I recently sent a wire transfer to my niece (a US national teaching in Spain) from the US to Spain in the amount of €50. Upon receipt, only €30 was deposited to her account. Local inquiries in Spain were unhelpful (ranging from “fees” to “I don’t know”). My bank does not charge a fee. I opened an inquiry with them and their investigation determined that the amount was less than expected due to “fees charged by the recipient’s bank and/or foreign taxes.” It kind of seems like boilerplate to be honest. The response from the intermediary bank was THE FUNDS HAVE BEEN CREDITED TO BENEFICIARY ACCOUNT WITH VALUE DATE [date] FOR 30,00EUR.
My question is: is this sort of deduction common in cases of foreign nationals in Spain? I can’t imagine that the fee would amount to 40% of the transaction. Does the tax withholding scenario make sense?
Mods: while this question has a factual answer I’m sure, please move it to IMHO as you see fit.
The fee for processing the transaction from the recipient’s bank may be a fixed amount (eg $20). I used to routinely send money to an account in Italy, and my bank would charge me £20 regardless of the amount I was sending.
Anyway, I doubt it’s got anything to do with how the Spanish banking system treats ‘foreign nationals’, and more to do with a fee for processing an international transaction or currency exchange.
Yes–our bank (USBank) charges a flat $20USD for incoming or outgoing wires. They waive it for us as “high net worth individuals” which is nice, but it always strikes me as odd that wealthy people get all these fees waived whereas people to whom that $20 might make an actual difference do not.
Basically you shouldn’t be using wire transfers for small amounts of money because of this type fee (which vary widely both for sending and for receiving because of the banks involved). Instead there are other companies who specialize in this–companies like XE, Wise and Remitly.
Thank you @SanVito. I did not word that very well. I ask because when she opened the account, she did not have her NIE (tax number), and they gave her an account for “non-Spaniards.” It involved presenting her US tax information and identity documents. I thought it might have something to do with tax withholding for these types of accounts (not because they hate foreigners ).
Yes, I executed the transfer as a trial run right after she opened the account with an amount I was prepared to lose in order to grease the skids as it were. I did not want to discover any unexpected fees down the road (e.g. €400 missing from a €1,000 transaction).
I’m casting a vote in favour of Wise (don’t have a personal stake in the company). I get my salary in euros but live in the UK, so I’m frequently making transfers from my own accounts in euro to sterling. Wise works like a charm for that at very reasonable fees.
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