I’m planning to leave Taiwan to go home and not return to work in Taiwan in the future. I need to take my money with me when I leave. It’ll probably be over 300,000 NTD by the time July comes around. So my question is would it be more cost-effective to do a wire transfer through Esun bank or take out cash and exchange it at TPE airport?
Any other advice is also welcome.
Wire the money. Off the top of my head, the charges will be under NT$1000 on this end (don’t know on your country’s bank end).
You don’t want to be carrying roughly U$10,000 in cash with you (NT$300,000), as that may be the top limit for most countries before you have to declare.
Good luck!
I think you should wire the bulk of it before closing your accounts then change whatever you have left into your home currency before leaving, either at a local bank or at the airport (I remember the exchange rate at Taoyuan airport being normal rather than extortionate like most airports, but not sure whether that’s still the case).
I guess you’ll have your apartment deposit and stuff in the final days, but you obviously don’t want to take TWD out of the country with you because it’ll be a pain/expensive/impossible to change.
Whatever you do (wire money directly is what I’d recommend), don’t exchange money at Airports!! Those are businesses that make profit of exchanging and they will give you the worst rates you can find anywhere in the world!
Generally true elsewhere in the world, but it wasn’t previously true at Taoyuan airport. I think they use the BOT rate there, or something very close to it, unless something has changed in the last couple of years.
(I should note that I’m referring specifically to major currencies here - USD, GBP, EUR, CNY, JPY, and so on. OP didn’t say where “home” is, but Bank of Taiwan rates tend to be pretty poor if you’re trying to exchange PHP, THB, VND, or whatever.)
from my experience with similar amounts. the SWIFT fees for ~10K USD will be around 70-80 USD. Personally i would not travel with that much cash and would do a wire transfer.
If you dont have a bank account overseas that can accept the funds, i would exchange the money in advance, and not at the airport. its a big sum, and the last thing you want is the teller at the airport telling you he is short on cash, or that he is out of 100 bills and you are getting it in 50s or 20s.
Forgot to specify. I’m going home to the states so it will be NTD to USD. I don’t feel like carrying a bunch of cash with me. I had done it with $7,000 in cash before because I had no other choice then but with $10,000+ I’m iffy about it.
Another option (if it’s still available - I haven’t used it in years) is to buy USD traveler’s cheques and carry them with you. I have been able to get American Express cheques at Cathay and China Trust. They were available in amounts of USD1,000 and maybe (I don’t recall clearly) USD10,000, so 10,000 would be easy to carry. This proved to be less expensive than a wire transfer.
I found Airport rates in Taiwan to be decent compared to cash rates in EU
Anyone use ESun for the pay pal link? Was thinking was easy to set up?
Yeah, that’s what I was saying too.
As another exception to the don’t-change-money-at-airports rule, BKK has a couple of money exchangers with decent rates as well, in the basement near the airport train platforms. (And a lot of money exchangers with terrible rates.)
The English on that sign is kind of misleading, no?
I thought TWD and CNY above those amounts aren’t allowed to be taken out even with declaration?
