Are you a small business making regular payments to suppliers overseas? Perhaps you’re a long-term traveler or expat using your home bank to send funds while you’re abroad. If so, and you’re fed up with the poor rates offered and high fees demanded by your bank, you should consider using an online money transfer system instead. Here’s a brief explanation of what OMTs are and why you should be using one.
How OMTs Work
Online money transfers are where the age-old practice of wiring money meets the twenty-first century technology of Electronic Funds Transfers (EFTs). If you use a debit or credit card, you’re already using EFT – the movement of funds from one account to another as data, rather than paper or hard currency – and online money transfers are simply another form of EFT.
After registering with an OMT service, you can transfer money with minimum delay to any account worldwide. All you need to do is provide basic contact information for the sender and receiver (an email address or mobile phone number is usually enough) and tie this to a bank account. After this, for a small fee you can send money quickly and easily anywhere without the hassle of going to a bank or a money wiring office.
Fast and Convenient
Unlike “cheque’s in the mail” guarantees, there’s no danger of online money transfer funds getting lost or stolen en route. All you need is an internet connection and you can send money vast physical distances in a matter of seconds. If your money is going overseas, there’s also the headache of currency conversion, as well as service fees. Banks often offer less-than-favourable rates for currency conversion and transfer while OMT providers, being custom-made to meet these demands, can offer much better rates.
Beating the Banks on Prices
Most online money transfer services offer fixed fees and an easy-to-understand pricing system, so it’s good to shop around and find the best provider for the kind of transfer you plan to make. While those making only small and occasional payments overseas may not see major savings, any individual or business making larger and more regular money transfers should see significant savings by switching from using a bank to using a dedicated OMT service.
Wait for the Best Rate
As well as offering more competitive rates than banks, some online money transfer services allow users to choose when their funds get transferred into local currency. This gives users the advantage of waiting till international currency markets are providing the most favourable rates. These service providers usually have offices and 24-hour service in the countries they operate in, so you can always speak to an adviser or a currency trader to ensure you are maximizing the worth of your transaction.
Safe and Secure
Many people worry that sending money via the internet will leave them vulnerable to fraud – what if online thieves are able to intercept the transfer? However, online money transfer services are extremely secure these days, using multiple layers of encryption so that any data intercepted by an unauthorized third party will only appear as meaningless code. Only once your recipient’s authorized bank or service receives the data is it decoded and deposited in the local currency.
As well as encryption, confirmation emails or phone calls are used to verify private information, and many OMT providers will also use insurers to guarantee your money is protected. Finally, secure financial data transmission is guaranteed by Automated Clearing House (ACH), the independent agency responsible for all online banking transactions.
Start Saving Today
Offering speed, security and highly competitive rates, it’s easy to see why online money transfer services are such a rapidly growing sector. We’ve come a long way since the first money transfer was wired via telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century. Now, as then, technology has given us new tools to make our money work harder for us, so start looking into ways you can save today.
