Sunday, December 4, 2011

Is there a way to remit ten thousand dollars from US to my family in India for free or a very low charge?

Most banks charge anywhere from $20 to $50 for remittances. It seems cruel that one needs to pay a hefty fee to wire transfer ones own money.|||I know that Washington Mutual's free checking comes with free outbound wire transfers worldwide.





However, you should probably be aware of what Indian regulations are with regards to such a large transfer of funds. Not being a lawyer, I can't say for certain what the rules are, but there's probably a decent paper trail for this sort of activity.





There's also hawala transfers, which probably get you a better exchange rate than the banks will offer, but that gets into a legal grey area both here and overseas.|||They are charging for the service of sending the money, just like using the mail or postal system. $20 dollars seems like a fair price for a wire across the world.





The only other way is a check in a FedEx envelope, which can possibly get lost?





Also, check with different banks, and maybe even "Western Union" if need be, take your $10,000 to a different bank and tell that if they wire the money for no fee you will open an new account?





Don't have to keep all of your money in only one bank! :)





Hope that helps?|||Yep and you are going to pay even more if you send it western union or some other service like that. And other than bringing the money yourself or sending it with someone else you trust there aren't too many options (10k cash per person is the max you can normally carry out of the country). I would look into a couple things if you are sending money regularly. One, you could see if there is a bank that has a branch in both the US and India. Some of the larger banks like Citibank have branches in other countries, then you could put someone else on the account and they could withdraw money overseas. You could just deposit money in that account as needed. You may not even have to have the bank in your local town and can just mail a check for deposits if it is in the US. The better option may be to fedex an ATM card to the person in India for an account here (just email or call them with the code) and they can withdraw money as they need it and you can only deposit what you need to. If you need to send it one time, I don't know of anyway you can get around spending any money especially with a large sum like $10k. Check out paypal too and see if you can make a payment to them for cheap but you still have to open accounts etc.|||send me the money in small bills and used and i will take if over for you for free on my next trip to New Delhi .

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