My bank in the U.S. won't let me wire money to Taiwan!

Business Money
21

[quote=“X3M”]Don’t USA have internet banking?
-Checks went out of style back in the 80s back in Europe.

Change bank right away, and find one where you can do your transactions on internet, and not by fax!!!???[/quote]
Actually, BB&T Bank does have a website (http://www.bbt.com), and I can log in with a username and password, but after I log in, the only thing I can do is see my current balance and see a list of recent transactions. It’s impossible to transfer money online, except to another account of BB&T Bank which is also in exactly the same name. When I go to the BB&T website and log in and then click on “Transfer Money”, I get a very simple online form which only asks for the account number of the originating bank and the account number of the receiving bank and the amount of money to be transfered. The website states that both accounts must be in exactly the same name and both accounts must be at BB&T Bank (but not necessarily at the same branch).

In my opinion, their online money transfer form is pretty useless because why would anyone have two accounts at the same bank both in the same name? I guess it’s for people who have both a savings account and a checking account at the same bank. But there’s no advantage of having both a savings account and a checking account because they both give zero interest.

This is their online form for transferring money, as long as both accounts are at BB&T Bank, and as long as both accounts are in exactly the same name:

https://online.bbandt.com/online/servlet/efsonline/trans-from.html

(But that website might not work if you don’t have a username and password.)

22

All of the above are excellent reasons to open an account with a “small town” attitude. Before you go abroad, open an account and get to know the bank manager. Make sure they know who you are and what you plan to do. I have absolutely no problems rolling a CD, wiring funds to and from, atm cards and credit cards. A simple phone call at our midnight gets me the bank manager, who knows who I am, knows my voice and is able to help without hassle.

EDIT: You might also check with xoom.com. I saw this advertised on CNN the other day. I did a quick look and the fees look to be about the same as a bank transfer. I also noted that they do international wires from bank to bank and even allow personal pick-up in some countries (not Taiwan) I have no idea about their security protocols, etc but it may be worth checking into.

23

As a matter of fact, my bank account is in the Middletown, Maryland branch of BB&T Bank. Middletown, Maryland has a population of only 2856, and my bank has a total of only 5 employees (including the manager). All of the 5 employees of my bank know me on a first name basis, and every August when I go back to the U.S., I always visit Middletown and go in to my bank and say hello to all of the 5 employees there. They all know me and they even know my wife and daughter, even though they only see me once a year.

But even though they treat me like a personal friend every time I send a fax to them, when it comes to their rules, they are extremely stubborn. But they have to be because I’m sure they would be fired if they broke the rules.

By the way, my Filipino maid told me about Xoom a few years ago. Like you said, unfortunately, Xoom can’t be used for sending money to Taiwan. (But money can be sent to about 30 other countries.) But another problem is that the maximum amount that can be sent via Xoom is only US$2500. And the fee is extremely high compared to the fee for wiring money bank to bank. The fee that Xoom charges depends on the receiving country, but for most countries, the fee is 5%. For example, to send $2500 to the US, Canada, Britain, or Australia, the fee is $126! That’s a ridiculously high fee because it’s about twice as much as the fee for wiring money bank to bank from the U.S. to Taiwan. In fact, the Xoom fee is even much higher than Paypal charges for transferring money. (Paypal charges 3.9%.)

24

Small-town banks in the US are also a pain because they are not accustomed to dealing with international transactions or other currencies. Whenever I have had to deal with something internationally in the past, the employees at my old bank (a local bank in my hometown of 2000 people) had no idea what procedure was and they had to ask around before they could figure out what to do. I find the bigger banks (like HSBC) much more able to handle these kinds of matters.

25

mmmm. My money would be gone in less than 60 seconds. I would take it to a bank that sees me as “profit” and is willing to work with me. They are there and they compete because they can offer personalized service.

26

They’re just trying to protect MN (and themselves) from fraud. A voice on the phone on an international call might be him, or it might be some dirtbag trying to steal every cent out of his account. It’s safer for them to just say “no”.

Dude, get the checks, write one to your father (or whoever), and get that person to wire the money. It may not be fast, but at least it’s less than the six weeks to two months that the other two ways seem to involve.

27

That would still take more than a month. My bank told me that it would take two weeks from the time they ordered a book of blank checks until the time the checks arrived at the bank. Then they would send me checks to me by regular Airmail, which would take two more weeks. Then I would mail a check back to my father by Express Mail, which would take 3 days. Then my father can’t wire the money to me until the check clears, which takes at least one week because all U.S. checks must go through the national Automated Clearing House (ACH), which is a very slow process. So the total amount that it would take until I get my money would be 5 weeks and 3 days.

If the amount of money that my father already has in his bank account is more than the amount of money that he wants to wire, then he might be able to wire the money before the check clears (because then if the check bounces, the bank can deduct the money from his bank account). So then it would only take 4 weeks and 3 days. But I’m sure that my father has less money in his bank account than the amount of money that I want to wire to Taiwan because my father keeps 90% of his money invested in mutual funds and bonds. All he keeps in his bank account is the money from his social security checks. I want to wire more than US$20,000. I’m sure that’s much more than my father currently has in his bank account, which means my father couldn’t wire the money until after the check clears.

Now my plan is to first transfer the money to a mutual fund company that I already have an account at (T. Rowe Price). At the T. Rowe Price website, after I log in, I can easily transfer money online between my T. Rowe Price account and any other bank in which I have set up a “link”. In order to set up a link, all I have to do is fill out a form called the “Shareholder Services Form,” get my signature guaranteed at the U.S. de-facto embassy in Taipei, and then fax the form in to T. Rowe Price. As a matter of fact, I already set up a link between my T. Rowe Price account and my BB&T account about a week ago. But T. Rowe Price has a rule that you have to wait two weeks (15 calendar days) between the time when you link an account until the time you can do any transactions which involve that account. So now I have to wait one more week until I can transfer my money from BB&T to T. Rowe Price.

Then after my money is transferred from BB&T to T. Rowe Price, then I still have to transfer it from T. Rowe Price to Taiwan. I called T. Rowe Price last night, and they told me that they will let me transfer money from my T. Rowe Price account to any bank in Taiwan that is in the SWIFT network and has a SWIFT code. (See here for more information about the SWIFT network.) So all I have to do now is get my bank in Taiwan (which is the “Taiwan Bank”) linked to my T. Rowe Price account.

I’ll keep everyone posted about my progress.

28

Last night (Friday, March 14), I finally got my money transferred from my bank account at BB&T Bank to my mutual fund account at T. Rowe Price! (I couldn’t have done it any earlier because I had to wait two weeks from the time I set up the “link” between the two accounts until the time when I could transfer money in either direction.) Now all I have to do is transfer my money from my mutual fund account to my bank account here in Taiwan.

However, I found out that the person at T. Rowe Price who told me on Monday that money from T. Rowe Price can be transferred to any bank in Taiwan was wrong! I called T. Rowe Price last night to confirm this, and they told me that actually, I can only transfer money to a bank which has a branch in the U.S. or has an affiliation with a bank in the U.S. My bank account is at the Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), and fortunately, they have an affiliation with the Bank of New York, so now I should be able to transfer my money from T. Rowe Price to the Bank of Taiwan via the Bank of New York.

But T. Rowe Price has a rule that any money transferred into an account can’t be moved out of the account until two weeks later. So I won’t be able to transfer the money from T. Rowe Price to the Bank of Taiwan (via the Bank of New York) until Friday, March 28.

This has been an extremely difficult process just to get access to my own money! I’ll keep everyone posted when I am finally successful to get the money into Taiwan.

29

Update: Last week, T. Rowe Price (my mutual fund company) told me that in order to transfer my money to Taiwan, I need to download a form, fill it out, get my signature guaranteed, and then mail the form back to T. Rowe Price. I asked them where I could get my signature guaranteed. They said at any branch of an American bank (such as Citibank) or at any American embassy. So then I planned to go to the Gaoxiong branch of the de-facto American embassy, but then a few days ago, I found out that the de-facto American Embassy would be in Taizhong this morning, at the National Taizhong Library (they go there about once a month). So since Taizhong is much closer to me than Gaoxiong, I went to Taizhong this morning.

I got there at exactly 10:30 am, which is right when they opened, but there was already a long line of people who had been waiting since 9:00, so I had to wait more than two hours until they finally called my number, even though they didn’t take a lunch break.

They finally called my number at almost 1:00, and then as soon as I told them I wanted to get a signature guarantee, they said “I’m sorry. We don’t do that. We can notarize your signature, but we can’t guarantee your signature.” (I didn’t ask what the difference was, but I think the difference is that notarizing my signature guarantees that I am the person who I say I am, whereas guaranteeing my signature also guarantees the contents of the form that I signed.)

Then I said “Well, then where can I get my signature guaranteed?” They said “You can only get that done at a bank which is a member of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). Actually, there is absolutely nowhere at all in this country (Taiwan) where you can get your signature guaranteed. As far as I know, the closest places where you can get that done are either Guam or Australia.”

Then I said “What about if I went to a U.S. embassy in another country, like in Hong Kong or Japan or the Philippines?”

They said “No. You can not get a signature guarantee at any U.S. embassy. You can only get it done at a bank. And not just any bank. It must be a bank which is a member of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC).”

Then I left the de-facto American embassy and took a taxi to Citibank because T. Rowe Price (my mutual fund company, where my money is now) told me that I could get my signature guaranteed at a U.S. embassy or at a branch of a U.S. bank. They were definitely wrong about being able to do it at a U.S. embassy, so I wanted to see if I could do it at a U.S. bank. (And it would be a lot cheaper than flying to Guam.)

So I went to Citibank and I asked the girl at the information desk if I could get a signature guarantee. I didn’t know the correct Chinese word for “signature guarantee”, so I just literally translated it as qian1 ming2 bao3 zheng4 (簽名保證). The girl understood what I meant, but she told the correct word is actually qian1 ming2 ren4 zheng4 (簽名認證). Then she said “No, we can not do that, and as a matter of fact, you can’t do that at any bank in Taiwan. But you can do it at the courthouse.”

So then I took a taxi to the main courthouse of Taizhong City and I was directed to an office called the “Notary Public Office” (公證處). So then I figured out that 簽名認證 (the word that the girl at Citibank told me) really means “notarized signature”, not “guaranteed signature”! I insisted to the people at the Notary Public Office that I really wanted a guaranteed signature, NOT a notarized signature, but they told that in Taiwan, there is no such thing as a guaranteed signature!

So I went ahead and got my signature notarized, but not guaranteed. Now I’m going to mail the form in to T. Rowe Price and hope for the best. If T. Rowe Price says that they won’t accept my form because the signature isn’t guaranteed, then I’ll just say “The hell with it!” and I’ll have to just leave all of my money in a mutual fund at T. Rowe Price. I really don’t want to have to go to Guam!

Sorry that this post is a little long-winded. It’s been a long day.

30

Wow. And I thought Bank of China was bad. My commisherationsh. Just to rub it in, I can send money using internet banking from Hong Kong to HSBC London using my Dopod whilst on the bog having a fag. At least I have done. If I ever make some more money I’ll try it again. But I do remember having to be physically present in HK to set it all up. On the other hand, “banks” in China don’t take company cheques if they have been folded and HSBC Shanghai sucks in ways that I never thought possible. They are taking this “world’s local bank” thing to extremes. Hey, in China, you don’t want a “local” bank.

31

Update: I mailed the Shareholder Services Form to T. Rowe Price (my mutual fund company) on Thursday, March 20, and they finally received it the day before yesterday (Monday, March 31). (I sent it by regular mail, not Express Mail.) However, T. Rowe Price still refuses to transfer my money to Taiwan because I didn’t get a Medallion Signature Guarantee (MSG).

On Monday night (the day before yesterday), I called T. Rowe Price and talked to a guy who is an expert about Medallion Signature Guarantees (MSG’s). He told me that:

  1. It is absolutely impossible to get an MSG anywhere in the world except in the U.S. and Canada. (So the Taiwanese woman at the AIT (the de-facto American embassy) was right about Guam, but she was wrong about Australia.)

  2. You can only get an MSG at a financial institution (a bank, a credit union, a mutual fund company, or a stock broker).

  3. You can not get an MSG at any embassy in the world.

  4. You can not get an MSG at an overseas branch of an American bank (such as Taiwan branches of Citibank, for example).

  5. In order to get an MSG, you must already have an account at the financial institution in which you want to get the MSG. So I couldn’t just fly to Guam, hop off the plane, walk into a bank, and say “I’d like to get a Medallion Signature Guarantee” unless I already had an account at that particular bank.

  6. Most banks have rules about how long you have to have an account before you can get an MSG. So I couldn’t just open up a bank account one day and ask for an MSG the very next day. But the length of time that I have to wait between opening up an account and being able to get an MSG depends on the bank. (However, this is the only rule which depends on the bank. Rules #1 to #4 above are the same for all banks.)

  7. An MSG is really just a stamp which is in green ink. The stamp must say the acronym “STAMP”, which stands for “Securities Transfer Association Medallion Program”. Then under the acronym STAMP, there is a long barcode which contains several check-sum digits. The way that they can tell whether or not the MSG stamp is genuine or counterfeit is to use a secret algorithm to check the check-sum digits which are in the barcode.

After I talked to the MSG expert, I started to plan a trip to go to Guam to get the Medallion Signature Guarantee. The first thing I did was do a Google search for the largest bank in Guam. I found out that it is the Bank of Guam, which has 23 branches throughout Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Then I wrote an e-mail to the Bank of Guam on Monday night and asked them if I could open up an account online. They wrote back yesterday morning (Tuesday) and they told me no, I could not open up an account online. I had to be there in person in the branch in which I wanted to open the account at. Also, I had to show two forms of photo ID and proof that I am a permanent resident of Guam, such as a Guam driver’s license or a Guam ID card.

I was really shocked when I found out that the Bank of Guam won’t let me open an account unless I can show proof that I am a permanent resident of Guam! So then I did a Google search to find out how to get a Guam ID card. Then I found out that in order to get a Guam ID card, you have to have documents which prove that you have lived at a fixed address in Guam for the last 90 days!

Also, I found out that a flight ticket to Guam costs the same price as a ticket to California, so maybe in California, I could find a bank that doesn’t require proof of residence. Here are the prices for the cheapest round trip tickets to these destinations, departing next Monday (April 7) and returning next Wednesday (April 9):

Guam: 16,800 NT (Continental Airlines, via Hong Kong)
Saipan: 19,600 NT (Continental Airlines, via Hong Kong and Guam)
Honolulu, Hawaii: 17,800 NT (Delta Airlines, direct flight)
San Francisco, California: 16,800 NT (United Airlines, direct flight)
Los Angeles, California: 16,300 NT (Malaysia Airlines, direct flight)
Seattle, Washington: 16,800 NT (United Airlines, via San Francisco)

This is becoming a nightmare! Maybe I’ll just have to wait until August because I plan to visit my parents in August, so I could get the Medallion Signature Guarantee then. (My parents are in Maryland.) But the the U.S. dollar is depreciating rapidly, at the rate of about 1% per day, so the longer it takes to get my money transferred to Taiwan, the more money I will lose.

32

Mark -
Quite an amazing thread. I thought my probs with “CitiBank” were bad when I got here 4 yrs ago…Man…you unfortunately are taking the cake.

But…you are posting some darn good info for the rest of us.

RT w/MalayAir @ NT$16,000…hmmmmm…

33

I am sorry to hear that you have such a hard time transferring money from US to Taiwan.

I have a Bank of American account. It also only allows wire transfer in person in a local branch. You can set up a telephone wire transfer for regular use. However, you have to set it up in personal, of course…

Luckily, I have ETrade accounts (both brokerage and bank accounts). The bank account allows wire transfer with a fax instruction; the amount can be more than $10,000. The brokerage account is even better. It has an online form to send the instruction, but the amount should be less than $10,000, or you will encounter long delay and ID verification, etc. You can transfer the money between different ETrade accounts. Note: the names of the source and target accounts for the international wire transfer needs to be the same.

ETrade has the linking functionalities for your other bank accounts, so you can do inter-bank transfer.

34

My credit union in the U.S. allowed me to set up an external wire transfer authorization to any bank in the U.S. without having to go back to the U.S. I handled the complete sign up from here in Taiwan and simply go online now and authorize transfers. You’re limited to one transfer a week and the maximum amount is $5,000 but the transactions are completely free so you can transfer up to $20K a month with no overhead other than a few minutes’ time.

My understanding is all NCUA credit unions offer this free “external transfer” service. I actually had two credit union accounts in different states and wanted to close out one account. My original credit union gave me a complicated, notarized signature set of instructions including various fees which I was about to embark on when I found out about external transfers from my second credit union’s website. When signing up for the “transfer out” function on the NCUA external transfers website I found out I could name any NCUA credit union account as the source account. I subsequently transferred all my funds from the first account to the second without paying a dime or having to go to the U.S.

I’ve never transferred my own funds to Taiwan – only go the opposite direction – but it would be no more difficult than authorizing a transfer while here in Taiwan to a family member’s account and then having them wire the money to you.

I realize the above doesn’t solve your immediate problem but thought the above information might be useful for the future.

35

Netuser,

Thanks a lot for telling me about ETrade. I’ll definitely look into it and I’ll see if I can open up an account online.

Spook,

Thanks for telling me about being able to easily transfer between credit unions in the U.S. But would it be just as easy to transfer money from a credit union in the U.S. to a bank in Taiwan?

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that U.S. credit unions have tight restrictions on who can open an account. For example, some credit unions are only for employees of a certain large company (like Walmart, for example), and other credit unions are only for members of certain trade unions, while others are only for government employees, etc. So how could I join a credit union if I live and work in Taiwan?

36

[quote=“Mark Nagel”]Netuser,

Thanks a lot for telling me about ETrade. I’ll definitely look into it and I’ll see if I can open up an account online.

Spook,

Thanks for telling me about being able to easily transfer between credit unions in the U.S. But would it be just as easy to transfer money from a credit union in the U.S. to a bank in Taiwan?

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that U.S. credit unions have tight restrictions on who can open an account. For example, some credit unions are only for employees of a certain large company (like Walmart, for example), and other credit unions are only for members of certain trade unions, while others are only for government employees, etc. So how could I join a credit union if I live and work in Taiwan?[/quote]

I actually did transfer about $35K to Taiwan from my first credit union back in 2005 when I was buying some property, I recall now. I had to FedEx an authorization I had notarized at AIT along with a photocopy of my passport. The external transfer system I describe above only wires to banks and credit unions in the U.S. though but it should be simple and convenient to wire money to a family member’s account and then have them wire the money to you.

You would have to go to the U.S. initially to open an account but the membership requirements can generally be met simply by having a mailing address in the credit union’s membership area. For example, a friend or family member’s address. I met the requirement by buying property in the membership area. I now have a debit card and credit card with my current credit union and am able to do every personal banking function I need online. Rates are good too.