Alternatives to Western Union

After being highly amused by a recent thread I thought I'd post about my experiences of using money transfer services to Thailand other than Western Union. I've used three this year - Skrill, PayPal and the newer kid on the block TransferWise

From a security perspective Skrill and Paypal work the same way - you give them access to your bank account via their App. TransferWise has a "cut out" - you have to send them the money from your bank account after you've placed the order online with them. I maintain a bank account in Thailand to which I have Internet banking access so I can see exactly what's going on

My observations (and I stress they're mine, take it or leave it):
Skrill: this worked quite well, you can nominate your base currency and if you stick with that you'll be fine except when you're transferring money internationally. My experience was that they convert the money being sent into Euros and then convert those Euros into the destination currency. Very costly

Paypal: With each Paypal account you can have two bank accounts attached by default - your US one (if you have one) and one for the country where you've registered your account. I didn't want to use my US bank account so it means I have two PayPal accounts - one for the UK, the other for Thailand. I simply send myself money from my UK account (withdrawn by PayPal from my UK bank account - same as Western Union) as "Family & Friends" so the transfer fee is minimal. When it reaches my Thailand account (instantaneously) I accept the transfer and convert it into baht. The exchange rate isn't bad - certainly better than if I sent it direct from bank to bank - and the very low fees are an advantage. The downside is that it then takes around 5 working days from the time I withdraw it from my Thai PayPal account until it reaches my Thai bank account. Why? Who knows. I suspect it would give the opportunity for fraudulent transactions to be stopped

TransferWise: This application is brought to you by the same geeks who invented Skype. I requested the money and was told the probable exchange rate at the time. I had 48 hours (I think) to effect the transfer, during which time the exchange rate could change so I was offered the opportunity to "hedge" or insure against that. As I transferred from my bank to TransferWise immediately, I didn't bother. They acknowledged receipt within a few hours (all by email) and gave me a date 48 hours later by when they said the money would be in my Thai bank account. It actually took a few hours longer, but I put that down to the inefficiencies of the Thai banking system and the time differences. And it was exactly the amount they said it would be. Best of all, the exchange rate was as good as I could get by passing cash over the counter at a branch of Super Rich (who have an App you can download to your phone if you want, giving up the minute rates they're offering against the baht). TransferWise say they're charging an administration fee but for what I was transferring at the time (roughly 10,000 baht) a fee of zero was charged

All three have smartphone Apps. I'd rate the services as follows:
1 TransferWise. Best exchange rate, best transfer time (bank-to-bank); requires more manual intervention
2 PayPal. Second best exchange rate, poor transfer time (bank-to-bank); requires some manual intervention (accepting the payment and withdrawing it to the Thai bank account)
3 Skrill. Lousy exchange rate unless your home currency is Euros; no further comment is necessary

However if you simply can't wait, Western Union with its poor security, high fees and terrible exchange rates is the way to go - take Bucky as your exemplar

I should point out that I use my trusty VPNs (I have several VPN accounts scattered around the world, some hosted by Kommie's Boys) for additional security. I know this will be a huge shock to Surfcrest's IT "guru", cdnmatt, whose complete ignorance of modern-day IT security and how the banks view it still causes amusement. However I'm sure he's a great help to Surfcrest ... somehow

For those who are interested, the emerging security especially for banking transactions is the subject of a leading article in this week's Economist

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[cdnmatt]

Probably the wrong crowd for this, but another excellent money transfer service is Bitcoin. No fees to receive funds, no limitations / restrictions, no ID required, no account to open, no KYC/AML hoops to jump through, and a simple ~$0.03 fee to send an unlimited amount instantaneously anywhere in the world.

If you know what you're doing, it's also extremely secure. If you don't know what you're doing, chance you'll get your money stolen, so be careful.

Plus you don't have to worry about things like PayPal freezing your funds for 180 days while giving no reason to do so, and offering no appeal process. You also don't have to worry about the nightmare of trying to contact and deal with PayPal customer support.

Probably the wrong crowd for this, but another excellent money transfer service is Bitcoin.

Perhaps you could do the same as me, and describe the step-by-step process of transferring money from another country to Thailand using Bitcoin from - you know - personal experience?

[Rene]

Probably the wrong crowd for this, but another excellent money transfer service is Bitcoin.

Perhaps you could do the same as me, and describe the step-by-step process of transferring money from another country to Thailand using Bitcoin from - you know - personal experience?

I would also like a step by step description of how to use Bitcoin in a secure fashion. TIA

[cdnmatt]

Well, I get paid in bitcoin, so for me it's a little easier as I don't have that extra step of transferring USD / GBP into bitcoin first. Instead, I got straight from BTC -> THB. Anyway, to get setup you would:

1.) Figure out how to store your bitcoin. Not going to get into details, as it's out of the scope of this forum. Tons of options available though, however I would highly discourage use of an online web wallet (eg. http://blockchain.info/), and instead download and install your own wallet such as http://electrum.org/ or even Bitcoin Core

2.) Buy some bitcoins. Just Google "bitcoin exchange my_country_name" to see what's available to you. If it's just a smaller transaction of say $3000 or less, just head to http://localbitcoins.com/ and you can easily buy there.

3.) Once in Thailand, sell your bitcoin. Again, http://localbitcoins.com/ works great for this. If you're in a popular area like Bangkok, Pattaya or Chiang Mai, there will be someone local willing to buy. You can meet together to do a cash transaction, they can put the money in your bank account, or however you want to be paid.

For example, when a client from Europe or the US pays an invoice, I can have cash in hand within an hour. No fees from the network itself, although I do get dinged about 1 - 3% upon selling, all depending who I find to sell to.

If you're just sending your boy special a few hundred dollars here and there, bitcoin would be probably far better than Western Union or anything else. Basically no fees, no ID, no forms to fill out, instantaneous, etc. Plus you can just send it from your computer / cell phone, instead of having to go into town to Western Union, fill out a form, provide ID, etc. Instead, you can just instantly fire it off to your boy special, and assuming he's in somewhere like Bangkok or Pattaya, he could turn around and sell it within an hour.

Plus there's zero chance of it being blocked for fraud, or money laundering, or whatever. It's a decentralized P2P system, so there's no governance or regulation in place, and it's designed in a way to make it impossible to do so. If you go through an actual exchange, most are registered with the governments as money exchange services, hence will require KYC/AML info. However, by no means do you need to go through an exchange. Again, http://localbitcoins.com/ works great, or you can find other personal connections to buy / sell with, etc.

EDIT: If anyone has any specific questions, feel free to ask here or in PM. I've been developing software for the bitcoin industry for 2.5 years now, so I know the protocol inside and out.

[Smiles]

BITCOIN.
You must be out of your mind. Unless you were mighty lucky you'd have lost a small fortune [or perhaps a big one, depending how gullible you were] owning bitcoin during ALL times on either side of July 10/2013 and November 30/2013 [i.e. a total of 5 months]
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from= ... D&view=10Y

I don't profess to know too much about the mechanics of using Bitcoins. I doubt that many do.
But the whole concept screams 'fad' to be, and that's being polite. I could also use the word 'scam' [Bitcoin has already gone through one very nasty episode which could easily be characterised as such].
Count me out of this scheme.

[Nirish guy]

If I recall correctly was one of our own esteemed board members not high up and tied up in the whole Bitcoin end of things and if Bitch boy Neal ( God rest his soul) was to believed they had a string of dodgy dealings going on in that whole arena.

I know Neal actuallyed publish some documents he claimed to have found about court actions etc that he had claimed to have found which could have been genuine or not, I have no idea, but as far as I know the person he was accusing didnt ever comment or deny the facts of that "expose" either way as far as I can recall, but of course knowing our dearly departed who one could never trust as far as you could throw him who knows whether that was true or not.

So, as I seemed to recall that Neals claims all centred round the member and massive Bitcoin fraud perhaps if they're reading this ( as I'm sure you know who they are. :-) perhaps they'd like to comment now and tell us THEIR thoughts on Newils at the time hugely libellous claims ( God Neal so loved that word :-( and / or their thoughts on the overall safety and security of the Bitcoin industry in general perhaps ?

[Nirish guy]

Apologies for the numerous typos above, it seems typing replies on a phone, whilst in bed with a hot asian guy lying next to me saying hurry up and get off the phone AND with a massive halloween party hangover isn't the best idea perhaps - mind you some might say they can't see much difference from my normals posts probably anyway - and they wouldn't be too far wrong of course :-)

[scottish-guy]

If any SGT member needs to experiment with transferring extremely high value sums of money to a third party, I'm willing to receive the funds and report back (eventually)

:x

[gaymandenmark]

Why not just use bank to bank transfer? For me it is the easiest and cheapest way.