Physical currency exchange with Forex Brokers

Hi guys, first post on Forex Factory. I travel a lot with my work and frequently have to change large sums of cash from one currency to another. Before anybody jumps to any conclusions: my business is 100% legal and I am 100% honest with my tax. If I change these large sums of cash at hotels/bureau de change then I get a terrible exchange rate, so I have decided to look into changing my money on the Forex markets. Whilst I know Forex Factory is mainly a site about forex trading, I thought that this would be the best place to bring my query: I live in the UK and can sign up for international business accounts with HSBC in currencies other than GBP. I intend to open two accounts; one in EUR, and one in USD. Does anybody know of a forex broker who would allow me to deposit from the USD account in dollars, use these dollars to purchase euros on the forex market, and then withdraw my euros to my EUR account, or visa-versa, thus avoiding a poor exchange rate at any point of the transaction. For this to work the broker would have to wire the withdrawal to me in euros.

Regards,

SimonP

You can do this with Oandas physical delivery service - its called FXGlobalTransfer. You will pay a flat fee of $25 per transaction and you can deal on the usual Oanda spreads (0.9 pips for Eur/Usd - instead of a few hundred pips spread you pay elsewhere). Oanda is the only dealer i know of that provides physical delivery to retail clients.

http://fxglobaltransfer.oanda.com/

Shrike,

Have you ever tried that... Oanda doesn't have a banking license so therefore I have no idea how they would be able to give it so cheap? Right now I just called DB and the spread for delivery is 1.4850 - 1.6350. This is standard. Their must be some unbelievable traders at Oanda just killing the futures market and taking delivery. Or ABN is losing money by helping Oanda.

This is absolutely perfect, may I offer my sincere thanks for your help.

fxtrader42: that must be DB's retail rates - even if i go to my bank at home (or if i buy in USD with my eur cc) i get a way better rate than that. DB themself can get it on the normal interbank market - they can just not roll a spot transaction and the deal will settle 'tomorrow next', so DB will deliver and take delivery of the respective amounts at that point. Terms and conditions for physical delivery are negotiable with banks - i guess Oanda carries enough weight to get good rates. Besides, nowadays even smallish funds/corporations get access to Reuters 3000, Bloomberg or EBS, so they could even arrange it them selfs. I dont know how exactly they are doing it - and its probably a business secret. But it doesnt even sound very sophisticated to me, they probably have funds lying around in the different currencies, take delivery as needed, hedge their exposure, and just distribute customer orders.

The cost of exchange with a retail bank or CC company is a blatant rip off - id even call it an informal cartell. It was really about time that someone filled that gap with a competitive attitude. I hope more will follow.

P.S.: no i never tried it myself tho

Hello all,

12 years later, and Oanda no longer offers a physical delivery service.

A question for the advanced FX traders out there: does any broker or bank allow this now? I have payments and receipts in USD, GBP and am looking to convert efficiently. Thanks in advance.

Bumping this because I was hoping there's enough knowledge out there on who provides this service. Being able to exchange one foreign currency for another doesn't seem like too much to ask. Back in the day, this was known as "foreign exchange" lol.

I found a solution: Interactive Brokers at www.ibkr.com

I can highly recommend them, they trade a wide variety of assets and global markets and are not a typical FX bucket shop.

Founded in 1977 and NASDAQ listed. Market cap USD 22 billion. The real deal.

Did you have experience?

Yes, I have used them several times, both before and after previous post