Sending dollars to your argentina bank account - TransferWise vs. normal wire transfer

[jantango]

I got 58.6776 on my TW transfer on Oct 22 when the official rate was 57.25. Later I found XOOM was at 61.9865 which I can no longer use without a US residence address. I'm satisfied with TW -- it's great seeing the deposit in my local account in about two hours. No more pickups at More Money on Libertad.

 

[artisans]

I recently opened a Santander Rio bank account. I tried sending US $1000 two different ways: (1) a standard wire transfer, and (2) TransferWise. Here's how it went:

Wire Transfer to Santander Rio

Someone told me if I wired money from my own account in the US (under my name) to my account here with the same name, I should be able to keep the money in dollars (in my U$S Santander account). In other words, no conversion to pesos.

An excellent description of the process for external bank to Arg bank transfer which was recently put into place, adding complexity and time consuming manuevers plus the excessive bank wire transfer fees.
I am using HSBC for bank to bank transfers in USD - external account at NY and local account here at BA. All occurs as Camel has described. However, once the USD arrive in the local USD account and the fees are assessed in my Peso account a Reclamo can be/is made by a local bank officer.
A few days after the Reclamo is made most of the bank fees are credited back. Most recently credited back to the USD account. The net bank fee costs, after the Reclamo, is in the range of 0.02% to 0.01% of the original bank transfer amount. An HSBC agent originally quoted 0.02% as the usd bank transfer fee but from experience it has been around o.o1%. Net cost around $8 usd currently.
Once the USDs are in the local account I can convert to pesos online banking or at an HSBC ATM at standard rates.
It's a lot of jujitsu, this process, and it can be further complicated by the local bank's delays in posting the dollars to the account, delays in servicing the Reclamo, all progress stops on weekends and holidays, and you can only convert currencies M - F, after 8 a.m. until 6 p.m.. And the ATMs are not accessible, "maintenance", during weekdays after the bank close at 3 p.m. until 4 or 4:30 pm.

 

[Patagone]

For those trying to get USD$ out.

You can send USD through Transferwise ( from Arg.) per their instructions below:

Sadly, Argentina is not one of the countries where you can send funds directly to your USD details - there is a limited list of countries for that only.

You can, however, deposit money in another manner. For this, go to your USD balance, click on 'Add USD' and as the payment method, choose International transfer. You will be shown our UK USD account details to where to send the money - so you are going through our own account to get the funds deposited to your Balance. From your bank, there is not much difference in the procedure, just the account details are different.

@Neil Did you actually try this at a bank? So sending USD from an Arg USD account to this TW account? Won't they object as the TW account isn't a mirror account, i.e. it's not in your name?

Did anyone try to send USD to the regular account details you see when you click your USD balance?

Officially you are not allowed to send USD from Argentina, but what happens if your bank tries? TW says about these details:

Your bank details to receive USD
Use your bank details to receive USD from friends and businesses.

How do I use these?

-> How to receive USD from outside the US

You can receive USD from outside the US via the SWIFT network by using your account number and SWIFT/BIC. They can cost the sender more, and usually take 2–5 working days.

You can only receive USD from these countries outside the US: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, British Virgin Islands, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Japan, Jersey, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, and United Arab Emirates.

Argentina is not on that list.
There are actually 3 different USD accounts you apparently can deposit to:
1- the account that is mentioned directly, 'to receive USD from fiends and businesses', and it has my name as accout holder. But as mentioned somehow you 'cannot receive USD' from Argentina and many other places.
2- If you choose to "add USD" to your TW account (button beneath the account details" you get several options. Using "wire transfer -> other banks", I get an account in San Francisco, payee is Transferwise Inc" and
3- if I choose International wire, I get an account in GB (Barclays), with an IBAN, but payee is also TW inc.

So does any of these 3 actually work from an ARG USD account? Is anyone willing to try? I will only be back next month to try myself, but would ike to know beforehand. Thanks!

 

[Neil]

@Neil Did you actually try this at a bank? So sending USD from an Arg USD account to this TW account? Won't they object as the TW account isn't a mirror account, i.e. it's not in your name?

Did anyone try to send USD to the regular account details you see when you click your USD balance?

Officially you are not allowed to send USD from Argentina, but what happens if your bank tries? TW says about these details:



Argentina is not on that list.
There are actually 3 different USD accounts you apparently can deposit to:
1- the account that is mentioned directly, 'to receive USD from fiends and businesses', and it has my name as accout holder. But as mentioned somehow you 'cannot receive USD' from Argentina and many other places.
2- If you choose to "add USD" to your TW account (button beneath the account details" you get several options. Using "wire transfer -> other banks", I get an account in San Francisco, payee is Transferwise Inc" and
3- if I choose International wire, I get an account in GB (Barclays), with an IBAN, but payee is also TW inc.

So does any of these 3 actually work from an ARG USD account? Is anyone willing to try? I will only be back next month to try myself, but would ike to know beforehand. Thanks!

I haven't tried....

 

[D.B. Cooper]

I got 58.6776 on my TW transfer on Oct 22 when the official rate was 57.25. Later I found XOOM was at 61.9865 which I can no longer use without a US residence address. I'm satisfied with TW -- it's great seeing the deposit in my local account in about two hours. No more pickups at More Money on Libertad.

I had the same problem when I tried to open my Xoom accnt. here some years ago. When I spoke on the phone with a Xoom rep that I no longer had a US residence she told me I could use the address of the branch where I used to bank in NYC. So I did. Now I have a Xoom accnt. that I've used for years. Apparently they don't check.

 

[D.B. Cooper]

I was using TW to send $$ from my US bank to Sant. Rio accnt. here. That was until last month when I went back to using Xoom.
If you clickon the "Compare Price" tab in the TW site you

 

[D.B. Cooper]

I got hit with a Telecentro outage while I was writing the above. So here is the complete post.

I was using TW to send $$ from my US bank to Sant. Rio accnt. here. That was until last month when I went back to using Xoom.
If you click on the "Compare Price" tab in the TW site you'll notice that there's almost a $4.000 pesos difference on a $1.000 U$D Transfer. Mucho $.
The best part is that Xoom does't charge a transfer fee. So it's a win win situation. The only down side to it is that it took almost 15 hrs for
the $$$ to show up in my S. Rio accnt. I don't know if it was because I was doing it for the first time. Will do it again next month.

 

[steveinbsas]

I was using TW to send $$ from my US bank to Sant. Rio accnt. here. That was until last month when I went back to using Xoom.
If you click on the "Compare Price" tab in the TW site you'll notice that there's almost a $4.000 pesos difference on a $1.000 U$D Transfer. Mucho $.
The best part is that Xoom does't charge a transfer fee. So it's a win win situation. The only down side to it is that it took almost 15 hrs for
the $$$ to show up in my S. Rio accnt. I don't know if it was because I was doing it for the first time. Will do it again next month.

I used Traansferwise for the last time in late September when the rate was $56.87 to one USD.

I din't make any transfers in October, hoping the rate would improve in favor of the dollar by early Novemeber.

Thanks to the information provided by oldgringo, I began using Western Union on November 4th when the rate they offered was $78 to one.

I made a second transfer on the 13th at the rate of $75 to one.

Here is a comparrison as of 5 PM today for a transfer of $1000 USD

XOOM

Total to receiver: $62.135,80 ARS (no fee)

Transferwise:

Total to receiver: $58,517.96 ARS ($23.48 USD fee)

The difference = $3.617,84 ARS

Western Union:

Transfer amount $990.00 USD + 10. USD fee for transfer using debit card in US)

Total to receiver: $71.428,50 ARS (to be deposited in Argentine bank account).

The difference compared to Transferwise: $12.910,54

The difference compared to XOOM: $9292,70

And the winner is.....obvious.

 

[jantango]

I started using Transferwise in May 2019, when XOOM required a residence address in the USA. At first, the TW rates were higher than XOOM. Now it's the reverse. Transferwise sends me a daily rate update. Today's included a money transfer comparison showing the difference between Transferwise and XOOM.

I made one attempt reading how to do a transfer by Western Union without success. I see that it's worth another try.

Another option is using a relative's residence address in the USA as mine and going back to XOOM.

 

[Goata]

I recently opened a Santander Rio bank account. I tried sending US $1000 two different ways: (1) a standard wire transfer, and (2) TransferWise. Here's how it went:

Wire Transfer to Santander Rio

Someone told me if I wired money from my own account in the US (under my name) to my account here with the same name, I should be able to keep the money in dollars (in my U$S Santander account). In other words, no conversion to pesos.

I sent a standard wire transfer from my US bank, and surprisingly, my US bank asked for my argentine CBU instead of "account number". I didn't expect my US bank to know anything about CBUs, but I entered it and it worked. I submitted the wire transfer around 3pm Argentina time. At 8pm Argentina time, I got a "COMPROBANTE" email from Santander notifying me that they have received a USD $1000 wire transfer "A VUESTRO FAVOR". (Why do they use "vuestro" in Argentina?) Their email also said I must submit Formulario 6-234 (available on this page) to my Santander bank branch.

Formulario 6-234 asks for your name, account number, CUIL, whether you want to receive your funds in pesos or foreign currency such as USD, and for the "Concepto de la Operación", which seems to mean the reason for the transfer. It also asks for a "código de concepto", which is a 3-digit alphanumeric code that you must get from this list: Códigos de conceptos. The code that fit me best was: "A07 - Depósitos de residentes en el exterior." I filled out the PDF form, printed it out and brought it to my branch. The woman at the branch told me I couldn't receive it in US dollars and I had to change the form to say I wanted pesos. I reminded her that the money was coming from my own account in the US to my own account here, and asked "are you sure?" She said yes, so I changed the form and left.

Meanwhile, I emailed [email protected], giving them my comprobante number and asking them to explain why I had to convert to pesos. Their response was, "Respecto a su consulta, si usted transfiere fondos entre cuentas espejo (misma titularidad) puede mantener la moneda USD." In English, "Regarding your question, if you transfer funds between mirror accounts (same ownership) you can keep the USD currency." Win!! So I went back to the branch and showed them this email and resubmitted the Form 6-234 requesting US dollars. She sounded doubtful but said she would submit it anyway. It took a few days but the money finally showed up in my Santander USD account, exactly US $1000. However, I knew they would charge a fee (comisión) for the transfer. Sure enough, a day or two later, they charged me $3,499.32 pesos for "Com por tx internacional por canje" and $87.48 pesos for "Comision por canje internacional". They took the fees out of my pesos account, not my USD account. But converting to USD, the fees were about $62. Here is the fee schedule:

View attachment 6187

TransferWise

For comparison, I then did a US $1000 transfer using TransferWise, again from my US bank account to my Santander Rio account. Transferwise only let me send as pesos, no option to send dollars. The TransferWise fee was US $6.11. I made the transfer around 8pm at night Argentina time. The next day, the money arrived in my Santander Rio pesos account, it was $57,491 pesos. There was no Santander Rio fee.

So to summarize:

Normal Wire Transfer: US $1000 transfer had fees of US $62, but remained in dollars. If I had converted to pesos and subtracted the fees, it would yield: $52,913 pesos.

TransferWise: US $1000 transfer had fees of US $6, but was converted to $57,491 pesos. If I wanted to keep it in US dollars, at the current rate it would convert to US $950.26.

So TransferWise is much faster, requires no interaction with the bank (no Form 6-234), and costs less. Only downside is it forces you to convert to pesos, but even with that, you can buy USD and still come out ahead.

Hey Camel,
Thanks for this post, it is very helpful, I am wondering if you have any sort of update or advice, I had an Arg. bank account a couple of years ago when I was transferring a significant amount of money to buy a house in Mendoza. I think I was paying 6% or so in total fees for the transfers but the Monthly fees at the bank were enormous for some reason and I closed my bank account once I bought the house. My question is how much has changed since the Peso jumped to $130 dolor blue and
has the new administration impacted how one might try to get dolors into the country? I normally head to the USA 2 or 3 times a year and would return with dolors in hand. I don't see that happening for another year (Covid) and want to bring dolors in the most efficient way possible.
Thanks,
Paul