How to send money to Cambodia?

[Zebedee]

I sent my friend in Cambodia some money on 28/07/2020 . The exchange rate on xe.com at the time was $1AUD = $0:715USD
I used HAI HA ....for the first time ever. They are in partnership with WING in Cambodia.

https://help.hhmt.com.au/hc/en-us/ca...es-Information

The transfer can be sent online or in person through their agents, I used a local agent.
I sent $1000.00 AUD my friend received $705:80 USD. When I paid the agent, I was sent a CODE , I then forwarded that CODE to my friend. He went to his nearest WING office in town, showed them the code,they confirmed his telephone number, gave him the money. It took him about five minutes with WING.
The whole process from supplying personal details, paying the transfer and my friend receiving the money took about one hour!
As I mentioned this was the first time I used HAI HA, normally I use a bank transfer. The differences are, it was faster, he received at least $60 USD more than had I used my bank! My Australian bank gives a crap exchange rate and charges a small fee ,( but still robbing me), my friends bank takes another cut . I am very pleased with this funds transfer company and will definitely use them again.
I think this company only operates from Australia...not certain about that, but australians can transfer to Thailand, Indonesia, Philipines and a few other countries.

[goji]

A 1.29% loss seems very reasonable, considering you're transferring to a country for which some of the usual low cost options will not be available.
Also, they're handing over cash, hence there should be more handling costs than with a bank transfer.

Of course, it's not necessarily a good thing if Khmer bar boys find out it's that easy to transfer money.

[Zebedee]

Just for clarity, I quoted xe.com rates in my last post, but those are "mid-market rates" as explained by that website:
-"All figures are live mid-market rates, which are not available to consumers and are for informational purposes only. "-


Mere mortals such as me would get lesser exchange rates,making HAI HA rates even more competitive.

[goji]

Just for clarity, I quoted xe.com rates in my last post, but those are "mid-market rates" as explained by that website:
-"All figures are live mid-market rates, which are not available to consumers and are for informational purposes only. "-
Mere mortals such as me would get lesser exchange rates,making HAI HA rates even more competitive.

I knew you quoted XE mid-market rates.
I measure the loss on any foreign currency transaction against that mid-market rate. With the expectation that there always will be a loss.

Something like 0.5% loss would be a very good result, as you might get with Transferwise or even the most competitive cash exchanges.

You don't have a Transferwise option for Cambodia. As stated, I think a 1.3% loss is a very good result for a less competitive market.

For example, compare with the c**** at Paypal, who charge £25 (5.6%) to receive £450 from China & charge the sender something similar on top of this, so over 10%. Transferwise is also not available for outbound transfers from China. I'm fairly sure there is a better option waiting to be discovered.

My UK bank charged 3.2% for an overseas transfer of several thousand pounds, in the days before I discovered Transferwise.

[speedoo1]

If it were me, I would be tempted to try Xoom. Or at least register and go through the process, to see if any surprise charges crop up. Has anyone here used this ?

As stated above I have used Xoom a few times for transfers to Colombia. There were no fee or charge to be paid by the recipient (I think I would have been told by the Colombianos that benefitted from transfers) and there was no information on the webpage when completing the transfers that the recipient had to pay something for collection procedure.

[Keith]

I decided to send some money to a gay guide I have used in Siem Reap, no sex, as he was suffering. He was selling some organic beauty products, so showing initiative. In the end, I said forget the products, I will send money. He gave me his Bank Account, I sent £150, and was charged £17 by my Bank, Lloyds. He only received £100, the Cambodian Bank took the rest!

[Zebedee]

I decided to send some money to a gay guide I have used in Siem Reap, no sex, as he was suffering. He was selling some organic beauty products, so showing initiative. In the end, I said forget the products, I will send money. He gave me his Bank Account, I sent £150, and was charged £17 by my Bank, Lloyds. He only received £100, the Cambodian Bank took the rest!

That was a large amount to lose even by Cambodian Bank standards. Would it be possible your bank gave you a poor exchange rate in addition to their fee? Thats how my Australian Bank "operates", they then emphasise their "low" fee in the hope the customer doesn't notice their robbing exchange rates! I hate to think of the amount of money both Cambodian and Australian banks gouged from me over the years.
And the sad thing is that loss is big money to your friend in Cambodia especially these days.

If you are sending the money online from your bank, it is usually cheaper to send your currency and allow the receiving bank convert it to Dollars...that is if your bank gives you that option. My bank does not give me that option when sending to Cambodia, but does allow me the option when sending to Thailand.

[goji]

That was a large amount to lose even by Cambodian Bank standards. Would it be possible your bank gave you a poor exchange rate in addition to their fee? Thats how my Australian Bank "operates", they then emphasise their "low" fee in the hope the customer doesn't notice their robbing exchange rates! I

Some customers have a blind spot to such charges.
In the past, I've even seen people triumphantly post about their exchange with no fees, whilst totally ignoring the dismal exchange rate. It's almost like they try to forget about it as fast as possible, which is an expensive attitude.
I prefer to make a note of when I'm screwed on a transaction and try to avoid it in future. e.g. The examples where Paypal have screwed me, as already posted here.


It's quite a pleasure to see the likes of yourself and Keith being equally open about such things.

I also see people being in denial over stockbrokers fees. They bitch and moan about a broker charging an extra £5 for overseas share trading, yet the same people haven't even checked the spread on the foreign exchange element of this. For UK brokers that's typically 1.5%, which is obscene and if you spend just $10,000 on a stock purchase, that's $150 in forex charges, when it really should be under $50.

[christianpfc]

Update on sending money to Cambodia. Contrary to my OP, you can send USD to a bank in Cambodia with transferwise.

details for my transfer on transferwise website:
You send 550 EUR
Total fees (included) 6.01 EUR
Amount we'll convert 543.99 EUR
Guaranteed rate (49 hours) 1.18145
XXX gets 642.70 USD
Should arrive by October 30th

The money arrived already on 27oct2020, but it was only 587.70 USD. That's exactly 55 USD less than what transferwise said, of which 10 USD "International Inward Transfer Fee" declared in the receiver's receipt and a further 45 USD disappeared somewhere along the way (most probably on the Cambodian bank side, Advanced Bank of Asia Limited).

Overall 550 EUR -> 587.70 USD corresponds to a rate of 1.07, which is 9% lower than xe.com 1.18. My worst money transfer ever in absolute loss of 55 USD (for highest relative loss of 17% see Brasil report).

https://transferwise.com/help/articl...outside-the-us

TransferWise supports sending USD to people outside of the US, but to do this we need to send your transfer via the SWIFT network.

Because SWIFT incurs additional costs, we will add a fee of 3.20 USD to your transfer to pay for this. We charge the same fee for payments to Hong Kong through CHATS system.

Your bank or other banks the money passes through on the way may also charge you a fee, so your recipient might get less. These fees tend to be around 25–50 USD, but there's no way for TransferWise to know what they'll be in advance.

Intransparent and expensive, I will never send money online to Cambodia again unless it's a matter of life or death.
I can only hope that immigrant workers in Thailand have better ways to transfer money to their home countries.

[goji]

Overall 550 EUR -> 587.70 USD corresponds to a rate of 1.07, which is 9% lower than xe.com 1.18. My worst money transfer ever in absolute loss of 55 USD (for highest relative loss of 17% see Brasil report).

1 Thank you for warning us.

2 Please query this with Transferwise.
(i) The Transferwise side of it is promoted as being fully transparent, which it has been in my experience.
(ii) Then the whole idea of it is the payment to the receiving bank is a domestic transfer in local currency, so it should not attract anything more than domestic banking charges. I presume Transferwise should confirm if this was a domestic payment to the receiving bank.