Sending money to student in UK

ChrisBan

Daughter recently started college in the UK, can someone advise on the most cost effective way of sending money over regularly. Thanks.

Tow

Standard SEPA transfer for euro amounts, value will be converted when it hits her account over there. For sterling amounts via a BOI account, other banks charge international rates. However, You 'may' get a better exchange rate using a 3rd party currency exchange broker.

EverythingGood

ChrisBan wrote: »

Daughter recently started college in the UK, can someone advise on the most cost effective way of sending money over regularly. Thanks.

Circle app is great. You both download it, select your currency, input your details. Transfer from your card to the app, transfer to your daughter, via the app, she then transfers to her account.

ChrisBan

Thanks for the information, the bank my daughter is opening an account with in the UK has told her there will be a charge of £9 plus the exchange rate per transaction.

maisiedaisy

Transferwise. Very quick, and rates seem to be ok, and it's cheap. Took 800€ about an hour to arrive in my friends account yesterday, and cost me £4ish to send it.

Another option is An Post currency cards. Your daughter would get a sterling card in her own name, and ask for a spare card. If you keep the spare card with a copy of her ID, the local post office should allow you to load money onto the card, topping her up so to speak. But, the rates aren't great, and it's a bit of a faff because the only way she can put money into her bank account is by physically taking the cash out at an ATM and then lodging it to her account.

owenob

Hi ChrisBan,
A Fire personal account may be suitable for this. It's a mobile app that gives you both a euro and sterling account. It only takes a few minutes to set up in the app.

Add the Fire euro account as a payee/beneficiary to your existing bank account (AIB or whatever). Whenever you want to send some money to your daughter, just transfer funds to the Fire euro account, then convert to sterling at great rates in the app, and send it out to your daughter's UK bank account from there. If she has a Fire account too, she'll get the money instantly and can use the Fire MasterCard to spend it, or take it from an ATM. If she doesn't have a Fire account, the money will arrive in her UK bank account in a couple of hours.

You can also use the account to pay for other things your daughter might need in the UK, or to get money back from her in sterling! (like that would ever happen eh? )

Just to let you know, I work for Fire, so ask any questions you like about it. Search for "Fire Personal" in the AppStore or Play Store.
Thanks
Owen

Yggr of Asgard

What owenob does not call out is that Fire charges a 1.25% conversion fee for changing from € to £ with a minimum of 1.25€, so while it's great it's not as good as other offers out there.

If you don't want to much hassle, you can use transferwise or currencyfair where you pay € to them and they pay to your receiver via faster payment so the money is there quickly, but there are charges on top of the exchange rate. Your daughters bank should not charge of it as it's a standard UK transfer.

If you don't mind doing some work, you could look at revolut, where you pay the money to your own revolut issued € IBAN account and than transfer £ to your daughters account from within the app. There are no fees and the exchange rate (during the week) is usually very attractive. This however might take an extra day depending on who you and your daughter bank with.

Otherwise your standard bank transfer directly from your bank can be done, but that gives you a bad exchange rate and additional cost as you called out.

It also depends on often and how much you want to transfer.

My suggestion check the amount you want to transfer on the different providers and see who is the best for you.

Charles Babbage

Fire is a good product, but it is a bit that they didn't get decent commission rates sorted.

Quackster

Revolut all the way. Unlike any of the other options mentioned, there are no charges whatsoever for currency conversion (up to a couple of grand a month).

Once you set up a Revolut account, you can load it with euro and convert to sterling instantly and then lodge into your daughter's UK account which should take no more then a couple of hours. Or else, if she also opens a Revolut account, you can just transfer from one to the other instantly.

maximoose

+1 for revolut. Best exchange rates and very quick transfers to UK bank accounts

Quackster

maximoose wrote: »

+1 for revolut. Best exchange rates and very quick transfers to UK bank accounts

Also, as Revolut-to-Revolut transfers are instant, if your daughter is ever stuck somewhere without funds, you can give her a dig out. Like, say, £20 to get a taxi home after a night out!