Changing Yen to Euro

BananaWhoops

Might be quite an obvious question but am rather clueless in these areas.

Will be returning to Ireland from Japan this xmas. I'll be closing my bank account here and taking out all the money. Can anyone tell me if I'm better off changing the yen to euro in Japan or at home? Any advice/experience would help!

whomitconcerns

i imagine more demand for euro in china than yen in ireland so I would change it there

Peregrinus

It makes very little difference. It will come down to whether Irish or Japanese banks charge more for currency exchange.

Given a certain amount in JPY, how much you end up with in EUR depends on (a) the JPY/EUR exchange rate used by the bank making the exchange, and (b) the charge levied by the bank to make the exchange.

All banks use foreign exchange conversion rates which are based on the wholesale rates used on the currency markets, and then plumped up with a little bit of margin (or a big bit of margin) for the benefit of the bank. They also levy an explicit charge for the conversion - usually, a percentage of the amount converted. The overall cost to the customer is the bank's margin, plus the charge.

Ask your Irish bank and your Japanese bank what their charge for the JPY/EUR exchange would be. Then on a random day check the JPY/EUR exchange rate offered by each of the two banks. They'll be similar, but probably not exactly the same. Your choice is (a) get your Japanese bank to convert your savings to Euro at their exchange rate and subjec to their charge and then wire the proceeds to your Irish bank, or (b) ask your Japanese bank to wire your savings in JPY to your Irish bank and then have your Irish bank convert them to EUR using their exchange rate and their charge.

It's a simple matter to work out, for a given sum in JPY, which of these two procedures would result in the higher EUR amount.

BananaWhoops

Thank you very much for the explanation!!

Lamnot

Or if it's a particularly large amount you could use a third party currency exchange broker. I've used Currency Solutions in the past to transfer € to £ and while it's a little bit of hassle, you tend to get a slightly better rate than the banks will give you