If you are trying to send or receive funds through a money transfer but are not in your home country, be prepared for some road blocks when you do not have a bank account in the country you are in.
Don’t worry though, there are systems out there that let you wire to the other person through a location based service which requires recipients to know a code to collect the money.Since September 11 this system has been tightened as this was the easiest way for terrorists to wire money around the globe. Now, usually both the sender and recipient must present some form of I.D. to take advantage of this form.
Brazilian immigrants based in the U.S. consistently wire money an average of just once a month. Experts estimate it averages out to 400 U.S. dollars a month.
The U.S. isn’t the only major nation transferring into Brazil though. Brazil also receives remittance from Japan at the same average of once a month. Japan however, averages the equivalent of 600 U.S. dollars a month, making it one of the leaders in contributing nations.
So how exactly does it work? Some use a bank’s wire service, which requires both members to have an account with the bank. This doesn’t always work considering the sender may not be able to open an account because of their immigration status, or the receiver may not be in a state where they can open up a Brazilian account – a huge reason why people leave the country for other countries like the U.S. or Japan.
People also turn to courier services or even mailboxes. However, not only do options like these take anywhere from days to weeks before the money arrives, there is also the question of how secure the system really is. Oftentimes, the money wired through these systems never even arrives.
Those needing to send money to Brazil may do so through one of the numerous offline services. Be cautious though, the exchange rate converts one U.S. dollar into two Brazilian Reais in addition to an additional 10% fee – give or take a few percentage points. After all is said and done you’ll have less than if you were to just wire the cash within the United States.
Yet another option is to wire cash using a pre-paid ATM or debit card. The sender simply buys the card and sends it through FedEx, a well-known courier service.
The card costs a mere $5 and you are allowed to send up to $1000. You can also trust that the funds will arrive safely and your recipient will not be forced to check the mail every day or even have to drive to one of the location-based companies to go pick it up. The even greater perk of this form is that to add money the sender simply jumps on the phone or on the web to transfer money onto the card in just minutes. It’s no wonder so many more people are turning to this option – it is by far one of the fastest, most convenient forms of money transfer. This way seems to be much safer than traditional methods that have existed for years.