Remit2India guaranteeing best exchange rates for transferring money to India

Remit2India is having a promotions where they are guaranteeing to match anyone who is offering exchange rates better than them. This seems like a great promotion. Their website also has comparison of their rates and ICICI bank rates. Remit2India is claiming to give few cents more than ICICI. In the past I have found ICICI to offer best rates. If remit2India is offering better than ICICI then folks transferring large amount should definitely consider them.

Here is the link to promotion http://www.timesofmoney.com/remittance/jsp/toml_nreExchangeRate_US.jsp


Looks like with Rupee appreciating against dollar so strongly, lots of people has started demanding better rates from money transfer services and this is showing effect.

SBI offerring for transferring money to India

SBI (State Bank Of India) has come out with a new web site for sending money to India. Here is the link: http://www.onlinesbi.com/glsus/#

I quickly browsed through the website. It is pretty easy to use and rate they are offering are very competitive. And being SBI you can trust your money is in safe hands.

I would love to hear from people who have used this service.

Best Rate for sending money to India

I did comparsion of exchange rates and fees charged by various services for sending money to India. Today's reference rate from Reserve Bank Of India (http://www.rbi.org.in/) is Rupee 40.97 for 1 US Dollar. All the rates should be looked in context of this reference rate. Rates offered on a given day will change.

I found HDFC offers best rates and lowest charges. ICICI bank was second. Here is my analysis:

1) HDFC Bank

Fees: No fees
Exchange Rate:
For 11 - 1000$ --> 1$ = 40.59 Indian Rupees
For 1001 - 3500$ --> 1$ = 40.68 Indian Rupees
For 3501 - 5000$ --> 1$ = 40.73 Indian Rupees

2) ICICI Bank
Fees: 2$ for 1000$ and free above it.
Exchange Rate:
For 1000$ --> 1$ = 40.35
For 5000$ --> 1$ = 40.46253

3) Western Union
Fees: $81 for 900$ transaction. They have limit of 1000$ so I tried 900$ transaction and they showed the fees of $81.
Exchange Rate:
For 900$ --> 1$ = 40.2864996

4) Xoom.com
Their online calculator didn't allow for more than 1000$. They have service fee of 15$ for the standard service and no fee for value service.

Exchange Rate:
For 1000$ --> 1$ = 39.70

5) eMoneyGram.com. This site also has limit of 1000 US Dollars. But has reasonable rates and has one day delivery. So it is good if you want to send money quickly.

Same Day Service Fee $15

Exchange Rate
For 1000$ : 1 US Dollary = 40.376700 INR


There are two other big services. CitiNRI and TimesOfMoney.com. I couldn't figure out any exchange rate information from their web site. I have no idea of TimesOfMoney.com but from what i have heard from my friends ICICI rates are much better than Citi bank. If that's true then Citi rates are lower than HDFC and ICICI.

Based on this if I am tranferring big amount I will definitely use HDFC bank. I have used ICICI bank in the past and their service was good.

Western Union fees are horrible. Only attracition is they allow for very quick money transfer. Receiver can pick money in India minutes after your transaction is done. I will use this only when I need to send money very urgently but then it only allows 1000$ which is pretty useless in emergency (atleast in my case.)

Do you trust Remit2India

Remit2India is a money transfer service offered by TimesOfIndia group. I was curious to know the rate they offer so I registered on the site and started a transfer ( I didn't complete it and canceled it mid-way). I didn't like the service for two main reasons & lots of small reasons

Big Reasons I didn't like:

1. On the site they don't talk about the exchange rate which will used for transaction.
2. They offer insurance to protect the transaction. Here are the exact words from the web-site "Remit2India, in association with ICICI Lombard General Insurance Co. Ltd, provides you with a Money Insurance Guarantee- a first ever in the industry.Now, insure your money against risks of service negligence or technology perils like virus/hacking*. Secure your money from the time it leaves your hands till it reaches your family, for as little as 4.95 Dollars . A small price to pay for complete peace of mind! " This is very scary to me. This service doesn't protect its customers for their service negligence or their system getting hacked. I will never use such service. Would you?

Some minor reasons:

1. Web site (http://www.timesofmoney.com/remittance/jsp/home.jsp) is very cluttered.
2. They give you a free photoclock for transaction of more than 1000$. Now why are you giving me clock. Add that money to my transaction. If I want to send a clock, I would go to some gift shop.
3. Usability is not great. Ex: They first ask to select the city and then ask for State. A better way would be ask to select the state and then populate the city list based on state and allow selection of city. ( Yeah I am software engineer:) )
4. At the top of site they have a link to set remit2india as your home page. Now why in the world someone set remit2india as homepage:(

Limit Order for Money Transfer

Exchange rate of US/Indian Rupee keep changing all the time. All the money transfer services to India take atleast 1 week and you know about the exchange rate used for your transaction only when money reaches to your account in India. Most of the banks uses this time to give you worst possible rate and provide no explanation for the rate they provided. I think there is need for lots of reform in this area. I would love for someone to offer a service where I can select minimum floor price for my transfer. This is similar to limit price you can set for stock sale. So once you have set the exchange rate for your transaction, bank will only do the transaction when it can provide that rate. It can mean that your transaction may not happen for some time or may never happen. In that case you will need to cancel the order and enter new order.

What do you think? Will you use such service?

ICICI MoneyTransfer Review

I used ICICI Money2India service to transfer my money to India. I used Power Transfer. It was very easy to use, it took around 5 days and exchange rate was reasonable. In this service, you need to wire money to ICICI account with Bany of NewYork and they wire money from there to your bank account in India.

This is how the service works:
1) Goto http://icicibank.com/ and select money transfer under NRI section.
2) Create a money to India account. It is pretty straight forward.
3) Login in to account. Select the PowerTransfer service. You need to fill a form which asks for details like amount, bank/branch to which you want to send the money etc.
4) I like the usability. You can select the bank from drop-down. Once you select the bank, it shows the list of city and you select your city from it. Once you select the city, it shows the list of branches and you select your branch. No hassle of knowing the swift code of your branch. All you really need to know is the account number and name of benefiary.
5) Once you have filled the form, they provide with information to wire money to ICICI Bank account with Bank Of NewYork. They also provide you a reference number which you must send with the wire transfer. You print this form, take it to your bank and transfer the money. Make sure you tell your bank to include the reference number.
6) That's it. Your work is done. You can track your order online. For me it took 4 days for money to reach my account in India.

http://www.rbi.org.in/ reference rate on the day of transfer was 40.90 and I got 40.65 rate for my transfer. To me it looks good, however I am no expert in this area. If you are currency wiz and have opinion in this area, I would love to hear.

Back to ICICI service, i think it is good and would recommend it to anyone.

Appreciating Rupee and poorer NRI

I am working in US for about 8 years now and harbor a dream of going back to India in couple of years. Most of my assets and savings are in USD. Recent 10% appreication of rupee has caused correspoding dent in my savings when converted in to Rupees. Everyone is talking about further gradual depreciation of dollar against most major currency. This makes me wonder if I should start diversifying my savings/assets to other currency. May this is time to buy a house in India. I have been thiking about it for long time, but think this is now time for action. I would hate to see further erosion in my savings because of depreciation of dollar.

DLF & ICICI Issue and Rupee Rate

I need to send some money to India. Since the rupee has depreciated significantly in recent weeks (current rate 40.5$), I was wondering if I should wait for some time for rates to improve. I was talking to my dad ( he lives in India) about this. He said it is better to send now because rates are expected to go down further. He said DLF and ICICI are coming out with huge public issues and this will result very significant inflow of FII investment in to India and would put further downward pressure on dollar. Logic makes sense to me and I am rushing to send money to India. However the amount is large so I am looking for best service to send money. I have done some research and looks like ICICI is the best way to go. I will post on it goes and the rate I get. I am hoping I will get atleast 40.5.

Is this Hawala

I have sent small amount of money (less than USD 5000) to India in the past using my bank. I never cared about the exchange rate since amount involved is small. However now I need to send relatively larger amount to India so I started looking around for other services. I also sent an email to Indian DL in my company inquiring about best way to send money to India. I got usual replies about ICICI bank, TimesMoney etc. However one reply was very interesting. This person's has a friend who wants to convert her money in India in to dollars and offered to tranfer money in to my account in India and in exchange asked me to transfer money to her friend's account in US. To me this seemed like Hawala and I don't think it is legally allowed in India? I politely refused the offer but am wondering if this is really Hawala or I am just being overtly cautious?

More interesting question is: Is there any legal way for me to exchange money with this person? By legal I mean follow the US, Indian and international financial rules. This way I can get the best rate, avoid paying commission to intermediary.