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Jul 2, 2003, 12:59 PM
Post #9 of 9
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Re: [Georgia] The safest way to bring money
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Please tell us more about the Citibank to Banamex arrangement.....
I suspect that what "jrice" was referring to is a relatively new (announced in May 2003) product from Citibank called "Citibank Global Transfers", which definitely leverages off of Citicorp's ownership of banks in a number of countries (somewhere around 13), including Banamex in Mexico. The program is supposed to allow account holders in a number of garden-variety Citibank accounts in the US, including basic checking, savings, and money market accounts to transfer funds ($3,500 per account per day, $10,500 per account per week, with higher limits available for premium accounts) to accounts in other Citicorp owned banks in other countries, including Banamex for a considerably lower cost ($10 for most of the countries in the program; $5 for Banamex) than traditional wire transfers. Fund transfers can be initiated by telephone or via the Citibank website (and in some locations from Citibank ATM machines), funds are debited from the initiating account and credited to the recipient's account supposedly immediately.
A major strength over some of the competing fund transfer programs is that the recipient's account number doesn't have to be pre-designated as is the case with Wells Fargo's Interquenta Express meaning that it can be used much closer to the fashion a wire transfer would be used. Additionally the account doesn't have to be identically registered (meaning the same account holder's name on both the sending and receiving side) as is the case with CCB/Banamex linked accounts meaning the account is of more value for people using it for remittances. Citibank is also claiming that at some unspecified time in the future they'll make the service available for fund pick-up at the receiving bank by non bank account holders (which will challenge the Western Union type wire transfer companies).
The current question mark in my mind is what the exchange rate discount they'll be charging for the service. The terms and conditions of the program make it very clear that Citibank is authorized to keep any difference between the their own internal exchange rate and the rate they're charging service users. Unfortunately, unlike the competition including Citibank's own c2it program, they don't have anywhere on their website (at least that I've found, or their customer service phone bank is aware of) that shows what rate an exchange will be performed on a given day. Emails asking about the rate have gone unanswered so far, and calls to their customer service number merely yield "it's very competitive", and misdirection to such things as Citibank's foreign currency department who answers "what program are you talking about?". If they can hold their discount to the 2.5% range they've probably got a strong, competitive product.
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