trying to send a small bit of money to Norway, and it is still limited in use. 

Not to mention that since it is outside the banking cabal, and they seem to run Western governments to one degree or another, I think it is only a matter of time before they get legislation passed that will cripple it or render it untenable.

I think the Paypal suggestion is an excellent one; I recently bought some items from Belgium, and simply had them send euros to the recipient, which were charged at their exchange rate to my credit card as dollars...which could have just as easily come out of my linked bank account.  So just have your recipient and yourself have Paypal accounts, and "pay" his email address the amount you wish in kroner, and they will take the requisite GBP from your account or credit card.  I don't know how competitive their exchange rates are, but IIRC they were decent.

I'd advise you TransferWise, it's cheap, quick and safe. I'm using it to transfer some saving from an English account to a Spanish one. And following this link you have your first transfer (up to 5000 pounds) for free  https://transferwise.com/u/0b22

Cheers,

Ana