Job Discussion Forums

[jellybell]

I'm from the US, an I have two banks that I use, one is a credit union, the other is a big chain bank. Anyways, I need to transfer money into these accounts but I can't seem to find a Turkish bank that still uses routing numbers to send money, only SWIFT or IBAN numbers. I know that the United States doesn't use IBAN numbers and SWIFT (probably won't work for either of my bank accounts Stateside) usage is very limited at this point. I really don't want to use Western Union if at all possible as it won't go into my account, and it will be an even bigger mess if I try to have someone on the other end take care of it.

What do other US and other expats do???

[molly farquharson]

i send money every month with Koc Bank to a credit union in the US. For the SWIFT code, use the routing number. I am not sure what IBAN is, but just this week I told the bank person just to write my acct number. The money always gets there. BTW, I pay a fee to the bank and somewhere in cyberspace more money is taken out.

Failing that, transfer your money to Citibank or HSBC and see if that works. Good luck.

[dmb]

[jellybell]

So the routing number should be enough for SWIFT transactions? I'll try again then now. Did you have to add two zeros, as a SWIFT code is 11 rather than 9 digits?

Yeah, I already researched IBAN for myself, and it definetely isn't anywhere where I need it to be.

[jellybell]

ok, tried again and no dice. I'm trying to do this on-line, so I think that this may be part of the problem, but because Garenti has this fancy on-line system that they're so proud of, it's really expensive to do it in person, like 100ytl or so.

How bad are the fees with Koc, how's the staff (English speaking?), assitance, waiting lines, Molly?

I'm more than willing to switch banks if need be, I've been tring to get this done non-stop for the past week, and on and off for the past month! UGH.

[justme]

I tried the routing no as the SWIFT no for an online transfer (Garanti) but it wouldn't work because the routing no is one digit too many.

But my credit union just expanded somehow, and I haven't tried it recently...

[molly farquharson]

maybe call/email your bank in the US to see if they have different numbers. I will e-mail mine but I know the old numbers I have have worked for 8 years. Koc charges $30 and then some lira, maybe 15, I forget. I would guess that you could find one English-speaking person and most branches. There's one at my branch, but I do my business in Turkish.

Good luck-- it shouldn't be so hard.

[Java]

I got 2 ATM cards for the same Garanti account and Fed-Exed one to my daughter. She withdraws cash from my Turkish account and deposits it into my U.S. account every month. Not all banks will give you 2 cards (Koc is one of them) but Garanti will.

[jellybell]

thanks Molly, I would really appreciate if you would do that. I've been pretty frusterated with all of this, but it's just all the uncertainty at this point that's really driving me crazy.

[molly farquharson]

i e-mailed my credit union and they don't have an IBAN number. However, I use the routing number as theSWIFT code and use my account number as the IBAN number. It works every time, including this past week.

[jellybell]

Fabulous Molly, I'll give that a go then and see if it works out, I really appreciate you contacting your bank for me and such...