So I am going to be returning to the USA at the end of the year. In our preparations we have learned that JP Bank has absurdly low limits for how much money one can internationally transfer at a time, and a fee higher than we want to pay. We’d have to do multiple transactions to move all our money to an American account.
We will not be returning to Japan at least for several years so we are hoping to take everything out after working in Japan for some time.
Options we have juggled are
1. Withdrawing manually over the next several months and carrying Yen back to the USA to exchange there.
2. Opening an account with MUFJ, transferring the money there, and then using Paypal or another service to wire the money to our USA account
Does anyone else have experience with this problem or suggestions how we might resolve it? ANother issue we have run into is because our phones are set to USA, we have not been able to use JP Banks mobile app to do business :<.
Any suggestions welcomed.
14 comments
Do you have a Wise account?
open Sony bank (or mufg) then once all your money is there just do a normal swift transfer abroad. you don’t want to pay Japan post bank fees but you’re okay with around 400$/10k$ Paypal fees?? if amount is less than 10k USD transferwise will probably have better rates. above that and better off just using swift.
I second wise.
It’s working well for me at a good exchange rate too.
I hear there’s a bar in Yokohama who can help you with that
“A lot of cash” is relative, and it might help if you could put it into perspective… USD10k? USD100k? USD1M? USD100M?
Wise (formerly known as TransferWise) seems to work well for most people for reasonable amounts. I previously used Shinsei’s (now SBI) GoRemit; but it took ages to get an account up and running, and to increase the transfer limit on it.
> Withdrawing manually over the next several months and carrying Yen back to the USA to exchange there.
Is there an over-the-counter maximum withdrawal limit? If there is, what happens if you decide to close the account instead?
> … and then using Paypal …
PayPal is only useful for small amounts (less than a few hundred dollars). Their fees are really, really high for anything more.
Wise is great!
What you mean? Wire transfer should have no limit (sure it does cost 4k jpy generally).
When they say there’s a limit, it’s just a triggering limit that make the bank calling you (it’s obligatory) asking whether the fund is for personal or for terrorism. Unless you’re gonna say yes for the terrorism use, I don’t see any issue.
I myself did wire funds higher than the limit a few times back.
Why not just convert to dollars in Japan and carry back? I just gave up on the stupidity of trying to send wires from Japanese banks and walked cash (under the reportable amount) back.
Japan Post Bank doesn’t have the greatest options for intl transfers. If you can handle the extra hassle open a more useful bank account like at prestia etc and simply move all funds from JP to that; likely easiest to go into the branch (post office) and close the account, asking them to move all funds to the new account.
Once at the new account ensure you raise the transfer limit to an appropriately high level and do the transfer. At prestia for example you can do a simple intl wire with no/low sending fee (you’ll probably pay 20-30 usd to receive it at your home country bank account, depending on your bank and account) and if you do enough at once they’ll give you a live fx rate at a less insulting spread to market
Why not just open a checking account with Schwab bank and deposit a check from your Japanese bank? https://international.schwab.com/expatriate-essentials
When it comes to international transfers I always rely on Wise (formerly TransferWise). I’ve never used it from/to Japan, but it looks like it might work for your situation:
[https://wise.com/gb/blog/japan-welcome-to-transferwise](https://wise.com/gb/blog/japan-welcome-to-transferwise)
Wise is fine. I’ve wired 20m once and it’s ok
Wise will charge you 26000 yen for a 4m yen transfer.
Wise is great, but over 500k jpy you will want a swft transfer, go remit with Shinsei was the most reasonable fee and crazy good exchange rates, just make sure you exchange with Shinsei and remit in usd, US banks give worse rates than any Japan bank in my experience.