International Money Transfer

[ulhaq]

Is bitcoin cheaper than other options for international money transfer? I have seen many agree with it and many dispute it, but not with hard numbers.

As other options are expressed in terms of a percentage (eg, 4% fees), this needs to be the comparison for bitcoin, at various amounts of money, despite that bitcoin transaction fees are apparently unrelated to the amount being sent. Let's also say for the sake of argument that a transfer within 24 hours is acceptable.

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[Wind_FURY]

Bitcoin transaction fees are related to how large your transactions are.

Bitcoin might still be a cheaper choice to send international money transfers but the fees are getting larger and larger. Blame politics, human nature for greed and control or pride.

[RoommateAgreement]

as Wind_FURY said the bitcoin transaction fees are fixed based on the size in bytes. so if you send $10 or $10,000,000 you pay the same if the size is the same. you pay something around $1-$1.5 and get the confirmation in ~10 minutes.

now the question is what the other person is going to do with it. if you want to transfer "money" to someone else, things become a bit complicated.
if you don't have bitcoin you have to buy it: money deposit in exchange to buy and pay buying fee
then easily transfer.
the other person has to sell the bitcoin and withdraw fiat, again money withdrwal fee to bank

[flower1024]

Bitcoin transaction fees are related to how large your transactions are.

Bitcoin might still be a cheaper choice to send international money transfers but the fees are getting larger and larger. Blame politics, human nature for greed and control or pride.

I fee that now Bitcoins are no more so attractive to send or received money but it is good only for investment purpose. Because I send money through bank to my home country without any additional charges and if I do a transaction in business hours then the transaction will be done less than one hour time. But nowadays even after paying highest fee sometimes, we may need to wait for few hours to get the transactions to confirm on blockchain network. I consider bitcoins are good only for investment purpose.

[ulhaq]

as Wind_FURY said the bitcoin transaction fees are fixed based on the size in bytes. so if you send $10 or $10,000,000 you pay the same if the size is the same. you pay something around $1-$1.5 and get the confirmation in ~10 minutes.

now the question is what the other person is going to do with it. if you want to transfer "money" to someone else, things become a bit complicated.
if you don't have bitcoin you have to buy it: money deposit in exchange to buy and pay buying fee
then easily transfer.
the other person has to sell the bitcoin and withdraw fiat, again money withdrwal fee to bank

If it is $1-$1.50 to send, then that makes bitcoin far cheaper to send than any other international transfer option, contrary to some articles I've seen.

I consider bitcoin money.

@flower1024, if bitcoin is not attractive anymore to send or receive money (you say you are just interested for investment purposes now), then it fails as an investment, because eventually use of the currency will decrease. I do not consider a few hours to be an issue.

[samuraijin]

I think so too that bitcoin has just started a new era for everyone who can transfer their money from users to other users without third parties and other intermediaries, any problems that occur in bitcoin transactions, I think this is just a start to be something big in the future

[coolcoinz]

Bitcoin transaction fees are related to how large your transactions are.

Bitcoin might still be a cheaper choice to send international money transfers but the fees are getting larger and larger. Blame politics, human nature for greed and control or pride.

You haven't explained well enough because "large" usually means the amount of money sent. It's of course different with Bitcoin, you're not paying a percentage of the transferred amount, so it's obviously a better and cheaper choice if you want to send large sums.
Bitcoin fee is usually the same if you're sending from 1 address to another. The more addresses take part in the transaction, the more expensive it becomes.
Right now a moderate fee of 150-200 satoshis per byte (around 50k in total for an average size transaction) will get you a confirmation in less than 24h, which is faster than a bank transfer.

[findingthemoon]

If you are looking purely at the transaction fees then bitcoin is nearly always cheaper but if you look at the conversation from 1 fiat currency to bitcoin then bitcoin to another fiat currency you will have a lot of exchange fees added to it in which case it is not so clear which is the cheaper option.

[Qartada]

The Bitcoin transaction fees are extremely trivial when you're transferring large amounts of money as you would typically be doing during these international transfers.

Realistically, the people transferring Bitcoin over the borders would actually be intending to transfer fiat using Bitcoin, which is where it gets more complicated.

You'd have to think about the exchange fees - typically you'd be talking about somewhere between 0.1 and 0.25% on each side, depending on the amount being transferred.

You could also trade with LocalBitcoins, but the price fluctuations that occur in the period before you get the opportunity to make that transfer could result in a significant dent to your funds.

There's also a value to convenience, to some extent.  You'd have to consider how much time these people will be spending figuring out how to complete the transaction and what to do, and how much that time is worth to them.

So it's pretty mixed.  If the two parties were already quite aware of Bitcoin and knew how they were going to execute the transaction, I think it could be quite a bit cheaper.  This wouldn't necessarily be the case all the time though.

[gentlemand]

Probably not, especially with how divergent Bitcoin markets are around the world.

The actual sending of the Bitcoin is the easy and cheap part. The turning fiat into BTC and the same at the other end has the possibility of costing vast amounts depending on how good your local services are.

I assume this is the part that Abra aims to streamline but I don't know how effective it is yet.

[Pettuh4]

Well it's cheaper per the transaction cost but the conversions from fiat to Bitcoin and vice versa can also be free if you buy from an exchange in any Islamic country like the UAE, it is the same as its market rate without any profit. They actually sell a voucher with the same amount as the Bitcoin price that you can buy an recharge for the same amount on bitoasis

[Wind_FURY]

Bitcoin transaction fees are related to how large your transactions are.

Bitcoin might still be a cheaper choice to send international money transfers but the fees are getting larger and larger. Blame politics, human nature for greed and control or pride.

I fee that now Bitcoins are no more so attractive to send or received money but it is good only for investment purpose. Because I send money through bank to my home country without any additional charges and if I do a transaction in business hours then the transaction will be done less than one hour time. But nowadays even after paying highest fee sometimes, we may need to wait for few hours to get the transactions to confirm on blockchain network. I consider bitcoins are good only for investment purpose.

Then maybe you are not using it the right way? Having Bitcoins as an investment is ok, but using it to buy drugs in the dark market or using it to launder money or help a friend evade taxes will always be perfect use cases for Bitcoin. But sending $5 worth of Bitcoin to a friend as a "tip" is stupid. Send him the real $5 instead.

[brobbel]

If it is $1-$1.50 to send, then that makes bitcoin far cheaper to send than any other international transfer option, contrary to some articles I've seen.

I consider bitcoin money.

@flower1024, if bitcoin is not attractive anymore to send or receive money (you say you are just interested for investment purposes now), then it fails as an investment, because eventually use of the currency will decrease. I do not consider a few hours to be an issue.

Depending on where you send the money. In Europe there is the SEPA (Single European Payment Area). When you send money using SEPA is it the same price as sending money locally.

In my case: when I send it private there are no costs involved at all. When sending it with my business it's about EUR 0.08 (approx. USD 0.09)
This is for payments up to EUR 25000

[Dudeperfect]

Is bitcoin cheaper than other options for international money transfer? I have seen many agree with it and many dispute it, but not with hard numbers.

As other options are expressed in terms of a percentage (eg, 4% fees), this needs to be the comparison for bitcoin, at various amounts of money, despite that bitcoin transaction fees are apparently unrelated to the amount being sent. Let's also say for the sake of argument that a transfer within 24 hours is acceptable.

For me, I used to deal using PayPal when I used to accept payments from my clients located around the world so PayPal used to take some fees and since the PayPal has serious restrictions in my country, they used to charge little more so I was paying little more charges for no reason. When I shifted to bitcoin, then I realised that it is not only eliminating the time of payment but also the charges. Yes, event at this stage I find bitcoin is better than any other fund transfer system.

[crairezx20]

If it is $1-$1.50 to send, then that makes bitcoin far cheaper to send than any other international transfer option, contrary to some articles I've seen.

I consider bitcoin money.

@flower1024, if bitcoin is not attractive anymore to send or receive money (you say you are just interested for investment purposes now), then it fails as an investment, because eventually use of the currency will decrease. I do not consider a few hours to be an issue.

Depending on where you send the money. In Europe there is the SEPA (Single European Payment Area). When you send money using SEPA is it the same price as sending money locally.

In my case: when I send it private there are no costs involved at all. When sending it with my business it's about EUR 0.08 (approx. USD 0.09)
This is for payments up to EUR 25000

It is the same as here offer in our wallet coins.ph that you can send your money easily using sepa via bitwala.
Well i think bitcoin are be still good way to transfer money fast with low fee. unlike paypal when sending to far places outside in your country it will ask for the fee and the amount of fee depends how long and how much you want to transfer to other country that can receive by the receiver.. So for me still bitcoin is the best choice because of cheap fee..

[kayeme]

Bitcoin is still cheaper than any other option I've seen for international transfers, but I can't say I'm sure it always will be, as the fees keep rising. At the rate its going I could easily imagine fees in the 20$+ range per average transaction at some point in the future.

[Lorilikes]

I am sure you found out by now that for most circumstances the fees for transferring fiat are insane.  Like through the roof and yet, bitcoin fees are pretty small in reality.

[Kakmakr]

Bitcoin to Bitcoin is definitely cheaper, but when the 3rd party services are used to convert Bitcoin to Fiat, then it becomes a whole new story. These 3rd parties will add fees and some of these services are linked to banks and they charge fees too. < In the end, it comes down to how you are doing the international money transfer and how you are using those coins >

We should encourage people to approach their local merchants to accept Bitcoin directly, so that they would not need to convert bitcoins to Fiat. ^smile^

[Amph]

it's definitely cheaper, in this regard, bitcoin has a big edge on international transfer, just take at look at this example

in my case with deutesche bank i need to pay 25 euro to transfer money abroad, and this apply to any sum, with bitcoin you will never pay a fee that big to send money to soemone else on another country

another good think bitcoin is good at is the conversion, when you convert usd with euro and receive money in your bank account they take 3.5% like paypal, with bitcoin you will never lose this percentage

[realinfo.co]

Bitcoin is cheaper way to transfer money worldwide but as per its growing nature people got more interested in it