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?
Tags: bank charges
Hi,
have you tried using sites like moneybookers.com? Or just withdrawing money from an ATM in Poland?
Best Wishes,
If it was just small sums of money, yes, but I am talking about tens of thousands of pounds. Therefore I use a currency broker. But when my broker sends the funds to my Polish account I get stung by these extra charges….
I use NatWest to send money to my son’s account in Switzerland. The bank charges me a ‘transfer fee’ and gives me an option to pay also my son’s ‘receive fee’ at the same time. It is only a few pounds extra, and always the same amount.
Thanks for the comment – in which case I will ask to see if my bank lets me pay any receiving fees when I send money too.
Mmm…there’s the apparent SEPA – Single European Payments Area. But the implementation of this is absolutely bizzare and illogical.
Maybe the solution would be to open a GBP account with mBank?
Barbara – Thanks for the info. I rang my bank to check and they can do the same – there is a choice of whether the sender or receiver pays these fees. By default it’s the receiver. But the fees would still be the same. I guess it’s based on a percentage of the amount which is why the fee varies for me.
Michael – Actually I did ask mBank about that but I would still have these fees because I would still be sending money from the UK to Poland. The charges are due to intermediary banks doing an international transfer as opposed to currency fees. The only way around it would be to just take cash from the UK and pay it in in Poland. The other problem with a GBP account at mBank is that I wouldn’t be able to physically withdraw cash so my money would be ’stuck’. But I have a friend who uses BRE bank and has a GBP account and he can go to his branch and pay in and withdraw his GBP in cash. I will check it when I get around to it…
Yes that is so annoying you pay to send money to your account in poland and then the polish banks takes a fee out of the money you sent with out any notice.When I questioned my polish bank why I was charged. Iwas told it was a service charge for letting me deposit my money in to my polish account.
I’ve found something that might be relevant – http://www.finlandforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1464
Ben, I am also with mBank and have been stung with these charges, a royal pain in the backside however being with mBank and opeining the GBP account I found this on their website, looks like you can withdraw from your GBP account via ATM.
http://www.mbank.pl/en/personal_banking/cards/debet/Visa_Classic_eMAX_walutowy/
Hi Jason
Actually I checked with them and mBank has no facilities to withdraw GBP because you can only get PLN from Polish cash machines and they have no physical branches. I am tempted to go to Millenium bank to get a GBP account – my local branch told me I can withdraw GBP from the branch if I give them notice up until 12 noon on the day before….
I wonder if both Poland and the UK will ever just get the euro and be done with it….
Hi Ben,
I would guess that mBank is not a direct “Transferer” of international money.
What I am saying is that if (mBank) was the one doing the transaction, receiving GBP and on their own creating Polish Zloty then you would not have an extra charge. But since they are small and “internationally challenged” (like Mr. Tiny) they need help (Viagra) in this transaction and the helping bank charges them and they pass that along to you.
In today’s international economy (collapsing maybe but..) banks should be able to do a simple transfer like that without an intermediary. Maybe mBank is too small for you?
I agree with EuroPete. I have similar issues when wiring USD from the States. When I send from a small bank I can see that the cash has flowed through a number of intermediaries (the bank can give you a print out of the flow). If I send from a large US bank to an international bank in Poland it is typically just 1 or 2 hops and the fees are smaller. For example if I send USD from Bank of America (largest bank in US) to Citibank Poland I am only charged 28zl on the receiving end, and there is only one intermediary used (I think Wachovia).
Hi.
Without getting into much detail, for 2 banks to transfer directly your money, they have to be… hmm… “friends”. This means they need to have nostro/loro accounts opened for eachother. Your bank is obviously not a direct correspondent of mBank, therefore sends the money to some other bank, that IS the mBank’s correspondent. Of course they will charge you, because there’s some work involved (and their PR didn’t decide it’s good to be the first Mother Teresa of the industry). ;)
It works like this: You send money. The bank A says “he wants to send money to B. Oh, hell, I don’t have B’s account here in my books… But C has their account… I think. Ok, I’ll put it into C’s account here. Hey C! I put some money onto your account. Can you please take it and give it to B? Thanks. *ka-ching*” Bank C: “Ok, ok, got the money… Hmmm… B you say… Jeeeeeez, Central-Eastern Europe and in PLN. Ah, right, got it. Hey B! Got some money here for your client, you can take it from your account. *ka-ching*”. A: “Got it… Mr.Ben… here’s the account, there you go Mr.Client sir. *ka-ching*”
Check other banks for this information. Of course the biggest ones have a lot of contacts with other institutions, the smaller ones not necessarily.
Have fun in the System! ;)
I’ve got it.
http://www.moneybookers.com should be your friend. As far as I can gather, it should be a pretty painless and very cheap way of transferring money – as far as I can see, current costs are about 10PLN plus 2% exchange costs – which is pretty reasonable if they’re offering a good exchange rate. At the moment from EUR (they’re not listing GBP for some reason) – they’re offering 4.48EUR to PLN – the xe.com rate is saying 4.51, so it’s a good deal.
As far as I can work out, on 1000GBP, you’ll get hit for around 35PLN using this method, which works out cheaper than the sending fee from the UK alone.
Hope this helps :)
What about xe.com — I find they have the best exchange rates, and if you are able to deposit a bank draft without fee then the cost would be rock bottom.
Hi Ben,
What about all those bank accounts for Poles living in the UK who send money home? I heard NatWest has some scheme with Polish PKO and you can send money directly to your Polish account quite cheaply . Might be worth checking.
Regards,
Gosia
I never bother with all that nonsense. I use my UK online banking with RBS to transfer money from my main UK account to my UK debit card account then if I need money I just use the local ATM to draw a wedge of cash. I do this in Germany, Poland and Slovakia and although their is a charge, it’s fixed.
Make the payment in euro, even though your account in the UK is denominated in Sterling. You’ll generally attract far better exchange rates at the receiving end and lower fees.
Always make cross-border payments in euro within the EU, even though none of the countries involved are in the eurozone.
Update – it seems the system has changed in the last few months.
The last time I used my broker my funds arrived via a different intermediary and they didn’t charge me anything for it.
Also it seems that my broker has started giving me the the option to specify a receiving bank for my transfer in the case that I have a preference.