Hi all,
Am curious as to people’s experiences (pro/con) with using different FX services to move USD to a Pt bank in €. Purpose would be for house down payment. Thus, USD values to be in the 100k-200k$ range.
Or have people moved that much thru Wise and everything worked successfully?
Thanks,
Lou
I went through ibkr converting it there at market rates. Worked great
No problems with wise but the fees are prohibitive for that much
Fantastic info - thanks for sharing. Really helps with learning the ropes!
Lou
We ended up sending money via our US bank in USD and having our Portugal bank (Millenniumbcp) convert it to euros when it arrived. The rate was good. Plus, our attorneys told us not to use Wise or similar services since it would be hard for the bank to verify source of funds in justifying it to SEF for
the GV application.
Yes, that could also be a problem with IBKR, because brokerages send money showing as remitter themselves, not the client. (Conversely, they don’t accept remittances from Wise accounts because the remitter’s name is Wise, not the client, and most brokerages don’t accept third-party payments due to KYC/AML rules.) IBKR or Wise could still be used by first sending their payment to a bank account in EUR in your name, and from there to the bank in Portugal.
it isn’t. People have used this route and it is fine. It is the same as transferring from Fidelity or Schwab.
Jeff, I ran into exact this issue last month when sending money from IBKR directly to Millennium BCP.
The transfer was blocked by ‘compliance’ people at BCP because it was showing the originator as IBKR and not as myself. Then dealing with the BCP customer service is not the experience to be enjoyed.
And yes, it worked in the past but not this time, resulting in weeks of delay.
So the recommended path is this:
Your regular ‘home bank’ home currency → IBKR → conversion to EUR → back to your ‘home bank’ EUR account → transfer to your PT bank
Just as a word of caution - IBKR does not like users who primarily convert currencies as opposed to trading which is supposed to be the intended use of IBKR.
Personal experience - I used IBKR for the big transfer for the GV, they sent me a nastygram but the transfer went through fine and my account is still in good standing a year later