Opening a bank account may have been trivial, but today I encountered the much more difficult problem of actually transferring money into my new account. My main choices seem to be ludicrously slow or ludicrously expensive.
I had hoped to be able to just write myself a cheque frim my UK account and deposit it in my Estonian one. Unfortunately I was informed that this would take two to three weeks to clear! I considered just withdrawing cash via an ATM and depositing that, but my UK bank will limit how much I can withdraw per day, charge me 1.5% (min £1.75) per withdrawal, and also sneakily take an extra 2.75% on the exchange rate (which most people never notice). So it seems my only sensible option is a SWIFT transfer, and its £21 fee!
I’m probably going to have to transfer money quite regularly, so I really hope there’s another method that I’m just being too stupid to think of …
What about paypal – you could send money to yourself if you set up an estonian paypal account?
From what I can tell I can’t withdraw money from Paypal to an Estonian bank account. Even if I could, they charge a hefty rate on cross-border transactions, so I don’t think this would ever be any better than the ATM option.
What about moneybookers.com? They have small bank account in both (Estonia and UK) and their fees are rather low. Only problem is that it will take few days to transfer the money from UK bank to Moneybookers and then from Moneyookers to Estonian bank account.
Hans already said moneybookers.com, and no doubt you’ve sorted it out by now, but I just wanted to add my recommendation.
(here via #london.pm where Simon Cozens suggested I read up on your Estonian adventures.)