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How do you transfer money to India

2.5K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  Redtape  
#1 ·
Hello,

How do most people transfer their monies to India ? Is there a website/service better than the other ? Are there any free providers at all ?

Cheers,
 
#2 ·
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#3 · (Edited)
Hi happybuddha,

Most people transfer through SBI. You have to have an account with SBI and then you can initiate the transfer. As far as I know you will get little higher exchange rate when you compare with all other services. Just google SBIUK . But to create an account you have to identify yourself @ their point of verification outlets which is in general local post office.

There are other ways like ICICI Money2INDIA (which recently resumed their services) and through CITI bank as well. In case of Citibank you will be given an NRI account + one local CIti account. The advantage with CITI is your amount will be credited to your Indian CITI account immediately where as others may take a day or two to do. Choose according to your needs.

If you are transferring huge amount then you can negotiate the exchange price to some extent.

I've used all these previously but my bets are with SBI.

Hope this helps.

Cheers !!
 
#4 ·
Most of these services have a fees associated with them. For ex, mates at work tell me SBI charges 10 bucks per transfer.
Are there any services which are free and offer the best exchange rates ? For example xoom, SBI, HDFC and money2india are very commonly used by people in the US, but very few know of service X(a small bank in India) which offered the highest exchange rate and was free. I always made/transferred a few hundred if not a few thousand more than what I would if I were using the 'known' services.
Anyone heard or used TorFx ? Amounts over 2000 (now, was it 1000 ?) incur no charges. I compared a base amount of $2000 to be transferred using TorFx and SBI and it looked like I would make a few hundred rupees more if I used TorFx. But have never used TorFx's services before.