I regularly send money from the UK to Poland because I earn in GBP and have company bank accounts in the UK but live in Poland.
The last 4 times I did a transfer to my Polish bank (mBank) I got charged some mysterious fees to receive the money.
When I send money I normally have a 10 GBP charge to send money abroad from the UK – this sucks but fair enough. But I am very annoyed to be charged to receive money. Especially as the charge to receive (110 PLN last time) is more than double the sending fee.
I rang mBank to query this because in their terms and conditions it says that they do not charge any fees to receive money. They said that these fees were not taken by them – but by an intermediary bank ‘along the way’. They said that when money is sent abroad it can go via a number of intermediary banks. Some charge a processing fee, some don’t. They said that they have no influence on the route the money takes. Therefore sometimes there is a charge, sometimes there isn’t, and in theory it’s the same whichever bank you send to in Poland.
Now is it just me or is this system totally shite? Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Anybody here happen to work for an international clearing house who can explain what’s going on? I heard that there was some European Union directive being mooted about to make money transfers across EU countries as simple as national transactions. Anybody heard about this?