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Do you work abroad and want to help your loved ones with a cash injection? Do you have to pay your debt in another country? Or maybe you just hunted an opportunity in a foreign auction service? In either case, you must send the money to a foreign currency account. While the process itself is not complicated, avoiding high fees is more difficult art.

The easiest way to transfer money abroad is to order a standard bank transfer abroad. If you have a PLN account, the amount will be automatically converted into the target currency. In such a case, the Bank will apply its own exchange rate, which may be unprofitable for the customer.

SWIFT and SEPA

When ordering a foreign transfer from an e-banking level, in addition to standard data such as the recipient's name, bank account number and address, we must also provide the SWIFT and IBAN code.

The first one is a code identifying the bank to which we send the transfer. It consists of 8 or 11 characters. IBAN is an international standard for bank account recording. It contains the country code (e.g. PL), two control digits, the number of the bank's organisational unit and the serial number of the account.

Please note that in case of SWIFT transfers, in addition to the currency conversion costs, additional fees may be charged by banks, including those acting as intermediaries in the transfer of money. By sending funds in this way, we do not know exactly how much the operation will cost us. Banks usually charge a certain percentage of the amount we send. It may even be a few dozen zlotys.

The customer can also decide whether the transfer costs will be covered by the sender, the recipient or whether they will be divided among them. The advantage of SWIFT transfers is the possibility to order the transfer of funds in any foreign currency.

A traditional SWIFT transfer is not an optimal solution if you want to save money. A more attractive alternative is SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area). It is cheaper and usually faster, but we will send the money only to the countries of the European Union and Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco and Andorra. The currency must be the euro. The exact cost of a SEPA transfer is determined by the bank, but usually does not exceed PLN 10.

In search of savings

An alternative to traditional bank transfers are companies providing money transfer services. It may be easier to use them, and in many cases the transfer of funds will be much faster and cheaper.

Funds may be transferred to the indicated bank account of the recipient or with the option of notification of pending transfer to the e-mail address or telephone number of the recipient. In case of a transfer between the currency portfolios of  customers, the operation takes place almost immediately.

Money remittance firms usually set a transaction fee in advance. In the case of currency transfers, the exchange rate at which the currency conversion will take place is also a separate issue. For a frugal customer, this is an additional advantage, as the exchange is usually more advantageous than in a bank.

Let's assume that we send 100 euros to the family, but we want the message to be in zlotys. In the case of a classic transfer, the bank will take care of the currency conversion at its own rate. It is often disadvantageous for us.