I’m wondering, for those who have only used wires from their banks with IBKR, how long the process took from initiating the first wire to the arrival of funds in PT…
Thanks!
1 Like
If I understand your question correctly, you want to:
- wire from your bank to IBKR - 0 days
- convert at IBKR to EUR - 0 days (+3 days for withdrawal hold and trade settlement - may incur a small amount negative interest)
- SEPA to Bison - 1 day (for funds to show up)
This process is at best ~4 days due to the above.
Thank you, I appreciate the responses. You got what I was asking right. I may be using Millennium rather than Bison. But hopefully that’s not materially different.
Just in case it may help - a SEPA transfer from IBKR to Millennium BCP works just as well as any other SEPA.
1 business day.
On the other forum, PT GV - Choosing Custodian Bank for Fund Investment - #43 by nevadaandonward, the consensus seemed to be that Millennium wasn’t FATCA compliant for depository accounts to hold investments. Have you been able to open with them?
This matches my experience. The wire transfer can take an extra day if it’s already afternoon.
That is only for US investors.
We’re trying to obtain GV here before minimum investment increases. As someone above said all the information on this forum is like “drinking from a fire hose” but absolutely invaluable-appreciate everyone’s input.
I’ve tried to quickly read through the messages on this thread because I intend to use my IBKR account to fund the bank account (currently being opened at Atlantico with help of our attorney) and subsequent GV investment. I had planned to just transfer funds straight from the IB account without having to transfer money in (as others have described doing) as my balance is more than enough to cover the transfer, which I planned to cover on margin without immediately selling securities to cover.
Has anyone else done it this way? ACH vs wire is best method? Never have used “SEPA” before so not sure what that is?
TIA,
Curtis
ACH funds are ineligible for transfer for a month and a half. You probably don’t want that. Wire transferred funds are available immediately.
1 Like
Is that true for funds I already have and have had in my IB account?
No, the restriction on transferring funds applies to funds moved into IBKR via ACH.
You can not move money to a Portuguese bank using ACH. ACH is only used to move money between banks in the United States.
SEPA is similar to ACH, but for European banks (and with some design improvements over ACH). If you buy Euros on the FX market through IBKR, you can transfer them through SEPA to your European bank after the 3 day clearing period elapses. IBKR is on both ACH, for dollar transfers to and from the United States, and SEPA, for Euro transfers between European banks.
If you already have money at IBKR you can skip all the steps till the money moved into IBKR. You should be able to convert and SEPA into your Atlantico account. The only thing is you need to link your Atlantico account to IBKR and do a test transfer first as I think they have some limits on a newly linked account.
1 Like
Thanks for the input! Next question: has anybody been able to make the cash transfer on margin from IB?
Anyone have a link to IBKR’s settling time documentation for currency conversion?
Hmm, so supposedly I was able to withdraw my entire balance the same day I converted from usd to eur. Usd had been wired in and sitting in IBKR for a few weeks
Originally bumped into the daily withdrawal limit but by activating 2fa with the app I was able to withdraw everything all at once
See Financial Strength - Strength and Security | Interactive Brokers LLC
interesting - I was unable to move the EUR out for 2 days after the trade - it said I am trying to move the assets of a trade that have not settled yet. That was for funds that were past the “cure period” of the hold (funds that had been in my account for a while). Funnily enough - it did not say that for a $10 conversion, but it did say that a larger conversion.
Of course, IBKR let me set up and request the withdrawal, but then rejected it this morning because the forex trade hasn’t settled 
Does anyone know if I am converting US$200k and then sending to Activo Bank from IBKR via SEPA, is there somewhere along the line I need to provide Activo or anyone with documentation about the source of funds for FinCEN reporting? Is that something I need to address? Will Activo accept the incoming transfer? Thanks for any insights.
I don’t know about Activo specifically, but your bank in Portugal is likely to ask about source of funds before issuing their declaration for the SEF application. Don’t think IBKR asks for FinCEN as long as it comes from another US bank via electronic transfer. Some banks explicitly will not accept anything but a wire from a US bank before they issue the certification needed by SEF. So I would check with the Portuguese bank directly before you transfer on what they need.
1 Like