USD to RMB Conversion. Need Help!

[koram]

Hey guys, a newcomer headed to China in a month. I am in the process of figuring out the most cost-effective way to transfer my funds over to China and therefore minimize the unnecessary fees that the banks often charge us.

In the case that I wire transfer USD to a Bank of China account, I know that I will receive the funds in denominations of USD and that I would have to manually convert the currency from USD to RMB. I have two questions here:

1. Is there a currency conversion fee involved here? If so, how much (usually in % I believe)?
   
2. Does Bank of China charge fees for accepting wire transfers from abroad?
   

Thank you all in advance.

[ilovelanguage]

Hey man, depending on how much you need, but for me, if I only need a few hundreds - RMB 5 or 6000 around, I will have the money exchange in any chinese bank locally.

ps. i base in australia, and we have boc - bank of china here, but i never use it, heard that it's expensive.

so, i opened bank accounts in china upon arrival. China constructive bank, China Merchants Bank or even BOC - they charge around 10 rmb per month for the fee.

Hope it helps.

[roddy]

That info should all be on the BoC site, in English.

[stoney]

If you have a bank card you can withdraw money from an ATM in China. Your USD is automatically converted to RMB. You get a very good exchange rate and there may be a small service charge depending on the bank you use. Not every ATM will do this, but many do. You don't need a Chinese bank account to do this.

[roddy]

You get a very good exchange rate

That depends entirely on your home bank, surely?

[koram]

stoney - I'm aware of the alliance between China Construction Bank and Bank of America, but according to their website there seems to be a 1% fee associated with the ATM withdrawls, although some people seem to attest it to be completely free of charge. In addition, some people on the forum have reported problems with actually receiving the money from the ATMs and thereafter resolving them--the two things that I'm not willing to go through given my limited conversational skills in Mandarin. Further, the USD seems to be doing fairly poorly against RMB and I would like to hedge the risks by converting at least some of my money into RMB.

roddy - I've looked into the BoC website as you suggested, but was not able to find the information that pertained to my exact question. I know that http://www.boc.cn/so...pj/enindex.html shows the current buying rate, but I guess my question is: do they have additional charges/hidden charges that effectively lowers the current "buying rate" (such as the currency conversion fee) when trying to convert my wired funds in my BoC account?

Thanks for all of your help!

[LaoJian]

Is there a currency conversion fee involved here? If so, how much (usually in % I believe)?

As I know, there is no conversion fee for currency exchange in BoC. While, there is actually a consuming limitation in China, I remember the maximum amount of USD each person can exchange is $50,000 per year.

Does Bank of China charge fees for accepting wire transfers from abroad?

I think no charge for accepting bank.

Hope this link would help on you

http://www.boc.cn/en/pbservice/pb4/

some of topics may be related to your questions

Here is a contact list for BoC branches in america, take a look and phone them for more details

http://www.boc.cn/en/aboutboc/ab6/200812/t20081216_494260.html

[koram]

All my questions have been cleared up. Thank you all.