> >THe cheapest (at least from an european perspective) is still
> >a direct account to account transfer (and the method of coice
> >over here ).
> Huh? That costs about $20 over here. The post office only
> charges a few bucks to do it.
Within Germany they are free (true for most private accounts,
sometime restrictet to 100 or so sending (!) transfers per month)
or only covered by a _very_ small charge like 0.3 or 0.6 USD and
within Europe, depending on your bank and your account type, but
generaly only a _very_ low fee). And if there is a fee, it's
only for sending, never for reciving (with an exception of an
automatic withdraw from your account - like for membership fees -
where the reciving party is paying for the service).
In fact, I'm always astonished about the fact that cheques,
are still a common thing in the US to do regular payments,
like rent, car loan, or what ever - I have seen the last
personal cheque (with an exception of the Eurocheque) over
25 years ago - almost anything is done via bank orders.
I had to learn a lot of new facts about money transfer over
the past year for my classic computer deals. For example,
there are bank institutes in the US that tell their people
they don't know about a SWIFT number, or don't use them ...
Gee - almost like a forgotten island in the international
money world (no, not the UK - the Brits may be conservative,
but they are not that stupid :). SWIFT is the international
transfer system - thats the way how people like Soros shift
billions of dollars within minutes around the world (and
send whole countries to doom) - nobody carries boxes of bucks
around the world since more than 30 years, and it is (if you
pay a fee) open to everyone you could transfer 10 cent or 10
millions within some seconds - to be honest, for 'normal'
people like us, it still takes two working days until you
get a response.
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
Received on Wed Dec 23 1998 - 11:40:25 GMT