How do I wire money to Hong Kong from US?
♫ Saturday, July 9th, 20111. If you intend to go to HK, bring an ATM card from a US bank which is on the PLUS ATM network. Using a Plus ATM card, you can withdraw money directly from your US account in HK, at various ATMs of the Hongkong Bank which display the Plus symbol. Of course, if you are going yourself, you can also consider Traveller’s Check or even cash if the amount is still reasonable to do so.
2. You can send the recipient a US Dollar personal check, which they can deposit with their bank. However, the check will take about 1 month to clear.
3. Go to a branch of a Hong Kong based bank in your area, e.g. Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp. or Hang Seng Bank in any major metropolitan area with a significant Chinese population, and purchase a Bank Draft or Cashier’s Check. Enquire if they can issue drafts in HK$ drawn on their account with their HK parent. Otherwise, check if they have provisions to clear their checks quickly (eg. if deposited with a particular HK bank).
4. Of course, you can always tell your bank to initiate a wire transfer, or get a HK based bank in your area to do it (probably better, since they are used to doing it).
5. ETC International (similar to 1. above, but subject to transaction fee) This is actually quite popular in Canada now.
6. Bank Draft. Every bank in HK that issues US$ Bank Draft can draw on their accounts in the US, so worst case is 7 days to clear. Add the time to deliver the physical draft to the recipient (2 – 7 days).
7. Cable/Telex/Wire transfer. Yes they are all different (in speed), and subject to service charge. Hang Seng Bank seems to charge a fixed fee for amounts up to some large number, and is probably cheapest. Note that the recipient will ALSO be charged a fee, typically USD 10 to USD 15, so if you wire $5000, they may only get $4990. This is caused by the Fed Wire Transfer between the correspondent bank (ie. the bank that, for example, Hang Seng deals with), and the receiving bank.
8. Cash. What else