How can I send money to myself from a UK bank to the Philippines? I don't have a UK credit card., only got a Filipino credit card.
OK Sir I stand corrected, I can only say being an old coffin dodger my memory is failing me, however I do find that BC seems to be the best at the moment? I remember using world first some years back and they were £22 per thousand and I was thinking when I changed to Wise it was half that, I guess it must have been well less?
I use Wise (full online bank account). The money can be collected at the usual variety of remittance places in the Phils, or paid straight into a Phils bank account. Rates are good.
I agree that BC Remit is a tiny bit better my only issue would be that I've never heard of them whereas Wise is a UK based International business that's been running since 2011 and which is used by my own employer for international payments to and from our African subsiduary. Plus Wise gives you real bank account details in the UK, Europe, USA, Australia, Canada, Hungry, New Zealand, Romainia , Singapore and Turkey, that's if you want to have accounts in these localities, I quite fancy getting an account in Singapore even although I will never ever live there and will probably never visit (too expensive £10 a pint ). Currently I have GBP and EUR account details and a PHP balance without account details. Wise is not a bank and is not FSCS protected but does operate the same as any other emoney business and your cash is ring fenced and kept in Barclays, Citibank and JP morgan Chase, as of last year they were holding about 9.2 billion GBP for their customer base.
PhilPensioner mentions Wise but unless you have a UK address Jim I don't think you would be able to get an account while you are living in the Phils, once an account is opened in the UK there is no ongoing residency requirement apart from getting your replacement card every few years. But Wise is definitely the best option as it is an international account, you might be able to apply and use a relative's address in the UK but there could still be issues with residency for the actual account opening.
As far as I know and considering I am a doddery old Bar Steward, BC is a UK company set up by Filipinos for this very reason, to send money back home, I do a transaction around every 6 weeks and been using them for around 8 to 9 months I think?
I did use my Philippines address to open my Wise account. I have my State Pension paid into it. It just means that a Wise debit card will not be issued to you (as a Phils resident). All their other services are available to me.
They are all companies created to send money around the world, fair enough they are newcomers they might even proxy their service through a company like WorldRemit or Wise but through swallowing a proportion of the fees. Good to know that they exist, the more services we have available to us the better!
I don't have an UK address, but I opened the transfer-wise account long time ago when I lived in UK. I still have the wise account, not bothered about a credit account as long as I can transfer funds from my UK bank to my Fils bank via Wise. Will I be able to do this? Sorry for the stupid questions but got a lot going on here!
I opened a wise account many years when I lived in UK when it was called Transfer-wise. I can still open it but not used it yet since it changed it's name to wise. I could use my bank in the uk to transfer funds but less favorable rates and a whopping 25 pound fee.
That's what I do Jim - so no problems. Mine goes from Santander to Wise and from Wise to BPI here - no fees on UK bank to Wise transaction. Fee on conversion from GBP to PHP and sending it to BPI. I have a two cards with WISE: one digital and one plastic, I like those because you can only spend what's on the Wise balance - so I normally top up Wise before using it to pay for anything over £100 etc. Also handy for paying things online in different currencies as they draw from your currency pot first, assuming you have something in it. I was going to tell you I use my Philippines address for Wise but upon checking I see that I don't! I'm actually using my UK address for that one
I also transfer money from my Wise account to my Phils BDO account (which I do have a debit/ATM card for). Cost is minimal . If I were to withdraw cash from an ATM here using a British card, cost would be p250 per pull. From my BDO account, and using my BDO card, it is p15 for the same. Really I should start having my State Pension paid directly into my BDO account. Just haven't got round to it yet. I also have a PayPal account, brought with me from the UK, which is handy for paying some bills and regular payments (such as Skype and my internet TV).
Yeah it should let you do that. I take it you still have online banking for your UK bank account? Which UK bank are you with Jim if you don't mind me asking, a lot of them close your account if you are no longer resident.
Santander, yep I have on-line banking. Santander did close my account because I was not able to contact them within the time-scale.(Phil post) 8 months to deliver a letter. I managed to contact Santander and get them to reopen my accounts but my direct debits were sent back. that's another can of worms. I opened my wise account and was a bit confused by them. They still have my records and Bank details, they wanted me to pay GBP 20 into the wise account from my Santander account, don't know if it has been transfer or not. Wait and see if the fees are absurd as Santanders or if Wise will pay the fees on my behalf and charge me!
If you sign into your wise account you will see your balance if a transfer was made into wise and nothing ever moved to a foreign bank then you will have a balance of £20 in Wise. There are no fees to send money from your Santander account to Wise because both are GBP bank accounts and in the UK, you just make an online transfer using Santander online banking to the Wise GBP account details which are just a sort code and account code, once you have money in the Wise account you can convert some or all of it to a PHP balance and you don't have to move it anywhere you just now have a PHP balance in Wise, there is a small fee for the convertion but you get the international spot FX rate for the conversion. Once you have a PHP balance you can then choose to transfer some or all of it to your local Philippine bank account there is another very small fee for that, I just sent 40,000PHP to my son from my PHP balance (school fees) and they charged me about 44 peso, the transfer can take a couple of days but it's usually 24 to 36 hours before the cash is in the local bank account.
