Spending US dollars abroadEdit

See Foreign Exchange fees on bank cards and credit cards for a comprehensive list of bank cards and credit card fees.

To wire money from the US, see the comprehensive list of US banks that offer free outbound wires. Note that it this list is getting outdated.

Buying US dollars with eurosEdit

Buying USD with euros is a tricky situation, teeming with pitfalls and hidden costs. The table below is a tool for consumers to attack this problem. The column entitled "cost of actual transactions" is meant for consumers to enter real world figures after completing a transfer. This will help expose undocumented hidden costs. Please use the credit card charges calculator to compute the final exchange rate that was applied, so all brokers are compared to the same source for a wholesale exchange rate. Although these are not really credit card transactions, the calculator will serve our purpose.

Using ForEx Markets to buy USD Edit

Using a forex (FX) broker to exchange money has the advantage of getting a realtime exchange rate that is very close to the actual value of your assets (aka "spot FX" rate). The pitfall is that most forex brokers are running either a scam, or they impose hidden fees (see legal scam: wire siphoning). Transparency generally does not exist with forex trading.

Many brokers are unable to deliver purchased assets. In other words, you can buy US dollars, but you cannot withdraw the USD that you bought. These brokers that deal in non-deliverables usually do not disclose the limitation; setting clients up to discover this after they exchange a currency. Brokers of non-deliverables are color coded in the chart below as red, signifying that they are unusable for our purpose. Forex dealers known to have hidden fees are color coded as orange. Before opening a forex account, check the list of blacklisted brokers.

You'll find that no FX broker comes close to offering what Interactive Brokers offers. IB does not siphon money from wires at either end, and their assets are deliverable. Their commission is only $2.50. There's no competition.

Using Online Money Transfer Operators (MTOs) to buy USD Edit

MTOs offer specialized services for transferring money country to country. The advantage is avoidance of hidden intermediary bank fees. You generally know the cost of the transfer. And unlike forex brokerages, purchases are always deliverable.

The pitfall here is cost is hidden in the exchange rate. Clients do not get the benefit of exchanging at the realtime rate the assets are being traded at. At best, a merchant may offer a wholesale interbank daily rate. This gives the false impression that the rate is very close to the actual rate being traded, when in fact there is no oversight or transparency in how banks compute the interbank rate. Worse, most banks will give the customer a retail exchange rate, which is the already marked up interbank rate with another profit margin on top of it.

There is no practical way to comparison shop with these services. In some cases you can get a rate quote once you have established an account, but the effort of doing that for every vendor makes it impractical.

There is a comparison site that seems to be neutral: http://www.sendmoneyhome.org/ However, it's not a complete representation of all the fees. Eg. Ivobank charges a 30 gbp wire fee that www.sendmoneyhome.org does not account for in the total amount received column.

Distribution of foreign funds in the US Edit

Most US banks accept incoming foreign paper checks for free, and incoming domestic ACH electronic fund transfers ("EFT") are also free, but they generally charge a fee for incoming international wire transfers ($10-50 depending on the bank). Unfortunately, most bank accounts outside of the US do not come with checkbooks, and to have non-US bank staff write a check from your account is generally cost prohibitive (Eg. 45 euros). Non-US banks are incapable of ACH EFTs.

Consequently, most consumers get burned when it comes to distributing foreign money to a US account. However, there are some exceptional US-based consumer banks and brokerages that will actually accept an incoming international wire at no cost. These banks and brokerages are listed below. Note that although these banks do not directly charge a fee for inbound wires, some of them use an intermediate bank that does impose a fee.

Credit unions generally do not impose incoming wire transfer fees. Credit unions usually have county residency requirements of some sort, so if your the US, just go check your local credit union.