Best Banks For International Transfers in the USA

If outgoing international wire transfers are an important part of your finances, you'll want a bank that offers you an easy transfer interface, low service fees, fair exchange rates, and speedy transfer times. Unfortunately, these types of transfers tend to be pricey at most American banks, with many charging well over $30 just to instruct a transfer (and that's ignoring the exchange rates and potential correspondent or intermediary fees).

Fortunately, outgoing international wires don't need to be an expensive headache. In this guide, we've ranked the top 21 US banks by their international transfer fees and exchange rates and explored the top five in more detail below. However, make sure you read to the end of the article, where we suggest even cheaper money transfer alternatives which you can use to save money without even needing to switch banks at all!

Banks Ranked By International Transfer Fees

As a banking service, outgoing international wires are remarkably similar between banks in the US, both in terms of process and fees. That's because all US banks rely on SWIFT (a system largely outside your bank's ability to influence directly) to ensure your funds arrive in a bank account overseas in a foreign currency without a hitch.

Still, there's some diversity among different American banks. For example, some banks have cut-off times for when you can send funds during the day for them to be delivered the next day, while others don't. Multinational banks tend to offer preferential fees for outgoing international transfers sent to banks within their corporate family, and some banks have better exchange rates than others.

Before we rank the top banks for international transfers, let's take a moment to understand how fees are charged for these services.

Fees For International Transfers

All told, there are three different kinds of fees that may affect your international transfer:

1. Outgoing Wire Transfer Charges

Your bank will typically charge a fixed dollar amount whenever you send an outgoing international wire.

Among US banks, these fixed charges average at around $39 per transfer, with some banks on the lower end and others charging more. These fees can be found in your banking terms and conditions and are typically charged upfront, meaning that if you send $1,000 to Canada and your transfer fee is $25, an amount of $1,025 will leave your bank account.

2. Exchange Rate (FX) Margins

Contrary to what many people assume, you don't exchange at the real exchange rate (known as the 'mid-market' or 'interbank' rate) when you transfer your dollars to a foreign currency with your bank. Instead, your bank itself uses this rate and offers you a poorer rate that amounts to a hidden exchange rate margin. This essentially means the $1,000 in the example earlier buys you fewer units of foreign currency than it would if you could exchange at the mid-market rate.

These FX margins vary widely depending on your bank or the currency you're sending to. For example, transferring to Canadian dollars, euros, or British pounds might incur a margin of around 2% or 3%, while transferring to Indonesian rupiahs or Nigerian nairas might be converted at a margin of around 7% or 8% or higher.

3. Third-Party Fees

Correspondent banks (banks that act as 'go-betweens' for your bank to communicate with foreign banks) and intermediary banks (any bank in the middle of a multi-step money transfer process) are often involved in international SWIFT wires, and each might potentially charge their own fees too. These fees are totally out of your bank's control, and since it's difficult to get reliable oversight of these fees in advance of your transfer, they don't tend to be very transparent either.

For this reason, it's difficult to estimate how much these fees could amount to, but on our money transfer comparison engine, we see third-party fees typically ranging from $10 to $50 per transfer. This comes on top of the charges and FX margins charged by your bank itself and can affect the final amount your beneficiary receives.

Below, we've summarised the wire charges and FX margins for all major American banks and ranked them based on their cost from lowest to highest:

Below, we explore the offerings from the top five best banks for international transfers, taken from the list above, to provide you with more details on each:

Best: Chase

Chase is America's best-priced bank for international wire transfers, with standard outgoing international wire transfers made online incurring a charge of just $5, which is significantly less than most other banks. However, keep in mind that Chase's exchange rate margins aren't quite so good and that there are several other service fees depending on how you choose to instruct your transfer and your recipient's bank account:

• $50 per transfer if instructed by a banker at your local Chase bank branch (to a foreign bank account in either US dollars or foreign currency),
• $40 per transfer if instructed by you on chase.com or the Chase Mobile to a foreign bank account in US dollars,
• $5 per transfer if instructed by you on chase.com or the Chase Mobile to a foreign bank account in foreign currency,
• $0 per transfer if the wire transfer is initiated by yourself on chase.com or Chase Mobile to a foreign bank account in foreign currency and is at least $5,000.

2nd Best: Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab is a broker-dealer first and a bank second. Signing up for an account means you should at least be interested in taking advantage of Charles Schwab's trading platform (which, by the way, offers some of the lowest trading fees in the US), but you'll also get a checking account to use for everyday purposes, including domestic and international wires.

All wires (whether international or domestic) cost just $15 per transfer when instructed online and $25 per transfer instructed in person. However, it's worth keeping in mind that if you're a more serious investor and you have $100,000 or more in Household Balances in your Charles Schwab account, the you get three free wire transfers every quarter.

3rd Best: Citibank

Citibank is one of America's biggest and most popular banks, and compared to most others, its international wire transfer fees are on the lower side. Here's the breakdown of outgoing international wires by client type:

• Citibank® Clients (standard): $35 /transfer
• Citigold® Private Client: $0 /transfer
• Citigold® Clients: $25 /transfer
• Citi Priority Clients: $25 /transfer
• Citigold® International: $30 /transfer
• Citi Global Executive Account Package: $30 /transfer
• Citi Global Executive Preferred Account Package: $0 /transfer
• Citigold® Private Client: $0 /transfer
• Citi Private Bank: $0 /transfer

4th Best: HSBC US

HSBC is a global bank that offers good international wire transfers to other HSBC accounts abroad, although its standard pricing of $35 per transfer is nothing special. It's also worth noting that HSBC doesn't explicitly disclose its transfer fees or exchange rates, stating instead in its terms and conditions that you should:

refer to the Pre-Payment and Receipt Disclosures received at the time of your wire transaction

5th Best: Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo is another decent option for making international wires, with its standard Wells Fargo Everyday Checking account charging just $10 per month (which is waived if you meet certain requirements) and charging $40 per outgoing international transfer (which isn't great, but still a bit lower than at most American banks).

Cheaper Alternatives

All of that being said, although banks like Chase, HSBC, and Citibank do offer lower-than-average charges for outgoing international wires from the United States, there are still far cheaper ways to make the same transfers without the need to switch banks.

This can be done using online money transfer services, which let you wire money domestically from your bank account, via the provider's account, to your beneficiary's account overseas with significantly lower fees and exchange rates. Taking our earlier example of sending $1,000 to Canada, instead of paying $30 to $50 in combined charges and exchange rates with your bank, you could pay just $5 to $10 with the cheapest provider.

Using our comparison engine on Monito, you can compare the best deals in real-time, but we've also highlighted two great options below:

Revolut

Revolut is a finance app offering a checking account and multi-currency balances. Its mobile app offers a multi-currency account in over 29 currencies, features to help you save money, budget-tracking software, and more, including outgoing international wires for very affordable fees and rates. Paid plans include travel insurance, travel perks, and higher fee-free allowances for foreign exchange, money transfers, and international ATM withdrawals.

Wise

London-based fintech Wise is a far cheaper option for international wires than big US banks and frequently ranks as the cheapest way to transfer money internationally on Monito. According to the Monito Score, Wise is also ranked as the best money transfer service of all, and its mobile app is ranked the best money transfer app. In short, you can't go wrong by picking Wise the next time you send money internationally!

How to Find The Best Deal

If you'd like to ensure you get the best deal for your exact transfer needs, no problem! Just run a search on Monito's real-time comparison engine below and check the live results for yourself: