Using Moneygram to Send Money

[MrMan]

How many of you have used Moneygram to send money? You can use it to send someone else money overseas or someone can send it to you. There is an online site. Walmart uses Moneygram. There are banks overseas that use it. You can send the money, give the person you want to receive it a code and make sure the name you send it under matches a valid idea. Another way is to deposit the money directly in a foreign bank account.

Let's suppose you have a bank account in the US and in another country. I spent many years in Indonesia so I will use that as an example. I had a US bank account with a debit card and an Indonesian bank account. MoneyGram only charges 1.99 to send money if you pull it from a debit card. But MoneyGram's exchange rate is lousy compared to an Indonesian bank. Once I sent $4000 and the amount it cost me compared to the bank exchange rate with the $1.99 fee was about $64 or so.

That's really not too bad on that amount of money. If I were sending tens of thousands, it might be a terrible deal. I asked my bank how much it was to send money, and they would charge $50. The bank on the other end might charge a fee like that. Then, if you use a small or regular sized bank, the transfer bounces around to these different banks that have international wire systems and they take a huge cut. The bank cannot tell you how much it is going to cost to wire money. There are just these crazy random fees... or there were. I stopped doing that when I saw the fees a couple of decades back. I like to know what I am paying for and make a decision.

I did wire money some time back from HSBC in Indonesia. I knew they had banks on both sides and had an international wire....whatever it is.... set up so it did not have to go through one or two random intermediary banks that would take their cut. I could calculate the percentage and fees up front.

Other options with Moneygram are to give your bank account number. I don't like having to give my SSN and other important info to make the transfer. It feels invasive. I know they are like a bank and banks take that, but I don't like it. I did not give my bank account number because if something happened with my debit card, I could cancel that, and lose whatever money was taken. You are supposed to be able to take the debit card out of your account. that might help if you get hacked, but you have already given it. It may make sense if you do it a bit to have an account just for sending from the US, put money in if you want to send it, and just that much plus whatever else to keep the account open. Sometimes if you have multiple accounts in the US and you keep a minimum balance in one, that's all you need not to pay fees for having the account. I am against the idea, on principal (no pun intended) of paying a bank to use my money.