The most common misunderstanding about SWIFT wire transfers is that "OUR" instruction means you pay all transfer charges. In reality "OUR" means that you pay all bank charges
payable to your bank. There will be more fees - the correspondent bank(s) will deduct "correspondent bank fee" from the amount you transfer -
the receiver will receive less than you sent. Usually this difference is about $10 (when the correspondent bank is Citibank or Standard Chartered Bank - according by my experience). But sometimes this difference is a much greater - about $100 or even more (especially when there are several correspondent banks in the chain).
Also the receiver's bank may take
another fee from the receiver.
Usually your bank cannot tell you how much will cost the transfer (how much fees correspondent banks will deduct from the transfer). Some bank employees (newbies) even don't know about this
dirty practice. Also this is not stated clearly in the Terms of Service and Tariff Guide (it is
obfuscated with legal jargon - it means that
this theft is completely legal).
Some European banks are working with several correspondent banks in chain, therefore there will be a several correspondent bank fees taken by every bank from the chain.
Some users complain about this:
Topic: BEWARE OKPAY bank wiresOkpay finally replied to the 9% fee question.
Here is what they said
There are no hidden charges, however we would like to warn you that correspondent bank charges can be applied and vary and (deducted from the sent amount).
Please do not ask us to give you the exact fee for the transfer you will send as it all depends on the country and the way banking system works is that in many cases you can not calculate the amount with 100% guarantees.
If you would like to get the detailed report on the fees and transfer times associated with your recent wire withdrawal feel free to request a SWIFT confirmation (subject to fees).
Note that I paid for the $45 transfer fee from my end, so the
only other fee is OKPAY's bank receiving fee.
They are saying they don't know what's the fee for them to receive funds. And if I were to request a SWIFT confirmation, they want to charge me more money for it.
In sum, they can say their bank charges them $5000 to receive a $5000 transfer, and get away with it, b/c according to them, the fees varies, and if you want a report, you would have to pay again.
Let's say the report fee is $100, so I transfer $200. They come back and say that $200 transfer have a $200 fee, and thus, not enough funds are left for the report.
This is total scam, at least for wire transfers from USA
This "scam" is completely legal.
This is not true: "only other fee is OKPAY's bank receiving fee" - there is also correspondent bank fees.
Actually there is a "hidden charges" but they are hidden by the banking system, not by OKPAY. On the OKPAY's website the fees (taken by OKPAY and their bank) are stated clearly. Also they have a warning about correspondent bank fees:
* The bank charges are USD: 1% (min. $12, max. $20); EUR: 0% for SEPA countries (when using Sofort banking details), all other countries: 1% (min. €10, max. €14); GBP: £4 on all incoming transfers. Please note, this is not the commission of OKPAY.
** Minimal bank transfer allowed to withdraw is €150 EUR / $150 USD. Correspondent bank charges vary and are paid by the sender.
*** Service fees of Exchange Partners may vary.
However, it is not clear that correspondent bank fees are applied to wire deposits, besides to the withdrawals. They should add more clear warning about this (despite that your bank should warn you about this).
