Moving money between countries

With all the improvements in communications (cell phones, the Internet, Skype) it is very easy to communicate, regardless of where you are in the world. But it is still very difficult, and costly, to move money between countries.

As I mentioned few posts ago, I bought an HTC TyTn II on Ebay. The seller wanted me to use Western Union instead of Paypal (PayPal is super easy to use to pay for items on Ebay or elsewhere). The thing with Western Union (WU) is that you can find a location with a WU branch pretty much anywhere in the world. The problem with WU is the fees they charge. For me to pay for the phone that I bought, I was charged over 10% in transfer fees!!! Suddenly, an auction that looked like a good deal became expensive. Arghhh!

Then, I needed Carla to move some money to Zagreb so that I can cover rent and other expense for the next few months. Well, I was not going to use Western Union for this! I found a service called an IBAN transfer which can be used to transfer money from your bank to another bank anywhere in the world. The fees turned out to be less than 0.5% (still a bit, but better than WU).

The only trick with the IBAN transfer is to have the correct banking information as you are moving thousands of dollars and want them to end up where you need them. I have noticed that bank tellers are always nervous with this kind of transaction, because they don't want to be responsible for sending your money to a wrong place. After Carla sent the money, I knew that we had provided correct information for the receiving account, but there was still anxiety about money getting to me. I checked the account the next morning and it was all there, minus $1.60 fee that they charged me on the Croatian side. You just can't avoid fees.

Oh, by the way, I had to open a bank account here as a foreigner since I cannot get my Croatian papers for another month. :-(

If anyone has a better, fee-less way of moving money, I would love to hear it.