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TOKYO, JAPAN - May 11, 2012 - It took some doing, but we have finally sorted out our SEPA Withdrawal conundrum! As of May 10th, our European customers who wish to withdraw funds into their European bank account via SEPA can once more do so thanks to our new Withdraw Center.

All funds will be send through our Polish account and will involve the following fees:

- Withdrawals below 10€ are not possible
- Withdrawals come with a 2% fee with a minimum of 1% + 5 PLN 1% fee with minimum of 5.5 PLN

 As is standard for SEPA customers should expect a 1 to 5 working day delay from the time the withdrawal is initiated until seeing funds arrive in your personal bank account.

Of course if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact any of our support team and open a ticket at : support@mtgox.com.

Regards,
Mt.Gox Co. Ltd Team.
Media Contacts
press@mtgox.com

Aww, a little high, don't you think ? SEPA transfers don't have a fee, you could charge 1-1,50 eur processing fee easily though.


I think i will pass then until you guys have more personnel to handle the work and lower the fees.

SEPA transfers can indeed have bank fees. The SEPA rules only dictate that banks cannot charge more for international EUR transfers than for domestic EUR transfers. Only in the case that domestic EUR transfers are free then must international EUR transfers be free as well.

Domestic EUR transfers often have fees in countries that did not adopt the Euro fully. I.e. Poland.

SEPA transactions have to be completed within 1 business day, so the holdup is purely on your end, correct?

Also: SEPA transactions are NOT free (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area#Misconceptions) - most are for private bank accounts, business accounts on the other hand often cost flat fees of a few cents per booking. I haven't heard of a percentage fee on transfers though...

A little late, don't you think? It's been how long since we heard last about SEPA?

Just came here to say: The only withdraws I do at MTGOX are in Bitcoin!

 :-*

2% can be very expensive.

I think Intersango only charge me 50p 20p...

This is bullshit.

According to the EU Payment Services Directive, bank transfers in whole EU+EEA zone have to be credited to the destination bank account latest the next working day (provided they're ordered by some defined cut-off hour). And this actually works.

If you transfer takes more then 1 working day to arrive, don't believe these fake MtGox explanations about bank delays of 5 days - the truth will be that MtGox didn't submit the transfer on they day they told you they did.

Oh, and actually the cut-off time for SEPA in Bank Zachodni WBK is 23:30:

http://indywidualni.bzwbk.pl/przewodniki/polecenie-wyplaty/godziny-graniczne.html

see the table at the very end of this page:

pilny    EUR GBP USD PLN    23:30

So I recommend that withdrawals are processed every day around 23:00 polish time (CEST = GMT+2 currently) - that will assure lowest average waiting time.

Actually on that page they write about the directive and that they are fully compliant with it.

And I've tested that Bank Zachodni WBK sends the SEPA transfers SEPA cycle 1, and that is usually credited on the destination account sometime between 12:00 and 14:00 (Central European Time). So That's when it makes sense to log on to your bank account to check if its there (unless your banks sucks and credits them a few hours later, but it has to be there by the end of the day.

To learn more about SEPA (STEP2) clearing, read here: https://www.ebaclearing.eu/

And I assume the MtGox's withdrawal account is at Bank Zachodni WBK, because the deposit account is there, so its probably the same.

This is really strange... and what the hack is 2% for? Isn't the idea of SEPA to have flat fee around 0.5eur for all transactions lower than 50.000eur?

The fee is strange but then again there are other exchanges out there that have no extra fee for SEPA so use them if it bothers you. I'm glad Gox offers this option though.

I have a feeling that Mt.Gox is trying to make even more profit with SEPA transfers.

Sorry but you won't get clientele this way. There is intersango and it provides lower fees.

Intersango is much cheaper and is a better option  :-\

bitstamp.net has proven to be a reliable service to me for sepa and still is. Not affiliated in any way with them

Yup, that too is fine

Please try to be fair. They have liquidity problems (see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80562.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80562.0)), so they'll have to raise some money somehow. I'd say it's better if they raise the money from their customers and provide reasonable service to the customers in exchange, rather than going with their previous venture (selling user data to the DEA: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/15/financial-bitcoin-idUKN1510930920110615 (http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/15/financial-bitcoin-idUKN1510930920110615)). I'm confident that at the point where they have their customers' deposits backed by real money, they will consider offering competitive fees and processing times. So, I'm not averse to recommending them, provided that they'll update their terms some day so it makes clear that personal data of customers will not be abused or disclosed to third parties.

Could be, but if so my bank publishes the same bullshit. When I make a SEPA transfer they tell me to expect "3 to 5 days" before it's in the receiver's account.

In actuality I usually see 2-3 days.

Then show them this, if they don't comply, check if the country where your bank is registered has transposed the directive to national law, and if so - find the national law and sue them:

http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/framework/psd_en.htm
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:319:0001:01:EN:HTML

Directive 2007/64/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 November 2007 on payment services in the internal market

Article 69

Payment transactions to a payment account

1. Member States shall require the payer's payment service provider to ensure that, after the point in time of receipt in accordance with Article 64, the amount of the payment transaction is credited to the payee's payment service provider's account at the latest by the end of the next business day. Until 1 January 2012, a payer and his payment service provider may agree on a period no longer than three business days. These periods may be extended by a further business day for paper-initiated payment transactions.

A bit of clarification is needed here.

1. 1 to 5 Business Day. Yes we all agree on this point that SEPA transfer as to be done in 1 business day or 24h. However, experience taught us that it can take, depending of the bank and circumstances (Public Holidays and so on) up to 5 business day. Also if the an Intermediary bank is involved in the process, and this happen fairly often, this will take at least 3 days : 24h for our Bank, 24h for the Intermediary Bank and the day after that for your Bank.

2. Fees, oh yes those evil fees! Yep even us are not to fund on them! The fees that has been mentioned earlier are external to Mt.Gox. By this I mean that in this very case intermediaries and Banks are in fact receiving those fees and not us!
And to follow on this very important subject, we are working/negotiating better fees and hope to offer you soon something better in this regards. We have a few solution that we would love to see happening soon!

Cheers!

1. There is no intermediary bank in SEPA zone, only SWIFT messaging is used between them. Tranfers show up in the receiver account in 24h and are made effective, can be spent, in 48h.

2. Fees are non-existent but some banks do charge a fixed fee (1,50-2,50 euro) depending if the funds are sent locally or outside national borders. The only reason i can come up with for mtgox to charge such a high fee is if they pass their international wires to SEPA fee onto their customers successfully disabling any advantages the euro zone provides.

How could you come up with such bullshit? This doesn't even make any sense! The term "next business day" already accounts for public holidays, so you can't explain a "5 business day" delay with holidays in between, this is absurd. Transfers submitted to the bank on Friday before the cut-off hour (23:30 in BZWBK), appear in the receiving bank on Monday afternoon, period!

And you are completely clueless with the intermediaries, Directive 2007/64/EC doesn't allow any "extra 24h for each intermediary", it has to appear the next business day in the customers account even if there are a 100 intermediaries in between, if your bank doesn't do that, you can just sue it.

Besides that there are no intermediaries in SEPA, SEPA doesn't work like old international SWIFT wires that they have to go through banks which are correspondents of each other - SEPA has a common clearinghouse for all participating banks: https://www.ebaclearing.eu/

This clearing house has two cycles of processing: in cycle 1, in which all transfers submitted by banks sending then until 02:00 at night are processed, and released to the banks they are meant for at 09:00. There is a cycle 2 with the cut-off hour at 13:00 and releases at 15:00. Most banks only use one of these cycles for sending, but receive from both of them and credit customers accounts in 2-3 hours after receiving from the clearinghouse (that means around noon for Cycle 1, and around 17:00 for Cycle 2). There is also a new, third night cycle, but its rarely used by banks: in by 01:00, out by 02:45. All cycles happen only Monday-Friday excluding public holidays.

And this actually works this way, I've done tests of transfers between many obscure banks and the transfers are actually there the next business day! Some banks cut-off at 16:00, some at 19:30, some at 23:00, some may at 15:00, but that's about it for differences.

I get SMS exactly at the moment I receive a SEPA transfer, you are welcome to test from obscure banks by sending me a 0.01 EUR SEPA noting the day and time it was submitted to the bank, and I'll tell you exactly when it was credited to my account. I've done many of such tests, and read SEPA STEP2 documentation at https://www.ebaclearing.eu/ so I know very well what I am talking about.

And what is "2% fee with a minimum of 1%" BTW? That also doesn't make sense! 2% is of course larger then 1%, so I have no idea what did you mean here? Is that a disguised 3%?

And BTW, your polish bank (Bank Zachodni WBK), charges only these 5 PLN for SEPA. All the %'s is only your (and/or the people's who you give the transfers to submit them to Bank Zachodni WBK maybe) profit.

And BTW: will you waive the withdrawal fee if the customer has an account also at the same bank as you?
http://www.bzwbk.pl/
Anyone with a passport and perhaps a second ID, can go to any branch in Poland and open one.

And they sell prepaid VISA cards with no ID asked, which have an account number (inside BZWBK) to fund them.
I can send you such card (in EUR) for 3 BTC (there is a bit of profit in that, but not much taking into account my time and risk if the card is lost in post) shipped worldwide if you want.
Withdrawing from an MtGox account to such card's number should be free of charge (at least it is from Intersango who have an account at the same polish bank).

I can find a lot of interesting information about SEPA if I search, and if I follow links posted here.

Yet, my bank tells me that while they mostly support SEPA they take it upon themselves to block transfers to certain SEPA countries (my bank specifically does not allow transfers to Romania, Bulgaria and Lichtenstein). I've sent a question to the ECB asking if that's allowed but I don't expect a respons for another few weeks at least.

While researching this I found a list, somewhere, with the names of banks and whether they were participating in some or all of three different aspects of SEPA. In my country, only the two very largest banks seemed to participate in all three, my bank was only listed under one of the headings (credit transfer).

http://epc.cbnet.info/content/adherence_database

Thus I'm not at all sure all the info linked to can be said to always apply.

They are definitely not allowed to do that.

Great info !

Believe what you want to believe... Still with experience we seems transfer taking more than one day, so in order to be in the safe side, and while we totally agree with you guys on the fact that it should normally take no more than 24h, we prefer to announce a 1 to 5 business day on SEPA, because, once again, we seens some taking more than 24h. Hope I am clear on this one.

Now this said, we made succeed to cut a better deal with our bank and also this will make it easier for everybody, the new fees implied are now : 1% fee with minimum of 5.5 PLN.

Thanks

withdraw wizard still shows 2%, tho.

Come on guys. Keep on nagging, I'm sure they can go still a bit lower  ;D

Come on, let the poor chap typing in the transfers in Poland keep the 1% and 0.50 PLN (The 5 PLN is charged for SEPA by Bank Zachodni WBK for all accounts). Would you like to sit there whole day and type in transfers for free? LOL :)
He has to eat also, you know what would happen if he'd starve? Would you like him to develop malnutrition? Don't be so cruel, give him the cash. He already lost half of his income, because you didn't like to pay 2%, and now he has to type in at least a 1000 EUR of SEPA per day just to eat. And where is the money for a house, phones, parties, trips to Bitcoin conference, cars, planes, presents for girls, come on...

yeah, i would gladly pay 10 or 15 PLN for every SEPA transfer i make before being taxed a percentage, what difference does it make to type 1 or 5 zeroes ? I would love to use mtgox services but this is unacceptable, at last we still have exchangers out there that think for their customers interest.

And how about my own 'malnutrition'?
MtGox has cost me about USD 300 (or was it 400?) because they allowed themselves to get 'hacked'.
After a short "we will investigate it", I never heard back about it.
I have my serious doubts about them, and am still very weary to use *any* exchange any more.
Thanks a lot.

Sorry for that, we forget to modify one of the default text. This has now been fixed, and thank you for letting us now.

FYI, I've now received a response from the ECB to questions I raised about my bank and its policy of not allowing SEPA transfers to all participating countries.


What I think it says is that my bank has a lot of leeway since my country, while being an EU member, hasn't adopted the euro as national currency. Posting this here since it might offer some more information as to why MtGox, like myself, has seen SEPA transfers taking longer than next business day.

Thank you for your understanding of our situation.  Our colleague in Poland has informed us that pending SEPA withdrawals up to last week have already been processed on Monday.

works a advertised.
took 2 business day (with a holiday in between).

... and now finally my bank has gotten back to me after performing an in-depth investigation of the regulatory framework:

1) They still claim (and I believe them) that they're allowed to pick and choose which SEPA countries to allow transfers to. They are required to accept transfers from all, though.

2) Since 1st of January all SEPA transfers must indeed be completed end of next business day. They will change their terms of services after having had this pointed out to them. (Thanks to everyone in this thread).

MtGox's Polish bank only processes SEPA withdrawals twice a week.
That's something I got from mtgox support and was never included anywhere else.

So if you decide to withdraw on Tuesday and the bank only processes on Mon and Fri, you'll get your money sometime middle od next week...

My last withdrawals:

5/20 received 5/28 received on the 6th business day after withdrawal
5/23 "confirmed"
5/23 "confirmed"
5/26 "confirmed"

So plusminus a little, it still works as advertised, but I would imagine there's still room for improvement.

Maybe they're strapped for Euros, I dunno.

If its Bank Zachodni WBK (and I strongly think it is, because that's where they have PLN), then its bullshit: Bank Zachodni WBK processes SEPA every working day at 23:30 polish time, and they appear at the other bank next working day around noon. I know, I have myself an account there since 12 years.

I'm very cautious about using MTGOX withdrawals after the agony of last year.
6th day is an improvement but still way too long. Going through a chap in Germany, I get it next day pronto with no fees other than the ECB exchange rate. If payment is initiated in the evening, it adds one more day.

Are you looking for some MTGOX codes by any chance in exchange for a SEPA payment ?
I will split it in half with a MTGOX withdrawal and see which one comes first :)

I don't trade at MtGox at all, although I have their Yubikey, I somehow don't trust their support if something happens (they're slow), so there are plenty of other exchanges with far better support: http://www.intersango.com/ http://www.bitstamp.net/ http://www.bitcoin-24.com/   - all these have SEPA, so there is no reason for me to touch MtGox, and increase their almost-monopoly (on volume) with my volume.

I buy coins at Intersango, and so far there is no EUR Bitinstant or something to deposit MTGOX EUR codes in Intersango. Maybe I can take some MTGOX USD code to deposit via Bitinstant to Bitstamp.net but just a little to test.

If you want to do a test today, I could just buy 1 coin from you via #bitcoin-otc IRC channel, and send you a SEPA from Bank Zachodni WBK this evening just so you see in your bank when it arrives and tell the group (start check your account tomorrow 12:00 - 14:00). You are sure there is no holiday tomorrow in your country (if there is then the test doesn't make sense)?

we can do a SEPA for 1 coin?
great. I am in SepaSwitzerland with a beautiful Euro Account.

No holiday tomorrow and I get an email when funds are deposited.

I have never used bitcoin-OTC yet so this could be a try, or I have a bitmarket.eu account with an open order to sell.
You could just buy 1 and send me 3.9 Euros ?

I did not know about bitcoin-24.com; do you know who is behind them?
and bitstamp is in beautiful Slovenia :)

I encourage you to register on bitcoin-otc and we could give each other a rating later, which will be useful for you to start making trades there (sometimes useful to trade without fees).

Instructions here:
http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/Using_bitcoin-otc#GPG_authentication_requirement
http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/GPG_authentication
Too much text there, in fact you don't need to read most of it.
You just need:
1) a registered nick on Freenode IRC
2) a GPG key

Then on IRC (being connected to Freenode) do this:

You will receive an URL. Use that URL like this:


of course using the URL you got, not the example one above!
GPG will give you a long number, with which you do something like this in your query window with gribble:


And done, we can trade and rate. In fact you only need to do this to rate, Bitcoin/SEPA transfers don't require any of that, we just do them ourselves.
The next time you connect to IRC you only need the last step (everify).

So far I did one trade there and got a rating: http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=miernik

If you want send me your E-mail in a private message and then I'll send you my GPG key to which you can respond with your SEPA account number by encrypted e-mail. You can also get my GPG key here:

http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xBF7AE9131EDCFCD9

Or let GnuPG grab it by itself:



I'll do the SEPA late in the evening, and then you can post here the time you got it on your account, so you can show everybody how much time SEPA from Bank Zachodni WBK really goes.

Oh, seems gribble is down since several hours, you'll have to wait till it comes back up to register on bitcoin-otc.

I believe I already have a bitcoin-otc actually !
http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=bitdragon&sign=ANY&type=RECV

With one rating already :)

received your mail and will revert shortly.

A guy from Germany, very responsive. He promises 0.1 BTC if he doesn't respond to a question within 24 hours. SEPA withdrawals are free of charge and are really done daily. Trade is also free of comission for now. You can deposit instantly via Sofortüberweisung. A really nice exchange, although only 35 days old now.

Gribble is back up, you can use #bitcoin-otc now.

You should be aware that with German Law, this thing is in need of a permit from BaFin, which I am guessing he has not.
So don't park a lot of cash there.

http://www.VirWox.com/ also has bank accounts in Germany (although they're in Austria). And they're a serious company, long time on the market, and they also don't have any special German licence, so...?

And http://www.bitcoin.de/ ?
It's peer-to-peer without bank accounts, but what does it matter if its a official German company?

Where does the information that a Bitcoin exchange in Germany needs any more licence then running a webshop?

Well

if the person running it is German and the thing is run from Germany, then it's German.
I am not trying to hate, I'm just pointing out that this is a pitfall that could be avoided.

bitcoin.de especially is SPECIFICALLY included by KWG §1 Abs. 1a, 1b & 4.

For our German readers: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8142.msg930105#msg930105

Funds received on 01.06.2012 at 15:00:13

Funds arrived the following day !

For completeness: I clicked "submit" in Bank Zachodni WBK exactly at: Thu, 2012-05-31 20:17:01 CEST

It would be the same if I did it till 23:30 CEST, but I wanted to go to sleep.

So, now we have proof how long SEPA transfers from Bank Zachodni WBK really take once they're submitted in the bank. If your withdrawal from MtGox didn't arrive on a day, it means that MtGox in fact did not submit it to the bank the previous day.

So, anyone has conducted tests when SEPA withdrawals from MtGox come to their account, from the moment they requested the withdrawal?

Can you shortly write in English what this KWG article says? My German is still poor.

Anyway, these guys running bitcoin.de know what they are doing, not?

Did you run that through Google translate or post it while drunk?  It's barely comprehensible.

"Calcification", indeed.

Are you kidding me. 1 week for SEPA ?  Still no founds received.

basically it says that if you're trading with BTC (not using them to buy/sell stuff), you need to get a permit from bafin (the german SEC).

OK, I found it in English:
http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/KWG.htm


Where do you see BTC mentioned there? Because my grep fails to find it :)

bitcoin is NOT considered "e-money", it is however legal to create it and spend it.
however, once "it itself becomes subject of trading" that trading becomes "banking"




There you go.

If this interpretation of that text that "trading these units" becomes something which needs a BaFin license, then also everybody buying/selling prepaid GSM phone recharge codes, Ukash codes and similar would require a BaFin license. Which they obviously not, because every Turkish phone shop found on almost every corner sells these. And countless other places.

Trading Bitcoin is no different then trading Vodafone or Ukash scratchcards.

That the value of the code is hidden by a scratchable layer of paint or public key encryption should make no difference - its just a technicality, the principle is the same.

Everybody all around Germany is trading Vodafone/Ukash/Paysafecard/etc codes on scratchcards, etc, so everybody doing that can just as well trade Bitcoin. If trading Vodafone cards is not a problem, then trading Bitcoin also can not be, because its in principle an equivalent thing.

Try to report your nearest Turkish shop which sells GSM phone recharge codes to BaFin and tell us how it went :)

yes it is different, that is exactly what this provision says (and the proviosn quoted therein).
it is okay to exchange BTC for ONE THING or THE OTHER THING but permission is needed if you are only or mostly buying and selling BTC for money.

What else are Turkish phone shops doing then "only or mostly buying and selling Vodafone-codes for money"?

Because these things are not a currency, they are means to an end - vouchers.
These are specifically exempt from regulation.

Please do not make me argue German Law with you, just read it yourself.