# Transfering money from Northern Ireland to the South



## tonyrtsmith (12 Mar 2012)

I will need to transfer about 3000 stg from Northern Ireland to the Republic on a monthly basis over the next year, what are my best options for doing these transfers / which banks should I use?

I want to keep the fees to a minimum and make sure I get a good rate.


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## Brendan Burgess (12 Mar 2012)

The fees are usually very low and some banks advertise "low fees" or "no fees"

The key thing is the exchange rate. 

Check around to see if there is a trusted friend who wants to open a sterling bank account. Then transfer the money to their account and they pay you in euro. 


Brendan


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## caseyfs (13 Mar 2012)

If you use internet banking you can transfer funds between NIB in Ireland and Northern Bank in NI. There is no charge for this and the currency rate is not prohibitive either. Ulster Bank Ireland have started a new system for transferring funds cross border via internet banking. I know it works for funds going south to north but there are transfer charges for this service. Most banks will charge a fee to make an internation transfer and the receiving bank will charge to accept it. They will also take several days to reappear in your account.


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## Purple (13 Mar 2012)

I don't do this myself but our financial controller does. He said that once you have a bank account in each location you can use someone like CurrencyFair.com (that's who he uses and he speaks highly of then, I have no idea who else is out there).

They had the best rates available when he's done a compare, and they only charge 3 euro for the transfer. 

He's totally paranoid about this sort of thing so if he's using them they must be up to scratch. They are fully regulated, and keep client funds segregated, they do require you to provide some documentation on registration for anti money laundering etc. but apparently that's standard enough. 

There are two options for exchanging, you can take the rates on offer and exchange instantly (they claim the rates on offer are no worse than 0.5% away from mid-market, and sometimes even better than the mid market rate), or they allow you to post your own rates and wait for someone to match you. Not 100% sure what that means but he got all excited about it.

I have no connection to these guys and haven't used them directly but if a paranoid accountant who works with me likes them it says good things about them.


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## twofor1 (13 Mar 2012)

I can get the free transfer from NIB to Northern Bank, but there are cheaper options.

Stg£1000 to Northern Bank usually costs €12 less than NIB with Transferemates free standard transfer. I would think there is similar savings for Stg to Euro.

http://www.transfermate.com/


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## tonyrtsmith (13 Mar 2012)

Thanks a mill everyone, rang all 3 for a quote on exchanging 2900 stg to euro

NIB gave 3377.66 euro - 6 Euro Transfer Fee = 3371.66 euro
Transfermate gave 3443.23 euro - 10 Euro Transfer Fee = 3433.23 euro
Currency Fair gave 3465.05 euro - 3 Euro Transfer Fee = 3462.05 euro


90 odd euro in the difference between them all, will go with Currency Fair.


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## tonyrtsmith (16 Apr 2012)

Purple said:


> I don't do this myself but our financial controller does. He said that once you have a bank account in each location you can use someone like CurrencyFair.com (that's who he uses and he speaks highly of then, I have no idea who else is out there).



[FONT=&quot]I have to say a big thanks  Purple for mentioning Currency Fair. I used them last week, I got a rate  of 1.2080 which was about 0.3% away from the interbank rate at the time  (1.2105) for my STG to EURO transfer. The transfer fee was £3 STG. I  compared the rates and fees to a number of other brokers and banks, and  currency fair did indeed come out on top, with other companies between  about 1% to 3% away from the interbank rates.  All the funds arrived  safely, I did some other searches on the company and found a lot of  positive feedback on a number of forums, they are regulated and Irish.  Registration was easy enough.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Thanks to everyone for your help in this.[/FONT]


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## igloo (4 Aug 2012)

*Regular transfers*

Very useful post.  Has any used service like CurrencyFair for regular (monthly) transactions between sterling (UK) and euro (ROI) bank accounts?


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