Hello all experienced folks,

I opened an account with postfinance after I came to Switzerland. Transfered money twice to my Indian CITIBANK account. Both the time there was a less (27 CHF less) deposite credited into my account (this is besides service charges by CITI). So in essence this is proving to be an expensive way to transfer money to India.
Can you folks suggest something better?? Appreciate your advices in advance!!

This has been discussed many times.

Try searching the forum, and if nothing helps, return to this thread.

I've been having the same problem to transfer money to India. Is so expensive. And that looks to be the only way (western union is faster but higher rate, 45CHF, in other countries, this senvice is cheaper). Here cant find any other solution, the lower I've heared from a bank was 22CHF

any coment on this welcome!

even CITI was good, from ur account to a linked account u paid only 1 euro, but no CITI in Swiss

Well I posted this question after I did a brief search on the forum. May be I did not use correct key words? can you please post a link for one of such threads? I would really appreciate it.

Thanks!

according to my discovery : banking charges for transfers to non euro region are high in switzerland.

Just now I got 209 hits for

transfer funds

and 500 for

transfer money

hint: Set the search to "show posts" rather than "show threads".
hint2: The EF search function is a bit intolerant compared with Google. But you can use google to search EF also. To restrict google search results to just the EF site, add

site:www.englishforum.ch

to the search terms. e.g.

transfer money site:www.englishforum.ch

Hello,

I transfer the money to my Indian Bank Through E Banking . I am charged CHF 5 per Transfer .

Always remember when you make the transfer to Select the Option that all costs are to beneficiary in the Indian account where Transfer is being made . Since Charges in India are Nil or Max 50 INR for some banks this works out to be the best way

This is what I found out in my way to lower transfering costs:

When I transfer money to Denmark from my Swiss bank account (Credit Suisse), the money always goes via the Danish bank Nordea (who is assosiated to CS) and for this service Nordea charges me CHF 22. Another CHF 6 is paid to my local danish bank and another CHF 5 to Credit Suisse. CHF 33 in total.

In order to save the CHF 22 I have opened an account in Nordea so now I pay "only" CHF 11 in total. Of course I have to transfer my money from Nordea to my local danish bank myself, but I can do that on netbank for free.

Check out which Indian bank you Swiss bank is hooked up with and open an account in that bank. That may be the key to lower your transfer fee.

Hello
Please can you tell me which swiss bank you use for e-banking, because currently I paid Sfr25. Thanks

Can you please mention which bank's e-services you are using for money transfer? I did it through e-banking of postfinance and was charged 27 CHF here and 56 INR from Indian bank.

Thanks.. I can see some way to save a meal for myself.

Well I tried to tackle this issue in the same way but I was surprised with the way postfinance works. Just to let me know which bank they made this transfer through which charged me additional heavy fees (postfinance share was supposed to be only 2 CHF for the transfer), they asked me to pay 30 CHF as "investigation charges".

I really did not understand what investigation is needed. I just want to know who took my hard earned money from my bank account. Looks like postfinance has figured out what people do when they come to know about swiss bank involved in transfer. They charge you 30 CHF for giving an information because of which they would potentially lose future transfers requests.

Most of the international transfers that go to India go through Standard Charted Bank.

I use my Credit Suisse account to transfer funds and it goes via Standard Charted. The charge I pay is 29 CHF per transaction.

The routing depends on the currency (being sent) and the related Nostro Account for that currency to be sent from the transferring country to the receiving bank. Major Receiving Banks have a Nostro Account for inter bank transactions. So for dollars the money would go via a US based bank via the Nostro account of that receiving bank and so on
best wishes

I could see the name of the corresponding bank in Denmark on the receipt I received from my local Danish bank. All the details......just waiting for me to take action on my own

I quick phone call to that specific bank and an account with netbank was up and running in just 1 day.

The posters in this thread are focusing on the CHF 30 fee, which is perceived as excessive. But what about the currency conversion rate? That can destroy more value than the flat fee.

This definitely makes a big difference if you are switching currencies. We just saved close to 1000 CHF transfering a big chunk of money from CHF to Euros, this was using xc.com compared to Credit Suisse.

Thanks GoldTop and Magic for bringing up a very valid point.

I always assumed that all the banks give the same interbank exchange rates. Here is a link to the CS page I check before I transfer.

https://marketdataresearch.credit-su...9999&tabtype=0

I just check the "Upto CHF 10,000.00" selling rate for INR and this is exactly what I get for my transfer.

Magic, It would be nice if you elaborate a bit. Obviously am missing something here!

Now go to www.xe.com and put the figures into the from/to and you will see what the exchange rate they give you. If you want to do this for real then you need to sign up an account. To get the real amount they give you go to the trade section and put in the details. Betweent the two you see the margin they are taking. Ditto with Credit Suisse, you will see that xe.com take a much smaller amount.

The interbank rate is going to be the same for all banks/organisations but the rate they give you will differ because they are taking a cut/profit for doing the deal.

Hope this helps, if you have any more questions then post back

The theoretical interbank rate is not available to mere mortals.

Then there is the buy/sell spread. When you buy, you might pay 1.25% more than IB. When you sell, you get 1.25% less than IB. The actual spread depends on Bank, amount, currency pair and format (bigger spread for cash).

You often get a better rate if converting more than 50k. If converting even larger amounts, you can try negotiating! Ccy pair CHF/INR probably has a higher spread because of low liquidity.

And then there are the discounters like those mentioned in various threads:

• What are the risks?
• Are they doing exotic pairs like INR?

To give an example the conversion rates will not be the same at the Bank called A and the bank called B, both in say Zurich.
If the conversion is to take place say in India the rates would be again different.
The conversion would take place if you send Sfrs to India in Mumbai. If you send INRS then the conversion would take place in Zurich.
CS has Nostro accounts for SFrs for some Indian banks. Other Indian banks have Noistro account with UBS.
I assume you could get better rate if one sends SFr, thus conversion is done in the entry gate at Mumbai .
If you send INRS your conversion would take place at the counter in Zurich.
best wishes