Job Discussion Forums

[Luna Chica]

Okay so I am cool with how to transfer money from my Aussie account to Peru. BUT how do you guys transfer money from your Peruvian accounts to your accounts back home? I realise I am not going to be sending massive amounts, but I do have some things back here in Australia that will need to be taken care of while I am in Peru. I know there is Western Union, but that requires someone to collect the money here in Australia and to put it onto my account here. It is also way too expensive.

ANy ideas? Thanks.

[naturegirl321]

YOu could do the same bank transfer. Just make sure your OZ account accepts foreign transfers.

[Aramas]

If you have an account with a Visa debit or credit card you could try looking into making payments from Peru directly to your Visa card. I've had money put in my account that way in Australia, so it would probably work from overseas.

Another alternative is to use a US or European bank that has branches in Peru. Maybe Citibank or similar?

How are you arranging your banking at the Australian end? I just set up new accounts with Suncorp yesterday. They have a transaction account that has a high interest (6.15%) at-call sub-account and a Visa debit card attached.

What I like about it is that the sub-account is invisible from an atm or the Visa card, so if you get hijacked or your card is stolen then they can only get what's in the front end account. You can just use phone or internet banking to transfer money into the front end account, and it's 'instant'.

My only reservation at this point is the security of online banking at internet cafes. It would only take one PC with a keylogger installed to clean out the account. Most banks offer 'tokens' (a kind of matchbox-sized calculator that spits out a different number each time for logging in), but if it was to break, or be lost or stolen then one's accounts would be inaccessable until a new one arrived - which could take months in some countries. One could of course set up an account for the bulk of the money with a different bank and only permit transfers to a nominated account, so even if someone got into the account they couldn't get any money. The downside is that transfers could take several days between banks.

Before you set up any accounts, make sure you read the full product dislosure statement very carefully. I looked at a HSBC at-call, high interest account that seemed quite promising, but half way through the PDS I found that whenever you make a transaction of any kind on the account you get no interest for that entire month. Bendigo Bank has a high interest account which, while not made entirely clear in the PDS, doesn't allow internet or phone transfers in or out of the account at all. Westbank has the highest interest rate in Australia at present (6.8%), but not only can you not withdraw money until maturity, you can't put any in either. There are plenty of others that only pay interest every 6 months, or even every year, so you really need to read very carefully. I must have read several hundred pages of PDS's in the past week. Just the Suncorp accounts involved two PDS's totalling 80 pages, but it's well worth taking the time to understand how everything works. If there's anything that's still unclear then ask them about it. Once you're overseas it's too late.

[keepwalking]

Your bank account here will be with Scotiabank, who are Canadian-owned (recently took over Banco Weise). As far as I know, you need something called a SWIFT number to transfer money.

I manage this by keeping a UK account active and I left enough money in it when I left to cover any UK expenditure. That way the direct debits just take care of themselves and if anything else crops up I just use internet banking to transfer funds from a UK account to a UK account.