Sending Money Home

If you want to transfer funds to another country, there are a few methods available to you.

Special Services

• GoLloyds

  This is currently the most popular way to send money home, but perhaps not the best. You sign up for an account at www.golloyds.com, fill in some forms, and then wait for them to send some papers for you to sign in the mail. After that, you can pay ¥2000 to have Golloyds exchange your money into your home currency and then wire the converted funds to your bank in your home country. You also have to pay a few hundred yen to furikomi (Japanese domestic interbank transfer) the money to Golloyds’ Japanese bank account and also as much as ¥7000 to your home country’s bank to receive the funds (although this amount is usually closer to ¥1500). Although it usually costs a minimum of ¥4000 in service fees to use this service, it is popular since it is easy to use. All you have to do is transfer your money via furikomi to Golloyds and they convert it to your home currency and send it to your home country’s bank for you.

• XE Trade

  This is the method most people should be using to transfer money overseas and has been bar none the best way to send money home. This method has almost no fees involved and is fast and easy to use once you have it set up. It has the best exchange rates anywhere (not counting exchange rates available to companies who are exchanging money in the tens of millions of yen; they get a better rate). XE Trade themselves don’t charge you a single yen to use their service. You log into their webpage, tell them how much money you want to send home, then furikomi the funds to them (the furikomi costs a few hundred yen and is often the only fee you will pay for the entire transaction). The best part is that if you live in a country like Canada or the US that has electronic internet banking, you can get XE Trade to send the money to your home account via EFT (electronic funds transfer). In many cases, your home country’s bank charges nothing or very little to receive EFT transfers. Other countries receive the money by either draft or wire. The biggest disadvantage to this service is that it is hard to set up since they have only general set up instruction for the entire world (very poor specific instructions for people in Japan). As a result, I will continue by explaining exactly how to set up this service.

Standard Methods

• O Naturale (aka, Bring the Money Back Home With You)

  If you can do it, this is the easiest way to send money home. Just pocket all the cash and bring it home with you on the plane and exchange it to your home currency when you get there. Be careful though, many countries have a max amount of cash that you are allowed to bring with you when crossing the border so talk to your home country’s customs service before hopping on the plane with over a hundred thousand yen. Also, be aware that if anyone knows you are carrying a ton of money, you are liable to get yourself robbed.

• Money Order

  This is the best transfer method to use if you plan on sending money home maybe one or two times during your stay in Japan. Basically you buy something similar to a traveler’s check from the post office. You pay them as much money as you want and they will give you a piece of paper called a money order that you can send home and have a friend or relative deposit into your bank for you. You usually pay a fee of about ¥2000 both at the post office and at your home bank when you use this method. The exchange rates the post office gives are not great, but they are usually better than the bank.

• Wire Transfer

  This is where you go to your Japanese bank and request that they transfer money from your Japanese bank account to your home account. This is ironically one of the worst transfer methods available. Many Japanese banks are not entirely sure how to do the transfers and you should also expect to pay a horrible exchange rate along with fees as much as ¥7000 to both your Japanese bank and home bank.

• PayPal

  It is possible to use PayPal to send your money from Japan to your home country but it requires a Japanese credit card for the PayPal account and charges ¥10000 in fees so is not a viable option.