Oz banks overseas fee

terencemc

Hey y'all,
I'm currently in NZ using my oz anz account and am getting nailed by costs.

$5+3% of value for atm withdrawals is ridiculous. Does anyone know of a way around this?

Is it possible to change banks from abroad?

Hope yee's can help.

IrishEmperor

Commonwealth have a card for traveling with; you top it up with money and get a cheap rate on withdrawing money at foreign ATMs:

http://www.canstar.com.au/whats-new/cba-travel-card/

http://www.commbank.com.au/personal/accounts/going-on-holiday.aspx

Xavi6

Most of the banks are pretty much the same with fees, though the one I work for only charges a 2% foreign transaction fee. Travelex do a card similar to the one posted above. You will always pay some sort of fee if you are doing overseas transactions.

terencemc

Hey Xavi,
Which bank is that?
I've got no qualms paying 2%, but what I'm paying at the moment is just greedy.

Is it possible to switch banks from NZ, to another oz bank??

Xavi6

terencemc wrote: »

Hey Xavi,
Which bank is that?
I've got no qualms paying 2%, but what I'm paying at the moment is just greedy.

Is it possible to switch banks from NZ, to another oz bank??

I'm with BankWest.

What would you be looking to switch over? If you can provide an Australian residential/postal address for an application you can do the whole thing online/over the phone pretty handy enough.

All it would involve is opening the accounts with the new bank first, doing a PayAnybody transfer to them from your old accounts then close the old ones. You will probably need to put a request in writing to close the accounts but that can be done in writing by fax/post. Shouldn't take more than 10 business days to do the whole lot.

If you have a credit card it's a bit messier because there's credit checks and balance transfers to be done but it's still possible.

EDIT: Direct debits can stuff you around a bit so take them into account when deciding to change over or not.