Hi everyone - new to the forums and have tried searching for an answer to my question but no luck. Sorry if this is repetitive...

My wife and I are trying to send about $2-3k to our US Wells Fargo account once a month to cover the mortgage, etc. Looking for the best way (best rates) to do this.

Last month, we did this though our bank UBS. When the question came up--did we want to transfer CHF or USD, we said CHF and were told that WF would do the conversion for us with their rates. It feels like we got hammered on the exchange. Would it be better to transfer USD and use UBS rates? Not sure where to even find out that rate information (for either bank) or if there's a better way to transfer funds on a monthly basis.

Any UBS/WF users want to chime in? Any help would be appreciated-thank for your patience if you've answered this before for some other poor soul.

Thanks -

Make 1 payment for the year, you won't save much, maybe $0.01-0.015 on the exchange. In order to get sightly better rates, think $100'000's rather than $1'000's

Nice idea, but if perhaps if the OP could do that, there would be no reason to pay the mortgage monthly at all. They could just pay it all and be done with it.

Anyway, I transfer to the US regularly, although I'm going from Credit-Suisse to Bank of America (or is it Skank of America) and I just transfer to US$ before I send it. I think the rates are marginally better. CHF to USD$ is almost at parity, isn't it?

I transfer to the US regularly as well, and this is also what I do. I choose my amount in CHF and then Credit Suisse asks "payable in" and I choose US$. I didn't do this once, and it was not good. I have a third party bank (Chase) that does the transfer to my real bank in the US and for some reason, if the money isn't received in dollars, there is another fee they tack on (which may or may not have been what happened to you). Otherwise, all I get charged is the 15 dollars from Chase to do the transaction, which you can't avoid with any US bank, and something like 5CHF from CS that I never see b/c it is included in my online banking package.

And yes, the exchange rate right now is about 1:1.

A transfer from Deutsche Bank to WF was just fine using XE.com . I would assume a Swiss transfer would be just as easy, and the rates are the best around. The caveat would be whether there is a standard transfer fee from your Swiss bank.

I have also had nothing but success with XE.com sending and converting CHF to USD -- a much better rate than the banks and the money usually shows up in my US account late on the next business day.

Thanks for the info... have you also been able to transfer funds from the US account to Switzerland with xe.com?

I've just done exactly that, seemed to work well but it takes about 5 working days or so. They will quote you a specific rate, seemed decent, and charge you a fee.

Add me to the list of happy XE.com customers. It's an easy-to-use solution and typically they have the best rates around.

XE.com has no per transaction fee if you choose payment delivery methods which don't incur fees. On the US side EFTs work both ways and don't incur fees. To/from a European EUR account, they'll pay with and accept interbank transfers (Überweisung/IBAN) which are also free. I would expect that there is something similar to/from CHF accounts.

They post mid-market rates on their front page, but their exchange rates are normally spread 1.75% from those on both sides. So their fee is effectively 1.75% of your transaction. Let us know if you find something cheaper. From what little I've seen, bank transactions in this size tend to have rates taking 2% or more, plus a per transaction fee.

XE's spread is 1.5% and no wiring fees on either side. So it's good for small to mid-size amounts. If you're wiring sums larger than say 2000, then you may want to look into some other FX sites (like oanda) that have wiring fees but much smaller spreads (around 0.015%).

Correct me if I am wrong (I am relatively naive with this).

I pay my monthly mortgage through a transfer from UBS (CHF) to my bank in Spain (EUR). UBS is now offering me a rate of 1.3474. XE.com midmarket is 1.32744, which increased by 1.75% is 1.3506702. So, it's not as good as with UBS. For my normal transfer of about 1000 EUR, that's about 4 Francs more expensive with XE. But, with UBS my bank in Spain charges 18€, which I understand with XE using I would not have to pay, using ETF. So, I would save about 21 francs by using XE.

Does this sound correct? Did you just save me about 250 francs per year?

The 'thanks' button is in the lower right-hand corner of your screen.

thanks for the advice everyone. went with the Abroad Extra+ option with UBS for a flat 20CHF service fee with a decent rate. Next month i'll use XE and see what the difference is. I appreciate all the help!

Another happy XE customer ... just bought a bunch of greenbacks again yesterday.

I did the XE.com registration 2 days ago and haven't heard anything from them. So so far, not a very good experience!