Some ways
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 4:29 pm
There are some new brokerage houses like Chuck, and Ameritrade, and a few others that offer checking accounts that have relationships with bank of china (to access the HK Stock Exchange, SEHK) that you can deposit RMB into an investment account and then get a dispersion credited to your USA account, but its a convoluted process probably takes a while, has a bunch of paperwork involved, and is probably as expensive as a wire when you consider all the fees. I say probabley because its one of those things i dont know from experience, and ive only "heard' its possible in theory.
I've seen people get creative with bill pay. The problem is in China most people pay their bills at the post office or bank, and the idea of using checks is unheard of (people do use them, but they go to the bank and get a bank draft or official bank check). I had students that needed to do it when sending application fees to schools outside China. Some banks offer bill pay (mainly for business accounts), and they use checks. Ive seen where they send a check to themselves (to their bank in the USA) through bill pay, but its really just the same as bank through mail. You have to wait for the check to get there and then wait for it to clear, which could take a month.
Personally if you lived closer to HK, you would have more options but in all reality I've found that each innovative idea I hear eventually costs as much or more then doing a wire transfer to begin with.
Shop around at the bank branches in your home and try to find the bank that has the cheapest incoming wire fee. Look into a business account because they sometimes have accounts that are free but have free incoming wires, and reduced costs on outgoing wires. If you can cut the incoming wire fee out, you only need to be concerned with the outgoing fee charged by the bank in china which could cut the cost down as Bank of China charges around 1% and the cap can be as low as 50RMB or under $10.
I've seen people get creative with bill pay. The problem is in China most people pay their bills at the post office or bank, and the idea of using checks is unheard of (people do use them, but they go to the bank and get a bank draft or official bank check). I had students that needed to do it when sending application fees to schools outside China. Some banks offer bill pay (mainly for business accounts), and they use checks. Ive seen where they send a check to themselves (to their bank in the USA) through bill pay, but its really just the same as bank through mail. You have to wait for the check to get there and then wait for it to clear, which could take a month.
Personally if you lived closer to HK, you would have more options but in all reality I've found that each innovative idea I hear eventually costs as much or more then doing a wire transfer to begin with.
Shop around at the bank branches in your home and try to find the bank that has the cheapest incoming wire fee. Look into a business account because they sometimes have accounts that are free but have free incoming wires, and reduced costs on outgoing wires. If you can cut the incoming wire fee out, you only need to be concerned with the outgoing fee charged by the bank in china which could cut the cost down as Bank of China charges around 1% and the cap can be as low as 50RMB or under $10.