Currency exchange

[eugmac]

Just posting to see if anybody has any experience moving a large lump sum of money from one country to another using an online exchange broker like XE Trade. It seems if I do a bank-to-bank wire transfer without a middle man the banks will charge me 3% commission for the currency exchange which ends up being a fair sum of cash if you're moving $10K+, plus a stupid one-time fee of $30. 3% commission means the mid-market exchange rate plus 3%.

I want to move funds from a Canadian bank to a German one, and it seems XE Trade doesn't charge any additional fees on top of their commission, which is reported to be much less than what the banks charge. How it seems to work is they withdraw the funds from the Canadian bank as an Electronic Funds Transfer, which many poker players are probably familiar with, which doesn't incur any high fees from the bank, and then they just deposit Euros into your destination account as a normal local bank transfer.

I've only read generally good things about them, but of course you can't trust random reviews on the web - if any of you have experience with them or other similar services I'd be very interested in hearing your opinion.

[KoRnholio]

Might be worth looking into your local banks and see if any have low currency exchange fees for the currency you are looking for.

The bank I use in Canada has an account where I only get juiced for 1.5% over the wholesale exchange rate on US-Can currency exchanges. Deposit USD check into it, then move the funds to my CDN$ account when I feel like it. I watch the US-Can exchange rate, so often if I don't need the money right away I just wait until it's more favorable before converting it.

[eugmac]

Hrm, but seeing that I'm living in Germany it makes more sense to have the money locally over here. My bank in Canada does offer a Euro savings account, but it doesn't make much sense to have all my Euros that need to use daily in a Canadian bank where I'd be charged $3 or whatever every time I withdraw from a German ATM.

From everything I've read XE Trade offers rates in the .5%-1.5% range with no additional fees, which seems reasonable enough. It just feels creepy just shipping so much cash to a company I've never dealt with before!