International Cheques

You should be able to go into your branch and ask them to do a bankers cheque in Euros from your account. I'm not sure but they may charge you for the service.

Regards

Phil

It was less than 20 last I did it (10?)

Stephen

You could use a currency broker if the amount is non-trivial. If the amount is small sending cash is the cheapest option.

Money orders, payable internationally.

It probably is possible.

My mother needed to send an amount in Euros to a company in Spain. Her local HSBC branch told her to use her normal cheque book, cross out the '£' sign, and write the amount in Euros.

I was amazed that the bank would have even suggested doing such a thing, but the cheque was accepted and cleared normally. I think she got charged the equivalent of what it would have cost for them to issue a bank draft in Euros.

Chris

This has been possible in theory since exchange controls were abolished in 1979.

However the recipient can choose to not accept such a cheque, and on the occassions I tried it myself (to Americans) it was always refused.

A cheque is just a written instruction to a bank to transfer money, there is no particular "magic" to it, hence cheques written on cows and so forth. Things like that are hangovers from the days when only the rich had bank accounts and they expected a personal service. Crossing out the pound sign on a web form might be a bit harder :)

It wont have 'cleared normally'. It will have resulted in a mail transfer being sent from her HSBC branch to Spain for which the normal fee will have been charged either to her or the recipient.