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How to transfer money to Europe?

Yes and no. There's no such thing really as a push or a pull in isolation. Every transfer involves both. In words of one syllable, an authority to pull *is* a push. OK, so I lied. All words but one were of one syllable.

If you prefer, though, one could perhaps use the existing push mechanism built into the credit/debit card system for the purpose of processing refunds. In that case, the payer would be the one burdened with having to visit his bank's mickey mouse centre, but would need to go armed with the payee's card details, which carries a slight potential security risk.

Reply to
Ronald Raygun
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I take your point about free banking in the UK having to be made up for by charging for extra services. That could have a lot to do with it.

I'm not sure why bank transfers from Spain to France should be so much more commonplace than from the UK to France. The UK is a bigger trading partner of France than Spain is, so you would think it should be the other way around.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Blunt

Because some EU rules requires that international transfers dominated in euros must cost the same as domestic transfers in euros. The British bank charging 25 for a transfer to France is making a tidy profit, whereas the Spanish bank is probably making a loss, but as long as there aren't too many such transfers it feels that it is better to absorb the loss than to raise the costs for domestic transfers, too. Btw, it is possible to send transfer money from the UK to France for much less than 25, the last time I did it, it cost me less than 10.

Given the number of international transfers I make, I would be certainly worse of if the UK joined the Economic and Monetary Union, and I had to pay 1 euro for every transfer I make within the UK.

Reply to
s_pickle2001

OK so my example wasnt great. but the point remains, different members of the Eurozone operate their own, separate paper and AFAIK electronic clearing systems, this means that the process of making a transfer is almost exactly the same as one between two different countries with different currencies (if we ignore the currency conversion done early on in the process by the senders bank or late on by the receiver's).

Ian

Reply to
ian.tomes

In message , snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

True, but there is a better interbank relationship.

What???? That is just not so. If both banks operate in the same currency then they can account directly with one another even if there isnt a formalised clearing system. There is still a direct payment mechanism so the funds are simply transferred from one account to another.

If there are different currencies then, because a currency account can not be domiciled in any other place than its country of domicile, there needs to be two sets of transactions one in each country, what used to be called the Nostro and Vostro Account system, upon which various mirror and contra entries are made in order to facilitate the currency transfer.

Ahh yes! The complicated bit.

Reply to
john boyle

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