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Hi just a query about can I get money transferred from a UK bank account to my Chinese bank account. My family want to transfer some funds to my Chinese bank account and as I have never done this before can anyone shed any light on this? What would I need from my Chinese bank account in order for the transaction to take place? Any information would be welcome thank you
Hi,
Can you ask your family to go asking the bank in U.K? They should be able to give you exact information. Usually it’s wire transfer. If it’s a small amount you can use PayPal.
I use the HSBC (they don’t charge if it is a transfer within the HSBC group) and you can make a money transfer online with internet banking. You will need the EXACT FULL name of the account holder as written on the account, the account number and the SWIFT address (eg HSBCCNSHCGU) of the recipient’s bank. The money will be transferred in Sterling so the recipient’s account needs to be a sterling account. When it arrives the recipient will need to pay a fee to transfer it into RMB and move it to a RMB account.
Thank you for the insightful information, I will definitely give it an attempt and hope for the best.
HSBC is great, especially if you’ve the privilege of premier accounts. It’s fully free transfers (via online) and the whole “can’t transfer money out of China” myth is easily skirted – well, if you’ve an account overseas, that is. Even via Bank of China, unless your amount is ridiculous, transfers in/out of the country are pretty easy to deal with – I’ve brought *in* several hundred k USD via HSBC and sent out, several hundred k via Bank of China, latest of which was today – there are regulations around these things, and what you need to do is walk to the bank, meet a client manager, talk to them, and they’ll “offer you a method” – which I am not still clear about their personal benefit from skirting the regulations, but I have one at BoC who ‘found a way’ much easier than what I intended and simply helped me out… maybe it helps their resume having dealt with a larger amount of money/transactions or something.
Just go to the bank and ask, and ask again, and ask again, until you find someone whose willing to help you out – money transfers are *seriously* not an issue in practice from personal experience. BTW @Merior all my HSBC stuff is done via the little fake calculator they give for the RSA code and I’m sure we use the same process, any host country account can be opened in any currency, and the process is deposit account -> exchangeable (I forget the name, there should be multiple types for this) account -> online transfer to destination account
@ Rick – as I understand it there is a $US 50,000 annual limit on how much you can transfer into or out of China in any one year. However, you can transfer sums in excess of that if the HSBC are satisfied that you have a good reason to such as buying an apartment or setting up a business etc as opposed to money laundering. I have exceeded the 50,000 limit with the approval of the bank but you can also transfer money to/from relatives accounts at the rate of $50,000 each as an alternative and I have done this as well.
The 50k limit is for the conversion to/from foreign currency – not for the transfers themselves. I was going to get the paperwork together to do it normally myself for the last set of transfers, HSBC recommended I just complete it at BOC directly rather than use the premier service as the cash I wanted to move was already in BOC, and when I went to BOC, a very helpful customer manager lady helped me sort it all out – originally trying to figure out all the documents I required, then suggesting we just have a couple of wife’s relatives come by and they’ll sort everything out. They did it all for us, just needed a few people, a few SFZs, and a morning – converted several ‘annual limits’, and transferred to my overseas account directly.
I know for a fact this isn’t within regulation – HSBC has a sign up saying as much, but the lady at the BOC not only suggested but didn’t hide the process whatsoever as we sorted it out, so I guess it’s pretty common.
@Merior @Rick in China allow me to hijack this thread for a related question:
I am currently using a simple CMB account to send money home. Would there be any obvious benefit in having a Chinese HSBC Advance account in stead? How different would that be from a HK one?
I’ve been in some really ridiculous situations with Chinese banks before, and I always have this fear in the back of my head of somehow losing access to my account and my money, lol.
Don’t have 500k RMB, so a Premier account is out of the question.
Do not get an advanced account. There is some fee involved and it adds up – I had an advanced account then upgraded it, and there was like, over 1k RMB in fees outstanding which left me WTFuckin furious and emailing various account managers and stuff for a while trying to sort it. There is also no benefit with advanced account as you still pay the fees – only premier is fee-less for the int’l transfers.
As for multi-country accounts basically if you have one overseas you can open another here of the same ‘level’, so for example, I have almost no money at any time in my Chinese HSBC account – just do a deposit (in USD, converted by someone else), then transfer to Canadian HSBC account via phone app, simple.
If your current process works, I’d just stick with it, no sense in changing for the sake of changing and again, HSBC advanced is a terrible idea 😛
I dumped the premier account as there are other banks in China who pay higher rates of interest that also have full banking services such as credit cards that my wife can take advantage of. Any money transferred from the UK remains in my wife’s HSBC Chengdu sterling account for as long as it takes her to transfer it to a US $ account or a RMB account. If it gets transferred to an HSBC RMB account then it will be transferred out to another bank in a matter of days for higher interest rates.
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