Advice for Receiving Small USD Gifts Transfers Here in Australia?

coolrunnings on 30/08/2023 - 16:26
Last edited 30/08/2023 - 17:07

Hi,

My son is having a birthday soon and his American relatives want to send him small sums of USD as birthday gifts.

To this end, I just opened up a Wise card debit card account, believing that it would let me receive USD transfers without large fees involved, and then he could just spend the gifts by having me tap the card for the purchases he wants to make and the Wise card would just convert the USD to local currency pay for the item on the spot. Or, I could just convert it into AUD straight away.

Wise let me set up an AUD account (based in Australia) and American currency account (based in the US). Supposing I tell my family to pay USD into the Wise US currency account, can I just convert it to AUD through the website? What fees would be involved?

I'm completely confused, and the Wise FAQ is just confusing me more.

Financial

Comments

  • spackbace on 30/08/2023 - 16:33
    +1

    Maybe a gift card might be a better option? Xbox, Amazon, etc etc

    • coolrunnings on 30/08/2023 - 16:53

      Yeah, it is almost like the system is rigged for that conclusion.

    • mapax on 31/08/2023 - 05:41

      Wouldn’t the relatives have to buy the correct country gift card though? I thought I had read that Amazon US gift cards don’t work on Amazon Au so then you’re stuck with finding things that will ship?

  • jv on 30/08/2023 - 16:40
    +1

    Paypal Me ????????

    https://www.paypal.com/au/cshelp/article/how-do-i-send-money…

    • coolrunnings on 30/08/2023 - 16:56

      Somebody voted this down. Is it that PayPal offers a particularly bad conversion rate or something? I'm genuinely asking.

      • jv on 30/08/2023 - 17:17
        +1

        Is it that PayPal offers a particularly bad conversion rate or something?

        No… Just negging because they can…

  • Gdsamp on 30/08/2023 - 16:42
    +2

    accept small monetary gifts in USD

    Make sure you are not CEO of AusPost

  • foxmulder on 30/08/2023 - 17:06

    Tell your USA friend to transfer using Wise. You just provide them your local bank details

    • coolrunnings on 30/08/2023 - 17:10

      My friends don't have Wise. They're senior citizens, many of them. I see that Wise let me set up a US bank account to accept USD. If I tell them to deposit their gifts into that account, is it easy to change it into the local AUD Wise account that I opened the account with? What fees are involved?

      • foxmulder on 30/08/2023 - 17:26
        +2

        Wise Fees. Just say you to receive $300 USD with non Wire (if you don't know, this is a US thing for their transfer method, pretty much a slower one, but free. Then you transfer that $300 USD to your local bank account to $464.40 minus $2.5 USD fees, you receive $460. The USD to AUD you use their Currency converter

        • coolrunnings on 31/08/2023 - 13:02

          Thanks, this is really helpful information!

  • Clear on 30/08/2023 - 17:08

    I often receive USD into PayPal as it's the easiest way and use that to make purchased in USD. Obviously if you're wanting to spend in AUD you will be going through PayPal's exchange rate which is inflated, but not by much.

  • YadaYadaYada on 30/08/2023 - 18:46
    +1

    I thought when you sign up for a Wise account here, you can get a US bank account number as part of it (which you can pass onto others to pay you USD with). And then when you've received money into into this USD account, you can convert it to AUD at any point in time (and use whatever conversion rate is at the time which are on the front page here https://wise.com/au/ or in app). People usually wait until it's a favourable rate to do this. Otherwise you just hold the USD indefinitely.

  • cauilfield on 30/08/2023 - 23:23

    get a wise account, and tell them to ACH into it. All up fees for a 15k gift were around $10 and the xchange rate was great recently.

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