Atm Withdrawals, Schwab Cards And The New Exchange Rate...

[TwentyThousandRoads]

Is your XP with ATM's in Colonia and how recent??
A word of warning, some Banks in Colonia can not read the new CC with chips . Among these are Banco Comercial now Nova Scotia, and also Banco Internacional. Some of the Banks that can read the cards are BROU, Santander and BBVA. Also some banks have limited each withdrawal to US$200.
Looking forward to your comments.

I've been to Colonia in the past week and was able to withdraw USD from Scotia with a chip-and-pin card. So maybe they updated their machine. Santander is fine too. Those are the only two I used, but both had the $300 or UY5000 limit per transaction. Have yet to run into a $200 limit in Uruguay. Even that would be nice. A limit of AR$700 is absurd.

Anyone help, I thought Western Union would adjust their rate to the new official. Nope. Just went to Western Union to today to withdraw US$1725 in Arg. pesos and was quoted $16.471,42

That means the rate they are giving is still 9.54

Sent today from overseas? I would guess if the funds were sent last week then maybe they got converted at the old rate and just sat there while the peso devalued.

Xoom is giving AR$13.21 so I'd think Western Union would want to be competitive with that...

 

[mikic007]

Citibank has apparently still problems with transition. They still pop up that if you want foreign currency you have to come personally and I can't even place plazo fijo... I guess ATMs are also victims of this amateurs.

 

[r2d2]

I went to the ATM today. Banco Nacion. With my Schwab debit card the limit was 1000 ARS. The card has a daily limit of 2000 USD set by Schwab (so the 1000 pesos limit is set by Banco Nacion / Link ). There was a ATM fee of 83.70 ARS. On my Schwab account I can see a withdrawal of 81.82 USD. If you do the math:

1083.70 / 81.82 = 13.2449278

So 1.00 USD = 13.24 ARS

Although Schwab will refund the ATM fee next month I am inclined to go back to Ria/Xoom. If I continued to generate over 8% in withdrawal fees then I guess eventually Schwab would close my account.

 

[TwentyThousandRoads]

Update: I went to a Santander Rio today. One ATM -- the large, modern one -- said I couldn't use my Schwab card there at all. I tried a smaller, older machine that was withdrawals only (no deposits) and got out 1500 pesos. This was for something like an 80-peso fee, so now we're down to 6%, which makes it competitive with exchanging Bitcoin or crossing the river. And the limit may be higher. It did not say what the limit was. The highest listed amount was 700, but when I manually entered 1500 on a dare, it worked whereas every other machine I've tried here has failed for anything over 700. I'll try higher next time... after failing on the first machine, I didn't want to trigger a block on my card.

When I spoke to Schwab on the phone, they told me their exchange rate is based on Visa's daily posted rate, which can be gotten here:
https://usa.visa.com...alculator.html/
It's only updated once a day. It's pretty much the same as the Xoom rate, both are a few points under the official "buy" rate for USD, but there's no Xoom transaction fee. The official "sell" rate is $0.30 higher, and the blue dollar is still another peso more than that.

 

[Girino]

Using foreign cards in Argentina is like going to Vegas and hitting every machine and the next. You might get lucky, but most likely you won't.

 

[TwentyThousandRoads]

Using foreign cards in Argentina is like going to Vegas and hitting every machine and the next. You might get lucky, but most likely you won't.

According to one guy I know, there may still be a certain ATM in a certain bank somewhere around Florida and Lavalle that's been dispensing US dollars this whole time. I've gone on epic quests to find this mythical thing, with no luck so far... but yeah, it's uncannily similar to trying to find your needle-in-the-haystack slot machine. I'd take issue with the comparison to Vegas, though. That's an insult to Vegas. This is more like the outskirts of Reno

 

[Girino]

But what about what happens in Reno? Does it stay in Reno?!

The thing about the mythical unicorn-ATM dispensing USD is new to me, but I can see the delusional romance behind such a hoax and the rumors it would generate.

 

[TwentyThousandRoads]

But what about what happens in Reno? Does it stay in Reno?!

The thing about the mythical unicorn-ATM dispensing USD is new to me, but I can see the delusional romance behind such a hoax and the rumors it would generate.

Yeah, the USD cash machine I think is more of a cute story to put the kids to bed...
Vegas is for gettin married, Reno's where you go to get a divorce. But seeing as the unlucky in love do better on the slots, they stock Reno with the crappier machines. Nothing that happens there is anything you'd want to take with you.

 

[Girino]

I didn't known the cultural reference associated with Reno, glad to have learned something new!

 

[artur]

What about the idea of transferring USD to your local ARG Bank Account? What are the pitfalls/costs there?