Bank transfer

A bank transfer is the movement of funds from your account to another account using your bank's infrastructure. The transfer can be domestic, between accounts within the same country, or international, routed through global banking networks. Your bank debits your account, credits the recipient's account, and records the transaction in both sets of records.

On a transfer that crosses currencies, the advertised fee is rarely where the money goes. The larger charge is the exchange rateTermForeign exchange×الصرف الأجنبيThe market where one currency is traded for another, at a rate that changes constantly based on supply and demand.Open the term: your bank converts at a rate a little worse than the one quoted between banks, and that margin — commonly one to three per cent — is a fee that never appears on a line labelled fee. On a transfer of ten thousand it is usually worth several times the transfer charge itself, which is why "zero commission" is an easy promise to make.

The second surprise is that the amount you send is not always the amount that arrives. An international transfer can pass through a correspondent bank on the way, and that bank may take its own cut from the funds in transit, before the receiving bank takes another at the far end. Some banks let you specify that you will bearTermBear market×السوق الهابطةA prolonged period when stock and asset prices fall 20% or more from their recent peak, driven by investor fear and selling.Open the term all charges so the recipient receives the full figure; the default option usually does not do that.

So compare transfers the only way that means anything: ask what the recipient will actually receive, and compare that one number across providers on the same day. Everything else is a headline.

• Ask for the rate you are being given and compare it against the interbank rate that day. The gap is the real fee.
• Your bank deducts its fees from your account, and the receiving bank may deduct additional fees from the incoming amount.
• Cross-border transfers typically take several business days; transfers within one banking system are often instant.
• Some banks impose daily or monthly limits on transfer amounts or frequency, and a transfer above a limit is usually rejected rather than split.