XE Trade

If you will be sending money home more than a few times during your stay in Japan, you should probably be using XE Trade to send your money home no matter what country you are from. For people who have EFT transfers available to them (almost all Canadian and American banks), the entire process of sending money home should not take more than 5 minutes on the XE Trade webpage, one trip to your bank’s ATM, and about 200 – 800 yen in fees. Usually you only pay for the furikomi and on rare occasions your home bank may charge a few hundred yen to receive the EFT. Also you will get a better exchange rate than anywhere else.

It takes me on average two days for the money I send to appear in my Canadian bank. If your country does not have EFT service available, XE Trade can send the money home by either wire or bank draft. A wire is fast but can have hefty fees involved by your home bank when they receive the wire (usually between 1000 and 7000 yen). A bank draft usually has no fees or very low fees from the receiving bank (usually whatever you are charged to deposit a cheque into your account) but it is sent by mail so it can take a few weeks before the money gets to your home country’s account. One interesting thing about asking XE Trade to send a bank draft is that it does not have to be in your own name, so you can send money to friends or family using this method. XE Trade themselves charge you nothing. They make their money off the fraction of a cent they charge you in the exchange rate. They can have a better exchange rate than other companies since they are large enough to trade huge amounts of money on the corporate level with international banks. If you want to get the same rates as XE Trade gets, you will have to transfer millions of dollars and open a corporate bank account.

Setting Up XE Trade

Service Discontinued. As of Jan 13th 2011 XE Trade is no longer available to customers in Japan

The instructions for setting up an XE Trade account on their homepage are not so great, and the information on how to send them your money by furikomi is non-existent, so I will provide step by step instructions on first how to set up the service and second, how to use it once it is set up.

1. Go to www.xe.com/fx and click on the “sign up now” button.
2. On the next page simply fill in your name and email information, press next on the bottom right, read the contract and then press the ‘I agree” button on the bottom right of the page.
3. The next page asks you for basic information like name, phone number and address. Make sure you put in your current address and phone number in Japan if you live in Japan. Be sure not to forget your user name and password, you will need these to log into their webpage later. The only complicated section is the “Credit Reference Information”. In this section, I suggest that in the “name of company field” you put in the name of your home country’s bank, in “Name of contact at company” you put in the name of your personal banker or bank manager at your home country’s bank, and for “Full phone number of contact” you put in a telephone number said bank manager or personal banker can be reached at. Press the “submit” button at the bottom of the page when you are done.
4. The next page will review your information. Make sure the information is correct. You must print this page by pressing the “Print this page” link near the top of the page. Sign and date the page. Please note that for the next few steps, follow my instructions and NOT the ones on the XE Trade homepage. The following instructions are specific to Japan.
5. You must send XE Trade:
   • The signed document you printed
   • A photocopy of the first page of your Japanese banking book (the page that has your account number, name and bank info)
   • A photocopy of the page that has your picture and passport number from your passport
   • A photocopy of your gaijin card (Certificate of Alien Registration)

   The easiest way to send this information is by fax. The fax number from Japan is 001-1-250-412-1779 (It is international to the US). If you can’t find a fax machine that will allow you to send faxes internationally, you can scan the signed document and upload the scan to them at XE secure file transfer. There are other forms of ID that they accept, but these documents meet all of XE Trade’s requirements and I know that all JETs have a passport and gaijin card, no matter what country they are from.

6. Usually within a day of receiving the documents you sent, XE Trade will send you a verification email asking you for phone verification information. Give them a date and number they can contact you at and the country and city you reside in now. Make sure the phone number you give them matches one of the numbers you gave when you registered. This is a security measure. If you did everything correctly, your account should be activated within a day of the phone interview.
7. If you will be using EFT (Electronic funds transfer, Canada and US only), please go to the next section titled “Setting up EFT”. If you will be using bank drafts, please skip to “Setting up bank drafts”. If you will be receiving your funds via wire transfer, please skip to the “Setting up wire transfers” section. Please note that if possible, you should use the EFT option first, draft option next, and the wire option only if you cannot use EFT and you need funds sent to your home country’s bank account quickly.

Setting Up EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer)

If you live in Canada or the US, chances are your bank allows EFT. This is the best way to receive money. It is fast and usually free. Contact your bank if you are not sure if they allow EFT transfers (especially if you are using a credit union and not a bank).

1. Go to www.xe.com/fx and click on any one of the “login” or “client login” buttons.
2. Enter your user name and password (which you chose when you signed up for your account) and then press the “login” button.
3. Click on the “EFT Bank Account” button under the `Payment Details` section and then click on the “Add New” button on the next page.
4. On this page you enter the information about the bank account you want your funds deposited into. If you are not familiar with your bank account information, I would highly recommend that you fill this form out while on the phone with your home country’s bank. All the information you need is usually listed on your checks if you have any, but explaining how to read that information off your check is beyond the scope of this guide since every country and bank is a little different. Be very careful; if any of the information you entered is incorrect and your home bank refuses the transfer as a result, you will be charged a fee. Press the “Submit” button once you have entered all the information required.
5. You will be brought to a page which you must print by pressing the “Print this page” link. Sign and date the printed form. Just like with the initial account set up forms, you can send this signed document by either fax at 001-1-250-412-1779 (when dialing from Japan), or you can scan it and upload the scan at XE secure file transfer. After the document has been received, you should be able to transfer to and from that newly entered account within a few business days. This information only ever has to be entered once and you can add more than one bank or bank account, but each requires a new signed form to be sent in.

Setting Up Bank Drafts

Almost every country accepts bank drafts and using this method is usually free or very inexpensive. The big disadvantage to bank drafts is that they are slow since they are sent by regular mail.

1. Go to www.xe.com/fx and click on any one of the “login” or “client login” buttons.
2. Enter your user name and password (which you chose when you signed up for your account) and then press the “login” button.
3. Click on the “Draft Payee” button under the `Payment Details` section and then click on the “Add New” button on the next page.
4. This screen is quite simple; put in your name and address of someone in your home country who can deposit the bank draft for you. In most cases you can send the draft directly to your bank and they will deposit it for you, but be sure to phone the bank in your home country first and make sure that is the case. The nice thing about a draft is that it is like a check; you can put someone else’ name into the “Payee’s Name” field and that person can then deposit the money into their own account at any bank of their choosing. Just make sure the “Payee’s Name” field contains the recipient’s (often yourself) full legal name on file with the bank. Sometimes there is a fee involved with depositing a bank draft depending on your bank and in other cases they may put the draft on `hold` for as many as a few weeks while they verify the draft’s authenticity. You can enter as many “Payees” as you want, each with their own mailing address, and their names will become selectable from a drop down box whenever you chose to convert money via bank draft.

Setting Up Wire Transfers

You can have XE Trade send money to your home country’s bank via a wire transfer. Although this method is fairly quick, it also usually requires a hefty processing fee from your home bank of anywhere between ¥1000 yen to ¥7000. Use this method only if you need money sent home quickly.

1. Go to www.xe.com/fx and click on any one of the “login” or “client login” buttons.
2. Enter your user name and password (which you chose when you signed up for your account) and then press the “login” button.
3. Click on the “Wire Beneficiary” button under the `Payment Details` section and then click on the “Add New” button on the next page.
4. On this page you enter the information about the bank account you want your funds deposited into. If you are not familiar with your bank account information, I would highly recommend that you fill this form out while on the phone with your bank. In most cases you will not have to fill out the “Intermediate Bank Information” section but only your receiving bank will know. Much of the information you need is usually listed on your checks if you have any, but explaining to you how to read that information off your check is beyond the scope of this guide since every country and bank is a little different. Be very careful; if any of the information you entered is incorrect and your home bank refuses the transfer as a result, you will be charged a fee. Press the “Submit” button once you have entered all the information required.
5. You will be brought to a page which you must print by pressing the “Print this page” link. Sign and date the printed form. Just like with the initial account set up forms, you can send this signed document by fax at 001-1-250-412-1779 (when dialing from Japan), or you can scan it and upload the scan at XE secure file transfer. After the document has been received, you should be able to transfer to that newly entered account within a few business days. This information only ever has to be entered once and you can add more than one bank or bank account but you will have to send in a new signed form for each additional account.

Using EX Trade

After you have completed the initial setup of XE Trade, using the service is pretty simple as long as you read these instructions. Unfortunately, the Japan specific instruction on the XE Trade webpage itself is quite lacking. It may seem complicated but really, other than the initial setup, all you do is log into a webpage, say how much money you want to exchange, and then go to your Japanese bank ATM to pay XE Trade with a furikomi.

1. Go to www.xe.com/fx and click on any one of the “login” or “client login” buttons.
2. Enter your user name and password (which you chose when you signed up for your account) and then press the “login” button.
3. Click on the “Basic Trade” button at the top left of the page.
4. Question 1 is “Is this transaction on behalf of a third party?” The answer is no.
5. Question 2 “Buy or Sell Amount”. There are two fields here, only ONE of which you will fill. You can either chose to sell currency or buy currency. Selling currency is when you want to specify how much yen you want to spend and XE Trade will tell you how much of your home country’s money they will give you in exchange. Buying currency is when you tell XE Trade how much of your home country’s currency you want and XE Trade will tell you how much yen it is going to cost you. So for example, if you want to pay a US bill for 400$, you want to `Buy` 400$ US with your yen. If you want to send 10 000 yen home, but in your home country’s currency, you are `selling` 10 000 yen.
6. Question 3 asks you to enter the currency types. If you are changing Japanese yen into your home country’s currency, chose your home country’s currency name from the `Currency to Buy` drop down menu and “JPY-JAPAN YEN” from the `Currency to Sell` drop down menu.
7. Press the “Next” button. On this page you will see two drop down boxes. The first one says “To be delivered by”. Chose either “EFT”, “DRAFT” or “WIRE” depending on how you want EX Trade to send your money to your home country’s bank account.
8. The last field is “To Be Paid To Us By”. Chose “Wire” and press next. This MAY then make another drop down menu appear if you set up the bank account information for the recipient already (Which you should have already set up if you have been following this guide). Chose the recipient’s bank account from the drop down menu (Likely there is only one choice), and press the “Next” button.
9. The last screen is just a summery of how much money you are exchanging. You have 60 seconds to press the “Confirm Deal” button or else you will have to press the “Refresh Rates” button. The reason for this is that you are given a by the minute exchange rate which means that the exchange rate may change from minute to minute. Once you press “Confirm Deal”, you will be brought to a page with a Deal ID on it. This ID is very important! Write the deal ID down!!!
10. Make sure you get a confirmation email. This should take only minutes. Ignore the instructions given on it, they are misleading and will lead to additional fees. Follow these instructions to pay XE Trade instead. Go to your ATM and do a furikomi to the following account.
    • Beneficiary Name (Who you are sending the money to):

      CUSTOM HOUSE ULC NON RES JPY

    • My Name (Your name MUST include the deal ID!!! If you lost it, it is also listed in the confirmation email):

      FIRSTNAME_LASTNAME_DEALID

    • Bank (There is a bank of America in Japan, and they accept furikomi):

      Bank of America (アメリカ銀行)

    • Account Type:

      当座　(Tōza, the second button)

    • Account:

      1484011

11. The last step is to reply to the verification email. This email just details your transfer and asks that you reply with what bank, when, and how much money you sent them. I have forgotten to do this step and my money still arrived. I think this is just an extra measure they take to make sure that your money is not misplaced.

See also

• Bank Transfer
• GoLloyds

Links

• XE Trade - Official site