To receive USD from overseas - which bank should I choose?

islongx

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Joined
Feb 18, 2020
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Hi all, I am doing freelance work for an oversea company and the company pays me USD monthly to my Indonesia bank account here.

I am currently using BCA Dollar account and the bank charges me USD 40 each time for receiving the money.

Any banks with cheaper rate to receive the payment from overseas?

Thank you so much!
 
They can send it directly to your rupiah account. These days bank rates are pretty good. Much better than years ago
 
Also that charge is because the sender is saddling you with the charges. So you need to tell your company that they should be paying the charges. It's an option the banks ask. Who pays. Remitter or beneficiary. Of course they say you. $40 a month x 250 employees adds up. $10,000 a month saved
 
They can send it directly to your rupiah account. These days bank rates are pretty good. Much better than years ago

Thanks for your reply! Let me check with BCA how much they charge for the rupiah account (y)
 
Also that charge is because the sender is saddling you with the charges. So you need to tell your company that they should be paying the charges. It's an option the banks ask. Who pays. Remitter or beneficiary. Of course they say you. $40 a month x 250 employees adds up. $10,000 a month saved

Thanks for your reply. The company said they only cover the bank charges associate with their bank, the subsequent charges by my bank (BCA) are deducted from the money I receive. $40 for receiving each payment is indeed a bit too much.
 
Where is your employer based and in which country were you previously located?
 
Can you open a TransferWise Borderless account to receive your payments?
 
I think Hsbc $ account you can receive US$ at face value no fees
I know on mine I've never been charged anything before
Get sent $5000 and receive $5000 example
 
It really depends on the amount of money you’re sending. I have never liked the automatic conversion to rupiah, as many banks will nail you for 1-3% off best rates for the conversion.

If you’re sending $500, $40 is a big hit. If it’s $10,000, it’s 2%. Perhaps just deposit funds into a US based bank, and send transfers less often?

I prefer to hold onto my USD, and then change larger chunks as the exchange rate becomes more favorable. I’m usually able to get 5-20% more in IDR In the long run. If I had automatically changed USD to IDR, even with the higher interest paid, I’d be at least 10% less in the bank.
 
Just bank in the US where they have no fee ATM usage accounts. Have your pay deposited there and use debit cards from the US bank to withdraw cash. You can always deposit cash in a local bank then. We have been doing that for 8 years now and all is good and only fees is a small monthly bank fee in the US and whatever the ATM fee is locally. ATM fees here are very low. Some lower than others.
 
Just bank in the US where they have no fee ATM usage accounts. Have your pay deposited there and use debit cards from the US bank to withdraw cash. You can always deposit cash in a local bank then. We have been doing that for 8 years now and all is good and only fees is a small monthly bank fee in the US and whatever the ATM fee is locally. ATM fees here are very low. Some lower than others.

At the end of that you have rupiah. How does the exchange rate turn out? Even if the fees are small I would have thought the exchange rate using a conventional bank would not compare favourably with the method I would otherwise use.

If you are in the US and still have an account there then I suspect a better method would be US$ payments to your account and then use Transferwise.com to send rupiah to your BCA account. The exchange rates with Transferwise are much better than the bank exchange rates. BCA do not debit my account when I use this system to transfer IDR from Australia.

Fastpitch if you sent say $1000 US what would you get in IDR using your method method today?
If you used Transferwise to send $1000 US today would put 14,629,849 IDR in your local account.
 
Screenshot_20200812-123247.png
 
BCA is 14860 right now

If you transfer US$ to a BCA account to then be exchanged to IDR I presume there would be a charge. Do you know what that charge would be offhand if you sent $1000US as this would then be relevant as to how much IDR you get out the end?
 
No there is no charge. Whatever arrives in US$ gets converted.
 
Charge from remitter no idea. What bank. But it will show anyway what arrived in your account in $ and then the amount in IDR. Bca don't take anything.
Now rate even higher
 
Fastpitch if you sent say $1000 US what would you get in IDR using your method method today?
If you used Transferwise to send $1000 US today would put 14,629,849 IDR in your local account.
I pay $5.00US per month for my US account. I have no ATM fees from them. Locally, using Mandiri ATMs, I have a RP2,00 fee ATM use fee. I normally check the AE App I have and find I get from 100 to 120RP less than they quote. Using US Debit cards you are either associated with Visa or Mastercard. It is their exchange rates you get, not the banks. As of what AE is stating right this minute, I would receive what you are stating. We have a joint account in the US. We have placed limits on our cards just in case of losing them. Together we can get 1,000.00 daily. We can change the limits any time. The US debit cards also work all over the world the same way. We have set up that ours are only good in Indonesia. If we travel, we open up another country for a specific time. Just takes a email through their secure apps. Using the US debit card in other countries is far more profitable than exchanging Rupiah.
 

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