Send Money to India for Free
Friday, Feb 04, 2011
One of the negative aspects of formal money
transfer channels to India is that they all charge
you commission for their services. You are charged
based on the amount you transfer and the time
limit you set for the delivery of the amount at
the recipient’s end. However, it is also
possible to transfer money to India without
incurring any additional charges. Banks such as
SBI, ICICI Bank, Wells Fargo and HSBC Bank offer
NRIs such an option, provided they exceed the
minimum amount required to avail free services.
The California branch of the State Bank of India
has introduced an audacious scheme wherein NRIs
who remit drafts worth Rs 50,000 and above are not
required to pay any service charges. This facility
is not only available in California but also in
other SBI branches of Los Angeles, San Diego,
Artesia, San Jose, Fresno and Canoga Park.
While banks forego service charges, they earn
revenue through exchange rate earnings.
Exchange rate earning is an amount earned by the
bank when they perform foreign exchange
transactions. This money earned by the bank,
facilitates fee waiver for transactions involving
large amounts.
Another bank that endorses free money transfer
services to India is ICICI Bank. ICICI’s
e-transfer service called Money2India allows for
remittance of money to India free of charge. One
interesting aspect of Money2India is that you can
transfer and remit money not just to other
branches of ICICI Bank but to other banks as well,
without incurring an additional charge, provided
the money transfer involve amount over $1,000.
Apart from SBI and ICICI, HDFC too has a service
for remitting money to India for free (over a
certain threshold amount sent) from USA, Canada,
U.K, Europe, Singapore etc. It is called
QuickRemit. Though it uses a third party service
to get the job done, it is still very secure since
the service comes within the bank’s secure
transaction domain. If you are familiar with
internet banking transactions, it will be easier
for you to use QuickRemit. There are two ways to
make the remittance. Either you can go for a
direct debit to an HDFC account in India or use
NEFT/RTGS mode to transfer to third party bank
accounts.
HSBC also offers free money transfer facilities
for NRIs to their NR accounts in India as long as
the funds are wired to the NR account with HSBC
India from an account with HSBC Group in the
remitting country.
A non banking service famous for free transfer
facilities is Remit2India. With easy and free
transfer of money to 62,388 branches of 87 banks
in India and 24 hour customer support, Remit2India
is a popular money transfer facility. All you need
is an online account in Remit2India in order to
make transactions through your bank accounts or
your PayPal accounts. Services such as Remit2India
do not usually set an upper limit on the amount
transferred. Moreover the transactions can be
tracked easily.
It is mandatory that you read the terms and
conditions of the provider before you use free
money transfer services. You have to confirm that
there are no hidden charges that are applicable
during the process. You should also be well aware
of the exchange rates used by the service provider
in order to convert your current currency into
equivalent INR.
Observe carefully and compare the exchange rates
of your current provider with others. If the
provider uses a lower exchange rate than the
others, it is best to consider an alternate money
transfer facility. Do a research regarding the
various free money transfer service providers
before making a final decision.
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