Best Way to transfer money to a bank in India

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
1
Hi Folks!

Question could be specific to mainly indian nationals:

I need to transfer a certain amount to India from my account. My online banking states an option of transferring the amount either in CHF or in Indian Rupees.

Any clue as to which option would be better (per experience) to get a better exchange rate? Do swiss banks provide better rates than indian banks?

Thanks and Happy New year,

Vinayak

2
Depends on the bank and on the day the transaction will occur. One thing to note is that you will be charged exchange transaction fee (around 20 CHF) if you transfer in INR but you will pay similar amount in INR (to the Indian bank) if you prefer to make the transaction in CHF. Hope this helps. If you have further questions, let me know.

3
Hi Vinayak,

Its best to send as CHF & let Indian Banks convert the same to INR. Do not convert to INR & remit as the rate of conversion you get (of-course w.r.t. prevailing market rate) will be far worse than the one you can expect to get in India, assuming that the market does not 'move' significantly during the time difference. The rate currently is around all-time high so..Happy remitting

4

One of my colleague had experimented with both the options and found that the conversion offered by his indian bank was better than the swiss bank...and he recommended to use payable currency as CHF...

5
I had the same experience...

btw just wondering is there an alternative to transfer to Indian banks...like a French guy told me they have a contract with an agency which allows them to transfer for a fixed rate up to a predetermined period regardless of the FX rate volatility...any idea this can be for INR as well ?

6
Hi all , just for info if this helps. I am not sure about other regions, but in Vaud, using BCV net-banking, the charge is a flat fee of CHF 6.00 (irrespective of the amount being used).

And if transferred to ICICI Bank in India, they charge a fee of Rs. 20 as conversion charges, which I feel is a good deal.

7
Pay in CHF. The exchange rate offered by the Indian banks is way better than the commission charged by my swiss bank, at least at present.

8
Note: I know the post is old, and perhaps the OP has already his views on transfer by now.

Using UBS to ICICI Transfers, it works the best while using CHF. UBS charges 5CHF when you select option (All costs borne by benificiery or, more recently, Automatic option). ICICI on the other hand does not charge anything from their side for the transaction.

As opposed to someone else stating above, I have not seen Rs20 charges in my ICICI bank statement. Nor do I think selecting "All costs borne by sender" option is good, since then you pay 20CHF here.

Unfortunately, I do not have ideas about other bank combinations, CreditSuisse-HDFC etc. Perhaps someone else can help you out.

9
I guess Money2India is the best...

10
But there is a diff in Exchange Rate if you go for a CHF 5 option of CHF 25 option from UBS. From my exp with the CHF 25 option, the diff between the day exchange rate and the rate ICICI gives you is lower than the CHF 5 option. I would say for smaller amounts aka less than 4000-5000 CHF CHF 5 is good but for higher amounts like CHF 10000 the CHF 25 option is better. Not sure how this pans our in Money2India.

11
Hi folks,

Apart from the wire transfer services provided by the banks, what are the other ways to transfer money to banks in India in a cost-efficient and fast way?

Best Regards

-lj

12
I think, wire transfer is the best way of doing it.

If you still want make cost-efficient, carry it with you.

13
money transfer from a post finance student account to an Indian bank acc

14
I aggree. PostFinance is the best option for you. They charge only about 2 CHF for the regular transfer and 10-12 for the expediated one. I recently sent some money using post finance and the conversion rate was competitive as well.

15
i need to transfer from my ubs account to icici/axis/sbi account in india

after going through about it on ef/internet still not exactly sure how it works

can i just transfer from my ubs ebanking ? why do people use services like money2india, etc.. ? then icici website suggests a correspondent bank account

for "wire transfers"..

Beneficiary IBAN : is this just the indian bank account number .. i am not sure if indian banks participate in IBAN..

Beneficiary's bank : is there a swift code for each branch ? i want to transfer in chf(and let icici convert ..guess thats the better option?) ..or is there is swift code for each currency ..but then this swift code is for correspondent branch ? where can i mention final beneficiary then ?

or should I uncheck BIC and use the Bankcode option ...what happens then?

16
Yes you can transfer directly from UBS ebanking without using money2india services. It costs 5 CHF for abroad transfers. With money2India, there was no charge of 5 CHF and the transfer is made to their Zurich account.

No just enter the account number. There's no IBAN for indian accounts

Yes there is a swift code by currency for each bank. If you are transferring with UBS ebanking to your ICICI bank account, the swift code to be used is ICICINBBNRI. You enter your account number as beneficiary. There's no need to choose the correspondent bank but if you want to force your bank to use one specific correspondent bank, you may do so by entering instructions to your order. Choose costs to be automatic or split.

Though money transfer is smooth this way too but there are indeed better ways than this...

17
"Though money transfer is smooth this way too but there are indeed better ways than this..."

like ?

18
It's better to use global banks like citibank for money transfer as their exchange rates are very competitive and the costs are lower. No interim correspondant bank costs involved.

19
i just used post finance to transfer some to icici bank ...it took one day more and some how 8 chf were missing.. never had such an experience with ubs

20
Probably illegal, but: in your pocket?