MoneyTransfer.com.au: International Money Transfer Guide in Australia

What is a money transfer?

A money transfer in the context of moneytransfer.com.au is money transferred internationally, across borders, and across currencies. If you transfer money abroad with a bank, the fees that will be incurred are not just the wire fees ($20-$30 likely), but also the cost of exchange to a different currency.

When you send money to a bank account overseas which is set up in a different currency than AUD, you pay anywhere between 1.5%-3% on that exchange alone.

In Australia, there is a myriad of international money transfer services meant to help prospective customers circumvent the banking system and essentially, paying less for money transfers.

On MoneyTransfer.com.au, we help our readers understand what are their options to send money overseas based on destination/currency while supplying supplementary background about the money transfer industry as a whole and how things work (how does the process go, what kind of regulation / protection there is, how not to fall into money transfer scams and so forth).

Transferring Money Internationally for Cheap?

A key aspect of money transfers is the price. Money transfer fees are composed of multiple elements and aren’t always clear to the user, but they are expensive to an unnecessary extent, in our view, when you use traditional banking. The main intent behind using an alternative money transfer company or service is to save up on costs and get your money transferred from point A to point B without hassle, for cheap.

To know whether a money transfer is too expensive you would have to break down, beyond figuring our associated fees, what is the exchange rate you are given. If you look at our list of current AUD rates, you will soon realise that the rates provided to you by your bank are incredibly worse.

What are some examples of money transfers?

Australia is an immigrant-heavy country with buzzing economy and there are over a million Aussies residing abroad. Combine that with the fact that the Australian dollar is a currency that is used solely in Australia (whereas other currencies like USD and EUR are used across multiple countries), and you get a perfect storm of circumstances to explain why international money transfers and currency exchanges are extremely popular in Australia.

People from other countries working in Australia will always need to send money home to their families, while Aussies abroad would often send money into Australia. Then you have expats, like almost 600,000 Kiwis who live in Australia and often transfer their funds in between bank accounts and currencies, switching between AUD and NZD often. Then you have property investors buying property in Australia, or more commonly – Aussies wanting to expand their investment portfolio out of the domestic.

There is an abundance of reasons for people to utilize money transfers in Australia.

Where our readers send money to

International money transfers are most popular in countries where there is much Ausralian emigration to, as well as countries that have a large immigration into Australia, as follows: