Chile Forum

I've searched the forum for the words remittance, foreign exchange, fx, money transfer, xe, oanda, repatriate - to find out if anyone else has had some experience transferring funds from Chile back to their home country. I've seen a lot of posts for transferring to Chile but not the reverse.

I recently sent funds from my account here in Chile back to my account in the US and frankly feel a little violated by the commission I got charged (around 14%). I haven't used any transfer houses like Western Union, etc.; instead I did it the old fashioned way: I went to the bank, talked to the personal banker, filled in some forms, took it to the teller, they stamped and transferred the funds. It wasn't a very large sum, just a test to make sure it worked. It took nearly three weeks for the funds to arrive and cost a lot more than I thought it should have.

I'm looking for anyone else's experience and recommondations of how to send funds out of Chile in a cost and time efficient way.

What bank did you use?

14% and three weeks is a lot.

Wires are not cheap, but we have never been charged that.

Santander to Citibank. I figured mutlinational banks would be efficient at this but apparently not. When I first wired money from the US to Chile it took about 15 days. It's now faster. I had expected the same to be true in reverse and I expect it to go faster next time. But the fee seemed pretty high.

we recently transferred money back home, with banco de chile. we were charged 0.2% (yes, I have triple checked that number) and it took less than 36 hrs for the money to be in my account back home. 1 simple form to fill out, and a bit of messing around at the bank (about an hr of me waiting, watching the teller etc punch details into the 'puter), sign the check and that's that.

I think I figured out your problem.

How much did you wire?

I just sent a wire for around $3,500 this morning out of the country. The charge came to $85 U.S. or so, or around 2% plus a crappy exchange rate of about 513 to the dollar (under 5% cost to wire). My account executive told me that there is a minimum and max charge. So, say you are sending like $100, that would be 85% charge.

I would also like to know if anyone has had any success using a method apart from a bank, cheaply. I asked someone at BCI what it would cost me and they told me a flat fee plus and % plus the exchange rate they shave off...so I don't think it'll be too cost effective. Any websites or services that anyone has used? Particularly to the US?

I send ScotiaBank Chile cheques to my Canadian BOM account by mail, it takes 31 days on arrival and I get that day’s bank exchange rate. This has been the cheapest though not fastest way to send out money, of course never more than $9999 CD equivalent, for that I pay 2% and a wire fee.

Boy, 30 days is blowing in the exchange rate winds a bit too long for my taste.

It's a Chilean personal cheque and the Canadian dollar is not the US dollar it mainly moves up lately and it’s only under 10k, a couple of points never hurts either way, I get around all fees that way. I do get overnight service if i want to pay for it.

Has anyone done this with banco estado?
I'm wondering how bad I'll get fee'd and how long it will take.

I've found my U.S. account is running really low but my Chilean account is doing fine.

I was really hoping there was an easier way, too bad paypal doesn't work with the CLP.