Send money from Japan | Golloyds
It's pretty straight forward to send money from Japan. The destination in my case being the UK. I use the GoLloyds remittance service provided by Lloyds TSB. My ALT Finances allow me to transfer money home every couple of months.
For me, when I send money back home from Japan, speed, reliability, ease of use and a reasonable price are my main priorities. The GoLloyds service is very fast, reliable and after you've set the service up is very easy to use. The only thing one could argue about is the price.
If you use their service to send money from Japan, GoLloyds charge a flat fee of 2,000 yen per transfer. The intermediary bank fees are 12 GBP but would be 7 GBP if I had a Lloyds TSB account. In my case, my Japanese bank charges a fee of 630 yen to send the money to GoLloyds.
In total that comes to about 5,000 yen per transfer. So GoLloyds isn't the cheapest way to send money from Japan. But as long as you are sending reasonable sums it's not too bad. On a 150,000 yen overseas transfer, that's just over 3%.
What's great about using the GoLloyds service to transfer money though is how quickly they do it for you. As long as I send the funds to my Japanese account GoLloyds provided me with before 3pm on a weekday, the money will hit my UK account the same day. To be honest I don't actually need the money from Japan to arrive all that urgently but it is a cool feature all the same!
Setting the service up is fairly straight forward too. You can apply online these days. When I set it up though I had to fill in and send off the application forms. You can still do it that way if you prefer.
Another way I to send money from Japan is through the Post Office. However I've never made use of nor do I know too much about their service. My understanding is that it is cheaper than the GoLloyds remittance service but it takes about a week for the funds to hit your account back home. Also, and this is what put me off, it seems that you have to fill in some paperwork each and every time you want to make a transfer from Japan.
I've been using the GoLloyds service for over 5 years now. Initially I had thought that I would track down an even better way to send money from Japan but I've not got round to it yet.
For people with Japanese credit cards, putting funds into a Japanese PayPal account and then sending the money from Japan to your PayPal account in your home country which you could then transfer to your bank may well work.
If you know of any better ways than the Golloyds remittance service to send money from Japan, please leave a comment.
29.03.2009. 06:51
Comments
I use ozforex.com which has better rates than Lloyds although you have to register and send in a couple of bits of ID etc... Def. worth it if you are sending a big chunk back.
Hi Von,
Thanks for the tip on sending money from Japan. I will look into that link you sent and see if it is something I can use to transfer money home myself.
"For people with Japanese credit cards, putting funds into a Japanese PayPal account and then sending the money from Japan to your PayPal account in your home country which you could then transfer to your bank may well work."
No. This is not possible.
Thanks for the feedback Mark. I've never tried this myself however hypothetically think it would work. Can you expand on why this theory of how to send money from Japan doesn't work?
Cheers,
Why not just send a wire transfer from bank to bank?
Hey Billy,
Hanging out with Yamamoto Kid. Not your average night out, or is it?
Yeah, bank wire transfers are fine. If you are minted. Don't know exactly what it costs but know that the fee is substantial. My dad once sent money to Japan for me through is bank in the U.K. and he had to pay a fair bit for the privilege. Also you need more than just your sort code and a/c number. There's also a CHAPS code that you have to get from the bank you want to send the money to.
Obviously there are a variety of ways to send money from Japan but for me the easiest I have found so far is GoLloyds.
I'm gonna subscribe to your RSS coz you've got some cool stories!
I realize this is an older article, but if anyone happens upon it (as I have), I'll leave my comment regarding the PayPal method...
PayPal does work the way you describe it. I've been doing it for over a year. They charge 3.9% + 40 yen. It's good for amounts under 70,000. You need 2 PayPal accounts***. Here's the math...
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Assuming the furikomi (Cost to send to golloyds) costs you around 650 yen...
PayPal: fixed at a 3.9% Fee + 40 yen
Golloyds:
(2000 + 650)/70,000 = 3.7% Fee :: Better than PayPal
(2000 + 650)/65,000 = 4.1% Fee :: Worse than PayPal
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The two examples show amounts of 70,000 yen and 65,000 yen respectively. The 2000 is the basic golloyds fee. The 650 is an estimate of what it costs to send golloyds the amount you want to transfer (furikomi).
Your numbers will change depending on what the furikomi costs you, but you can see PayPal is a very good deal for relatively smaller sums. If you have a lot to send home, then golloyds is your best bet.
*** You can figure out the process of getting a Japanese credit card and opening the paypal account on your own. It's not too complicated after you get your Visa credit card/debit card.
Thanks for the detailed information about sending money via Paypal.
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