Transferring Money from the Homeland

It took over two months but I was finally able to establish a bank account in Bali. The main reason is that tourists are not allowed to open bank accounts. So I had to establish a form of residency by obtaining a retirement visa and a kitas (a type of “stay” permit but not true residency).

So rather than continuously relying on ATM transfers which tend to max out at 2.5 million rupiah ($185 USD) per transaction and come with high fees, I can now transfer money electronically from my USA bank to my Indonesian bank in Bali.

Since the fee at Bank of America is $35 for an international wire, I wanted to transfer a significant amount of money, which would cover a scooter purchase and many months of living:

As you can see the amount of rupiah that the Bank of America wanted to send me was 96,028,088, which translates to $7,115. That’s a hidden currency exchange fee of $385 or .051%. And that doesn’t include the wire fee of $35!

At first I was annoyed at the $35 fee. And then I was furious at the currency transfer rate !$%^#&@!!!

So I went to Transferwise and here’s what happened:

The maximum TransferWise transfer is $1,000. Their fee is $11.88 USD, and so if we multiply that by 7.5 to compare to the $7,500 I wanted to transfer with the B of A you get fees of $89.10.

The difference is:

Bank of America $420 (including the $35 wire fee)

Transferwise $89

Now even $89 sounds like a rip-off but money exchanging is an enormous business and everyone skims. But the Bank of America is tiptoeing into an almost criminal case of unfairly punishing the ignorant tourist who may only move money once.

Shame on them.