Best way to transfer money from UK pounds to dollars?

April 18, 2015 6:52 AM

This has been asked before, but not for a long time so I think it may have changed. I have money in a UK bank account I would like to transfer (in the most cost-effective way) to my US bank account. What's the best and cheapest way to do this? Thanks!
posted by EtTuHealy to Work & Money (7 answers total)

My vote is for XETrade. I've transferred large sums of money multiple times the reverse direction (I went to school in the UK, so I transferred money from the US to the UK), and that was the best that I found. It only works if you're transferring between bank accounts in both countries (so you either need a bank account in both, or you need to be sending to someone else with a bank account). It arrives fairly quickly in my experience (a week?), and they take less of a cut than others than I looked at. I have always found it to go smoothly.
posted by ClaireBear at 7:15 AM on April 18, 2015 [8 favorites]

Send cheques to someone you trust in the US to deposit them into your American account on your behalf. Otherwise you pay a fee for each and every transfer which adds up if you are doing it monthly.
posted by srboisvert at 8:35 AM on April 18, 2015

Transferwise. I was looking for a solution for this for a long time and finally settled on this for ease of use, speed, and most importantly, really low fees.
posted by rubyrudy at 9:01 AM on April 18, 2015

CurrencyFair will get you the best rate, no doubt about it.
posted by signondiego at 5:06 PM on April 18, 2015

Seconding Transferwise. I live in the UK but am American, and frequently shuffle money around between my US and UK accts., and Transferwise has worked well for me. You can also use a company called Xoom, but something about them feels weird to me (although I have used them without issue, but it just feels sketchy somehow).

In a pinch, I've used PayPal, but then of course you subject yourself to their fees and remarkably terrible interface and customer service.
posted by still bill at 6:19 AM on April 19, 2015

Depending on the amount of money, and on your UK bank's ATM fees, I'd withdraw cash from the UK account with an American ATM and then deposit the dollars into your American account. Some banks waive foreign ATM fees altogether so there'd be no transaction cost at all.
posted by Yellow Silver Maple at 10:39 AM on April 19, 2015

Cheques as already mentioned are the all-out cheapest way to do this. The downside is that it can take weeks to get them cleared.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 6:13 PM on April 19, 2015