Transferring money from US bank account to Taiwan

Business Money
1

Prior to moving to Taiwan, I was working for a US company. I was a remote employee, meaning I had no office to go to, I worked from home with my computer over the Internet. When I decided to move to Taiwan, I talked with my manager and he agreed that there would be no problem with me keeping the same position. Since I did not have an office to go to anyway, there was little difference between me working from home in the US and me working from home in Taiwan. My paycheck is direct deposited into a US bank account.

What is the easiest way to get money out of my US account and into a Taiwanese bank account? I initially was hoping to use Paypal, with either a new account for my Taiwanese bank, or just add the Taiwanese bank to my existing US Paypal account. This way I could just Paypal money out of my US account to myself, then withdraw the money into a Taiwanese bank account. I was just doing some reading up on this strategy and I came across this post:

[You can withdraw $ from your PAY PAL account in Taiwan Now

However, the conclusion seemed to be that this strategy doesn’t work too well. The quote below sums it up nicely.

[quote=“Ben”]I just tried this, and yes, it works quite well, except that the rate they give you for exchange is piss-poor. About NT$0.5 less than what a bank would give you. So, this will only be worth it for small dollar amounts. Larger dollar amounts, and you get raped on the exchange rate.

I asked them if I had a US$ account, could I withdraw US$ to the US$ account in Taiwan, and they said no. I assume because if they offered that, you would basically bypass them for the exchange, and do it at your local bank, and they wouldn’t make anything except the small NT$35 transaction fee.[/quote]

Is there a better way to do this, or is PayPal (and thus terrible exchange rates) the only way. This thread seems to suggest that PayPal is a decent way to do this:

forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … &&start=10

If in fact PayPal is a good way, here is another question. Earlier when I was in PayPal trying to create a new account I ran accross some issues. Although I could select Taiwan as my country, NT was not listed as one of the available currencies. Also, my bank account here just seems to have an account number, there is no routing number/bank code etc to fill out PayPal’s form with.

I believe I have to sign up for an “international account”, but I don’t see that anywhere on PayPal. Even the Help page sends me back to the same sign in page when I click on “How do I sign up for a non-US account”. I can say I’m from Taiwan, but NT is not listed as a currency.

Can anyone shed any light on these PayPal issues for me? Thanks!!

2

If it was me, I would go for 2 approaches:

  1. Ask your company to Telegraphic Transfer your Pay into a US dollar account here at a TW bank. It’s pretty common and straight forward to hold a foreign currency account, and you can transfer funds from it to your NT account and withdraw it when you need to spend the money.

  2. Find out if you can TT funds using internet banking from the US. I have got a forex/investment account offshore that allows me to set up a TT in a matter of minutes. Key in the amount, the destination bank account number and address, and click submit.
    I believe that some banks can set up a pre approved TT similar to a standard reoccuring TT transaction so you once it is set up, you can enter the amount and date for transfer, and then you can do it with a few clicks.

The reason I make these suggestions is I once looked into paypal but the commision they scoop off each transfer far outweighs a normal TT or Forex transfer. Paypal is ok for buying stuff and passing some money around, but when you are the sender AND the recipient transferring a large amount, Paypal just doesn’t make sense.

HTH.

3

See here for setting up a Taiwan bank account in PayPal:
[forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … 099#626099](Which banks issues debit cards other than Chinatrust? - #7 by jlick

I would also not recommend PayPal as your transfer will be chiseled away at through poor exchange rates.

Wire Transfer is the best way for large amounts. ATM card is the best way for smaller amounts (though US banks usually limit you to around US$500 per day).

If anyone knows of a US Bank which offers this service, I’d love to know about it. It takes me about 1/2 hour , two phone calls, and a fax to get a wire transfer out of my current bank. I’m always wiring to the same account, so I’d be thrilled to be able to set it up once and then be able to do transfers on the bank web site from then on.

4

Couldn’t you just wire USD into a NTD account, i.e. without going via another USD account here? Obviously this assumes the local bank allows incoming TT from overseas and money will be exchanged based on the daily rate.

Usually those multi-currency accounts have certain conditions tied to it - HSBC requires a minumum of NTD150k and Citibank NTD250k in your accounts, else they charge you a fee, around NTD500 a month I think. So if you don’t need a USD account here for anything else it’s probably better not to bother with it at all.

Dunno if this applies to USD transfers into Taiwan, too, but be aware that there could be charges from intermediate banks when doing a TT (see here).

5

I have an HSBC account in England and an YuShan account here, and have had no real problems doing wire transfers. HSBC also saved the transfer details as a “template” (their language) so that they have all the bank information for next time. They also offer recurring transfers.

The fee was about 2% on the English side, and about 0.5% on the Taiwanese side.

I only do that when I need big chunks of money, though. Most of the time I just pull money straight out of my English HSBC account from an ATM.

6

So you’re able to use your home country ATM card at an ATM here and withdraw money? There must be some catch right, it couldn’t be THAT easy? Exchange rate? Even if I was limited to $500 dollar withdrawals per day, that would certainly suffice. Do you just use any ATM machine or is there a local branch of your bank here? I use Bank of America and I know there is a Bank of America in Taipei (I live in Kaohsiung), but when my wife called they gave her some line about it being for business customers only. Anyways, its too far away. I noticed that the ATM cards here have those little microchips/smartcards embedded in them. My Bank of America card does not. Before I go out and try it, does anyone know if that would be an issue?

Sorry for all the questions, just seems too good to be true. I’m not trying to transfer huge amounts of money into my Taiwanese account or to use as cash. Just a few hundred here and a few hundred there as needed.

7

Check with your home bank whether they have extra charges for using foreign ATMs and whether they take a premium on the exchange rate. Good banks charge no more than 1% premium and no ATM fee. Bad banks can charge 2-4% premium and slap a fee on top of that.

Otherwise, if your ATM card has a Plus or Cirrus logo on the back then you should be able to use most banks’ ATMs here. Look for ATMs with the Plus or Cirrus logos on them.

8

Thanks for the info. I’m going to call Bank of America tonite when their call center is open and ask them about using foreign ATMs and about wire transfers. On the Bank of America website it appears you can only wire transfer between multiple Bank of America accounts that you have. In the FAQ it says you must visit a Bank of America branch office to wire internationally. However, I imagine there must be some way I can do it over the phone.

9

My HSBC cards have IC chips on them just like the Taiwanese cards - they changed over to them a couple years back. I pay a total of about 1.7% - call it a charge or an exchange premium, either way it’s the same.

Some ATMs work, some don’t. Mostly I use the Chinabank ones at 7-11.

10

I would strongly recommend NOT using BofA. They are just not set up to serve expats. BofA just gave us the runaround re: wiring money out to Asia and we’ve since decided to switch to Wells Fargo, which has service specifically targetted at expats. See here:

wellsfargo.com/inatl/consum … al_banking

11

I called Bank of America last night to ask them about using ATM’s here and about wire transfers. I was ready to get the runaround after reading your post Opihiman. I guess you could say I’m not too much better off after having made this call.

The woman told me I could use any ATM with the Visa logo on it and said that I would be subjected to the same ATM fees as using another Bank’s ATM - 1 to 5$ or so. I’m a little skeptical at this because this would involve a conversion of USD to NT, which would probably have some additional charge. I guess I could go to a bank which offers USD accounts and try withdrawing USD there to avoid the conversion. (I do have a USD account here as well as an NT account) She was able to look up and tell me that there was 110 or so ATMs in Taiwan with the Visa logo on it, but she could not break down that number by city, or give me the location of any in Kaohsiung. However my wife says she has seen them before. I might just try going to one and withdrawing a few thousand NT, figure out what the conversion to USD would be, and then look up online how much I actually get charged to figure out how much I get charged in penalties.

As far as wiring money to my Taiwanese bank account, I see now that that is possible with my online banking. I need a routing number and account number to do it, however, but the only thing I have from my bank here is an account number, and some other number that appears to be the initials of the bank (ICBC) + TW for Taiwan + PP (not sure what that’s for)) + 3 digits (possibly a branch number). The whole thing is 11 digits/characters, so its definately not the required 9-digit routing number I need for wire transfers on the Bank of America site. However, my wife tells me that this is what they told her when she asked them for a routing number. The lady I was talking to said I could ONLY do wire transfers by visiting a local branch of Bank of America or through online banking, I could not have a BoA representative do it for me over the phone. So, I guess I really need to figure out the routing number for my bank. Has anyone else encountered this situation?

12

My wife just called up our bank to ask for a 9-digit routing number. He was pretty certain that 9-digit routing numbers are a US banking thing, and that international banks use the number described in my previous post. Since Bank of America online banking requires a 9 digit number, it looks like its not possible to do the wire from their online banking. I’d have to visit a local branch (there are none here) or do it over the phone. However, BoA customer service has already told me that I can’t do a wire over the phone. So it looks like I’m shit out of luck. I’ll have to try withdrawing from an ATM and see what kind of fees I get hit with or switch to a different bank.