I send money to my family in the philippines every month and just realized im losing like 80-100$ each time between wire fees, exchange rate markups, and whatever hits on the other end. thats over $1000 a year just to send my own money.
Called my bank and they said "thats normal for international transfers"' which is insane, tried western union but fees are worse, and those money transfer apps take 3 to 4 days which doesnt help when family needs it quickly
Is there actually a better way in 2025 that doesnt involve either bleeding money on fees or using sketchy services? just frustrated at this point
Dealing with international payments is actually bankrupting me in fees
byu/AwakePasta inpersonalfinance
Posted by AwakePasta
17 Comments
Wise is your friend here – I’ve been using it for years to send to family overseas and the fees are way lower than banks or WU. Usually takes like 1-2 days max and the exchange rates are actually fair unlike banks that markup everything
Also look into Remitly specifically for Philippines transfers, they sometimes have better rates for that corridor and do same-day delivery to certain banks there
Metrobank is a foreign branch of one of the major Filipino banks
Can you open an account with them? I know the do a lot of remittance activity
I am not personally familiar with this, but I know someone who found that the most convenient way to send money to their hometown in Africa was through Walmart, of all things. I do not know if it was lower fee, but it worked.
Find banks with free international wire transfers. My bank uses intermediary banks where the end result is better than Wise’s rates
There are going to be fees regardless. I don’t know at what point you consider it “bleeding money”.
However, there are *many* competitors to WU and traditional banks in the international money transfer space (Wise, Remitly, etc).
I hesitate to say send cash, but that too is an option.
i’ve been using Xoom for years. takes directly from my US bank account and transfers it to a BDO account in the PH. zero fees. almost instantaneous transfer. exchange rate is slightly lower but not terrible.
You are using the wrong bank to send money transfers. We also send a lot and its nowhere near as much.
If you are in USA, have you tried using credit union? The swift transfer is cheaper than bank. USD to USD
Only use international bank transfers for large amounts since they usually have a flat feee. Otherwise, for regular transfers, use a service like Wise. The fees are much smaller.
First world problems. Why do you think it costs so much to send the money? It should be expensive.
Some big banks waive these fees if you’re in their upper tiers, but you usually have to have lots of money to qualify.
>Bank of America Advantage Relationship Banking, Bank of America Advantage® with Tiered Interest Checking and Bank of America Advantage® Regular Checking accounts plus Preferred Rewards members qualify for a waiver of our domestic incoming wire fee. The international incoming wire fee is waived for Preferred Rewards (Platinum, Platinum Honors and Diamond Honors) members.
Schwab says $15 for outgoing international wires, no fees for much else. It’s also a fantastic debit card with no international ATM or Foreign transaction fees.
There definitely are banks that do international transfers for free. I am not familiar with the Philippines, but to send to India many banks just do it for free and I am guessing the value is in getting dollars to store in the US and rely on the fact that dollar appreciates over the Rupee always.
Can you do something like open up a chime account? No international transaction fees, allows atm withdrawls, can be used as a credit card/apple pay/google pay,etc, you can turn off ability to overdraft, etc. It uses visa’s currency exchange rates, which are hard to beat.
Banks normalize it like yeah that’s just how it is. I switched to sending stablecoins and letting my fam spend via Oobit and the difference was night and day
Did you never google this before? Because WISE would be at the top of any search.
Try Revolut, looks like they operate in USA too. Great for Europe.
Other than Wise (first move money to wise account then send from wise account to foreign bank).I read a reply on another thread suggesting sending to a Philippines bank USD account for further reduced fees.