I recently did my first international transfer from my bank in Europe to my new account at MegaBank in Taiwan. However, I was surprised to learn that when I sent around NT$35000 it followed with a whopping NT$928 transaction fee based on the following provided specification:
International bank transfer: NT$114
Receiving bank fee: NT$814
Questions:
Is this a normal fee at banks in Taiwan or in general when conducting international bank transfers?
Is it possible to reduce the transfer fee in any way by either changing bank in Taiwan or configure the currency accounts in any way?
Note:
I have my account at a bank that currently do not have a branch in Taiwan. The reason why I need to do transfers and not just do ATM withdrawals is because my card got cancelled and I need to be able to access my funds in Taiwan somehow.
Was there a correspondent bank involved that charged the fee? Your European bank probably did not send the money directly but via Deutsche Bank or similar, who charge a fee.
I was going to suggest that too. Was the “international bank transfer” fee charged on the Taiwanese or European end?
For reference, the last time I transferred a similar amount (US$1500) to myself using TransferWise, the fees at Mega Bank were as follows:
TransferWise fee: US$4.25
Mega Bank incoming transfer fee (including intermediary fee): US$18.16
So your fee of NT$814 seems a bit higher than what I paid for a larger amount. It’s odd that you quote the fees in TWD - did you transfer directly into a TWD account or use a multicurrency one? That might make a difference.
Also, some of the fees, in particular the intermediary bank fee, are often fixed, at least within a certain range. So your relative fee would probably be decreased by doing larger but less frequent transfers.