Cheapest way to transfer USD to US brokerage?

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vaneyckt

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Hey all. I have a bit of a weird situation.

As part of my job compensation I receive US shares into a Morgan-Stanley account. I want to sell these shares for USD and transfer this money to Firstrade. However, this is proving to be a bit harder than expected.a

My first thought was just to have Morgan-Stanley wire my gains directly to Firstrade. They're both in the US, so how hard could it be? Well, it turns out that Morgan-Stanley does not allow customers to add custom info to the "For Final Credit To" wire transfer field. This means I cannot transfer directly from Morgan-Stanley to Firstrade.

So now I'm looking for alternatives. I figured I might be able to use CurrencyFair as a go-between, but alas US brokers do not accept wire transfers from "3rd party companies". Seems protectionist bs to me, but it is what it is.

It seems the only option left to me is to open a USD account in Ireland and have Morgan-Stanley wire the proceeds to this account. Then I can wire the USD from this account to Firstrade. While this would work, I'm annoyed about the wire fees.

Is there a smarter way to go about this? And more generally, how do people tend to go about transferring funds to their US brokerages? What's the most cost effective way?
 
A few days ago I did the same, but from eTrade to Ameritrade, and it worked OK (the USD appeared in Ameritrade shortly after eTrade reported the wire transfer as completed).

However, eTrade allows for additional fields, where I added my FBO (for the benefit of) number, as provided by Ameritrade.

Still cost me $25 for the wire transfer though, but at least I was able to save in currency conversion fees (twice), currency fluctuations, and other charges related to sending back the wire from Ireland to US.
 
I use Transferwise to send money from my U.S bank account to my Irish bank account. It's the cheapest option I have found do far.
 
I'm looking into this for the same reason. I haven't tried it yet but Revolut now offer incoming USD transfers to your personal IBAN, so there's no need to quote a beneficiary reference field on the broker end. I've successfully set up my Revolut account as a payee on Morgan Stanley, now just need to wait for vesting before testing :)

This discussion also suggests it works: https://www.reddit.com/r/Revolut/co...lut/ei9osvu?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x
 
Just to update on transferring USD from US brokerage (Morgan Stanley) to Euro:

I setup my Irish Revolut IBAN as a USD wire transfer destination in Morgan Stanley, as Revolut support incoming USD.

Sold shares in Morgan Stanley yesterday which were settled and paid out by them today.

Shockingly this arrived into my Revolut account same day. I upgraded to Revolut premium using the current 2 month free trial offer, and was able to convert the whole amount to Euro at market rate, without any extra fees.

I wouldn't plan to leave the balance in Revolut for long given issues some folks have had with restricted access or fraud on Revolut accounts.
 
Did all your dollars appear in your Revolt account ?

Was there a charge taken by an intermediary bank ?
 
Full amount transferred by Morgan Stanley appeared in Revolut. Speed and amount suggest no intermediary - it was in my account about 30 minutes after broker confirmed they had initiated the transfer (although I would not rely on this timing - I may just have been lucky).

Morgan Stanley took an advertised $7.50 wire fee - would have applied for any wire transfer.
 
Interesting.

A few years ago I transferred dollars from Revolut to another bank and there was $20 dollars missing on arrival in the receiving bank account. This was explained as an intermediary bank fee. Revolut could not identify this intermediary bank and could not explain what their charging structure was. They could not state whether the same bank would be involved in a future transfer.
I have avoided dollar transfers since this episode.

At least the fees for currency conversions within financial service providers are identifieable. So I convert and transfer euro.

Sterling and euro transfers have never attracted intermediary bank charges.

It seems to be a Dollar thing.
 
Problem may have been with your destination bank rather than Revolut. Your bank may have used correspondence banking for incoming transfers. In the past, SWIFT transfers to exotic destinations could go through multiple such hops, with unpredictable fees at each stage!
 
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