(Solved) Can someone help me with this international money transfer? (France=> Taiwan)

Hello
My chinese is very poor and I have never done anything like this, so if someone could help me to fill this international money transfer form, I would be very grateful…
If this is not the right forum or if you know a place where it would be better to ask, please redirect me

background: I’m going to be an exchange student in Taida in september, I am currently in Taiwan on the 90 days visa exempt, I will do my resident visa and ARC as soon as I get the Taida acceptance letter ( very soon, they said early July)

I just opened a chunghwa saving accounts, and I want to transfer about 3500 euros to it from my bank in France, Credit Cooperatif.

This is the form my french bank gave me:
i.imgur.com/axU7sUv.png

This is the information card to international transfer that Chunghwa gave me:
i.imgur.com/L6zGWmH.jpg

This is my Chunghwa saving account card, with the numbers and name blanked out:
i.imgur.com/OCFme50.jpg?1

I have to fill the form and send it back to my french bank.
MONTANT: is the money amount ( about 3500 euros, that’s about 140.000 TWD )
DEVISE: is currency (I will use euros)
CLIENT DONNEUR d’ORDRE: This I know how to fill, it’s my name and french account numbers
BANQUE DU BENEFICIAIRE: When I look at the info card Chunghwa gave me, I think it’s obvious that NAME is BANK SINOPAC , and BIC CODE (BIC CODE is apparently the same thing as SWIFT CODE) is: SINOTWTP
I’m not sure about the ADDRESS field tho.Should I put the address of the chunghwa post I went to? ( near Shida)

Then in the “Beneficiary” part, I am lost.
According to the ChungHwa information card, I should put “Chunghwa post” in the “name” field, and then they give me 2 big numbers.
But the form ask for first name +last name/ full adress/ IBAN number which I would assume are MY name, address, and bank number in Taiwan… Is that right?

“Motif du paiement” means “reason for payment” so it’s easy to fill

I assume I can ignore the 3rd part of the CH card “correspondent/intermediary Bank” ?

Sorry for bothering you with such boring stuff but I need to make sure this goes well, otherwise Ill have to couchsurf for the whole year …/

I just replied another thread with similar situation.

forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 8&t=132440

I am not sure if you can write a personal check from your French bank, and deposit into your Taiwan bank account. I did that with my US bank to Taiwan bank.

You opened a bank account with just a landing visa? :ponder:

Technically you can, I think you are supposed to go to the national immigration agency and get a number of some kind that allows you to open a bank account.

[quote]Technically you can, I think you are supposed to go to the national immigration agency and get a number of some kind that allows you to open a bank account.
[/quote]
Why “technically”?
All I had to do was ask for an ID number thingie at the immigration agency and that was all, why, can it be a problem?

This SWIFT code is for SINOPAC HQ, the address is here: swift-code.com/taiwan/swift- … otwtp.html

Yes, you are right. Your name, address and bank account number. Update: But for the name you need to preceed it with “Chunghwa Post”, so you enter “Chungwha Post-trak” as name. Your account number needs to be preceeded with “700”, so the result ist “700youraccountnumber”. Their instructions give you examples for this.

The image you posted has an intemediary bank for USD payments only. You can ignore it and let the bank figure it out or you fill out the information if you worry about your bank screwing you on fees. You can find SINOPACs intermediary for EUR (Deutsche Bank) here: mma.sinopac.com/MMA7txt/channel … 201112.pdf (page 4)

Thank you so much ma3xiu1 it all makes sense now! soon I will be able to eat!

I’m having similar problems at the moment. I took all the information the Post Office told me to give my currency exchanger and I think it confused them - said it wasn’t a Taiwanese bank (the numbers I gave them are right, I think they got confused by the intermediary bank)

Why do I need an intermediary bank anyway? I’m worried I’m going to get bent over by exchange rates if I’m going to exchange to USD and then to NTD. Is it just Chunghwa Post that needs this? Maybe it would be easier to just open a bank account elsewhere.

The post office in Taiwan does not offer foreign currency accounts. They are only authorized to deal with Taiwan dollars. They are probably not part of SWIFT either. So for dealing with foreign currency, they need a partner bank, which is why this is all a bit complicated.

The reason to open an account there is that they are backed by the government, often offer good savings rates and obviously have the best branch network. If you need foreign currency transfers and the bank in your home country does not want to deal, try to open an account at a full local bank like Mega, Fubon, HSBC, etc. You can exchange your money at that bank (online) and transfer the TWD to your post office account, if you want to keep it.

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I see. It seems really easy for something to go wrong. It also has to go through Sinopac before eventually reaching my account. What I don’t get is why you can’t just send NTD through a currency exchange company. They told me it had to be EUR/USD/CNY/HKD. The reason I’m doing it like this is if I just take it directly out of my bank account back home I lose like 12% of my money.

Wait, I think I saw in another thread you can’t even open an account with any other bank without an ARC?

Because TWD is not a 24/7 freely convertible currency. Offshore banks can not sell their TWD outside of Taiwan banking hours, which is a risk for them (you can google the details, it comes up every couple of years and is also one of the reasons Paypal had a hard time here).

I heard that too, because of money laundering rules. Don’t know any concrete details though, sorry.

Edit: If you do not need a lot of TWD, just a bit of cash to keep you going, maybe just use a debit card from the bank in your home country and take cash out of the ATMs here?

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What is Western Union’s cut?