Bank Transfers

Of course it is possible to send to a Leva account, but it is also correct you need to convert currencies. Unless you have a Leva account you can not just send Leva. The answer you received probably had to do with the exact way you asked the question (hint: call the help line in Budapest for OTP and ask them).

What you need to clarify is you want to make a transfer to an abroad account which is in Bulgarian Leva, and ask how many Forint do you have to send to make equal the amount in Leva. They should then do the rate calculation for you and tell you then how many Forint to transfer since you have a Forint account. That is also what your UK bank is doing also, but they are just not as transparent telling you about the details of the transaction.

fidobsa wrote:

.... he asked for payment in Bulgarian Leva. I went to my local OTP branch but they say it is not possible to do the transfer in Leva,....I have previously gone to a UK bank and made a transfer from there in Leva.

OTP are being awkward and inefficient.  It's no problem in other banks in Hungary.

But....there is a law here in HU that the official currency is HUF and even if you say, hold an account in Australian Dollars (AUD) but want US Dollars (USD), they will first convert the AUD to HUF, then the HUF to USD behind the scenes. It means you lose out on two exchanges. The HUF law is why you get HUF currency back in change when you pay in another currency like Euro (EUR).

There's no problem technically in them transferring Leva (BGN) to Bulgaria. It could be that they just do not do that much business in Leva and do not hold any significant reserves in BGN. All banks hold amounts foreign currency in the most obvious currencies. BGN is perhaps not one of them. They would probably route the money through one of their correspondent banks in another country (like Germany or Austria).

It would be far better if your lawyer in Bulgaria would receive EUR because then you can use the SEPA (Single European Payments Area) transfer system which is cheap to use and universally implemented in the EU (even those not using the EUR as their national currency).

Last time I sent money abroad like this (from Austria to Croatia) was some 15 years ago, because it was so crazily expensive, at least compared to the amount involved.

I know I can transfer eur from my german bank account for free to any other EUR account in a EUR-country. Are you saying that even transfers btween two EUR accounts in non-EUR countries in the EU would be free or cheap?

Few years ago I had the issue that a US person had to transfer money to me in germany, cheapest and simplest solution turned out to be: Paypal !
(I am not even sure if the receiver needs a Paypal account, s.  Paypal info pages ) Creating a Paypal account is of course not the issue, connecting it to a bank account does, of course involve some identification process.
Of course lawyers tend to be too conservative for this...

fireroller wrote:

....

I know I can transfer eur from my german bank account for free to any other EUR account in a EUR-country. Are you saying that even transfers btween two EUR accounts in non-EUR countries in the EU would be free or cheap?

Guess I am saying that.

If the countries are in the EU, then they all belong to the SEPA (Single European Payments Area), even if they do not use the EUR as their national currency.

It still costs to send money wherever you are as there is a transaction charge but it's a fixed amount for EUR (I think up to 50K EUR if I remember correctly, it's a single flat fee).

The transaction costs might be absorbed in Germany or the destination country or more importantly, if it's the same bank or a subsidiary. I guess it depends on where they hold their settlement accounts. For EUR countries, I guess would be a kind of EUR virtual hierarchical account in Frankfurt at the ECB or the national bank. For local settlements, I guess these are done locally and for international (with the EUR zone), then probably via the ECB.

Hi,
We have different option to transfer the money to every where in world.
No matter what currency is this,

usually i move to country by country as per the employer requirement so for transfer the amount to my native place or any other account i use the transfer wise site.

https://transferwise.com/u/928a55


its secure and very less chargeable .. go through it given link ,,,register it and see the currency conversation ratio...

Hope you like it easiest way of transferring money to anywhere.

I've used transferwise for the last 2 years across sterling, euros and forints. I have to say that I have always found it friendly, efficient and massively cheaper than the banks. The 'but' is that you have to have bank account in the currency you are buying.

I used Transferwise many times, but more recently have got a better rate using XendPay. The rate you get is fixed when you book it too, when I used Transferwise the rate could change by the time the payment was made.

Beware re rights under SEPA. I recently transferred euros between my Irish euro bank account and wife's euro account with Bank Austria. They deducted 20 euros. We had to get quite aggressive with Bank Austria before they would refund the 20 euro charge.