e*Trade HKG has a US Dollar account
 

rjmore -

No! For guys getting paid in USD you are in luck if you use E*Trade. I just spoke with e*trade here in HKG they have their own USD account here in Hong Kong! (Note: Because of the financial powerhouse that Hong Kong is, e*Trade HKG has setup, for lack of a more technical word, "easy-access" ties with e*trade USA). That means if you get paid in USD here and store USD in your HSBC Powervantage account, you just make a 3rd party transfer to e*Trade Hong Kong's U.S. dollar account (for your info the acct is #: 502118029201....no, that's not my account you can call them to confirm!) and your money will just transfer straight over - no exchange rate hassles. Great!

Lucky for you guys...I get paid in HKD. :ugh:

Aloha :cool:

etrade/hsbc
 

can you confirm the process to transfer from hsbc hkg to etrade ?

i have an etrade usa account.
i have an hsbc hkg account.

the '3rd party transfer' list is all banks, etrade is not on the list.
under the 'bill pay' option, etrade is listed, but it seems to only
allow hong kong $ transfers.

i could just wire the USD's from HSBC HKG to etrade USA...pay the
HSBC outgoing wire fee, (etrade has no incoming wire fees) but
it seems like there should be a free way to move the $'s to etrade
hkg from HSBC.

thanks.

Let me just say, if you are coming from the States, you will think HSBC is the worst bank you have ever used. They charge you a fee for everything. It is very inconvenient and you must do many of the things that should be done on-line by actually showing up in person.

You want to get a new card cause you lost yours? That is fine, come in and fill an application. HSBC is like most things in HK. Convoluted and very complicated with lots of paperwork.

You want a credit card? sure, how's 20+% APR sound? What a deal, right? I never get credit cards for more than 10%, but in HK, that is unheard of. Not to mention they will cap you limit based on your salary. So if you are a US based FO, then your limit will be around 4 to 5 grand.

IMHO, the best option is to have a really good bank in the States that doesn't charge for incoming wires. I use Commerce Bank, which is a bank in the northeast, based out of NY. If you are coming from this area, I highly recommend you walk into a branch and open an account. You can do everything online, there are NO FEES for anything, and they are really customer oriented (hopefully they won't get bought out, but probably will).

They don't charge me for when I transfer money, and it costs about 16USD for a wire transfer from HSBC. The nice thing is that you'll be able to do this from the states if you don't make it out to HK ever month.

Good luck

bribo757
 

I assume you are holding USD in your HSBC account. Just see my previous post. Transfer the money to e*trade's USD account - just as if you were transferring money to a friend's account. I even put their account number on my previous post for e*trade's USD account. (call them to verify).

Once you've done that, give e*trade a call. You must notify them that you've transferred money into their account that is bound for your USA account. Make sure you include your 8-digit USA e*trade account number. If you've done the transfer prior to 1:00 p.m. local hong kong time it will show up the next business day.

Call e*trade HKG if you have any questions. i also posted their phone number on an earlier post. They're quite friendly and very helpful.

Like Sqwak7700 said, don't pay HSBC wire transfer fees. HSBC is notorious for charging you for everything - bypass all of this by using e*trade.

Aloha :cool:

Alohajec,
Trying not to sound like a broken record here.....but, under the HSBC make Foreign Currency Transfer to non-HSBC bank (which is what we are trying to do in this situation), you have to choose a Bank name from the drop down list given on the page. E*Trade is not listed there. So despite having the E*Trade HKG USD acct number that you have kindly provided, the only place that E*Trade is listed under any transfer pages on the HSBC website is under BillPay....using HKD transfers only.
Anyway, thanks for your input. If you can find where to do a foreign currency USD transfer to E*Trade on the HSBC website, please provide the info.
FYI

e*Trade Has an HSBC U.S. $ account in HKG
 

FYI -
No worries. The news keeps getting better. I just spoke with both e*Trade and HSBC again to verify the following information. The account number I mentioned in the previous post (502118029201) is an E*Trade Securities HKG Limited U.S. Dollar Account with HSBC Bank. (Say that 10 times fast). In short, it IS an HSBC account number.

So that means when you goto HSBC's online transfer section in their website, Under the section "Transfer to/from Foreign Currency Account" select "To an HSBC Account - 24-hour Currency Exchange Services" since that account is an HSBC account. (Do NOT choose the "To a non-HSBC Account" option).

Once you are there in Step 2>>> Select "Other HSBC Account" and input the account number listed above. (Call e*Trade to verify this beforehand as I claim no responsibility!) Change the Account Currency in the pull-down menu to "USD United States Dollar."

Funds will be transferred immediately and there will be no charge since it's within HSBC!

Remember to include your 8-digit e*trade USA account number (I guess you put that in the Notes section) and call e*Trade afterwards to notify them you've transferred funds to your e*trade USA account.

Hope this helps/works for you.
Aloha :cool:

Got it....will give it a try. The only other glitch (if you want to call it that) is that our pay often doesn't go into our acct in HSBC until after 1 pm, so this may delay the funds getting over to the US by a day. Worth it though and will just have to adjust the day I should expect to have my $$ in the US.
Thanks again for your input.
FYI

Here is a question.....Can't you just write yourself a check from the HSBC and deposit it in your North america bank? No wire fees but it takes a bit longer to get your $$.

Well, first of all, if you are US based you get paid in USD. The check book you are able to get for your HSBC acct is a HKD check book (I'm only speaking as a PowerVantage customer with HSBC). To get a bank check written in USD for you will cost you something like $80HKD or there abouts. This again relates back to actually being in HKG just after your pay comes in and you are heading straight home to then cash the check. If you have the flexibility to do this and not need the money straight away, then fine.
If you were to change your USD to HKD online (read loss of money through commission etc) and then write yourself the check in HKD.....I would imagine most banks won't cash a non USD check from a foreign bank anyway, and if they did, they'll probably hose you for commission and put some ridiculous hold on the funds in the meantime.
I've signed up with ETrade in the US and will report back on how it goes. Note that ETrade HKG told me they only deal with the brokerage side of ETrade US and not the banking side, so if you are going to try the transfer this way, it will only work to a brokerage acct and not a ETrade bank/checking acct. Other brokerage/banking options I've checked out in the US recently that have pretty good deals as far as no fee for incoming wires, interest on checking accts, ATM fee refunds etc. are via www.schwab.com and www.everbank.com. They all along with ETrade brokerage and checking have similar setups with minor differences. One thing I like about the Scwab setup is that they will give unlimited refunds on ATM fees using their debit card worldwide. They'll (as far as I can see) refund those costs once a month. Anyway, lots of different options. At the very least, nobody should now have to pay for the cost of receiving an incoming wire (if you are, change banks....or open a separate acct via one of the ones suggested here) to get your pay to the US.
I wish we had this discussion years ago! (Thanks again Alohajec :))
FYI

Thanks for the great input guys. I think I will just have to eat the fees until I get into the groove of a new pay date etc. Let us know how the e*trade stuff works out!

Can confirm that HSBC Premium account allows fee free transfer to other HSBC accounts, anywhere in the world. So it bloody well should... as the requirement is to have average balance >1 million HKD.

Actually, not that bad, as you can hold all sorts of securities/ currencies in the account (so not just HK shares, but also US government treasuries, corporate bonds, CD's etc.) But it does make it pretty much your main bank/ savings account, which defeats the purpose of wanting a free way of sending money to your (presumably main) account in the US.

Guys, why makes things so complicated? E-trade, bank draft, etc. You can save your time by just doing everything online and it won't cause you that much more.

By using PowerVantage Online banking with HSBC, you get discounted online wired transfer to overseas account for HKD$100 per transcation.
You will still need to pay the local charges at your own bank in the US, which will usually cost about USD$10 per transcation. This is probably the most convient way to transfer money. No need to go to the bank or anything, everything can be done with a click of your mouse! Easy!

bus

Busx3,
The whole point of this thread is to try find a way to avoid those exact fees you are talking about. If you are happy to continue to pay the $$ to send and receive your pay, that's fine....the idea here is that there is a way that is not overly complicated to do this without paying anything.
I'm pretty sure most people are aware of the use online of the wire transfer with HSBC. One thing some may not be aware of is that it can cost you more if you tick the "overseas charges to be paid by recipient" box at the bottom of the form. If you do this, HSBC USA take a slice of the pie as your money makes its way to your bank. So, the costs end up something like this.....
Wire out - $100 HKD taken by HSBC HKG. Wire passing through - $20 US taken by HSBC USA. Wire being received - $10 (or up to $20 by some banks) wire being received by your bank.
If thats OK with you....go for it. By the way, the $20 I quoted above that HSBC USA take out is what I used to see before I changed to ticking the box of "overseas charges to be paid by self". If you do this, then the total wire fee for HSBC become $130 HKD (ie, a bit less than $100 HKD and $20 US).
So, make sure you change how you tick that box on the form you use in the HSBC wire transfer page online. That is a big savings straight away. As far as paying a bank fee to receive the wire.....again, if you are ok with that then fine. The point of this thread is that it is not that hard to adjust your banking setup, if only slightly, to avoid that fee. Just setup an account online with someone that doesn't charge for incoming wires, no monthly minimums and a checkbook and then write yourself a check to deposit at your local bank. You can't tell me that is over complicating the process.
FYI

E trade account
 

Can anybody confirm what type of E*trade account you need to have for this transfer.

Do you need an E*trade savings account, E*trade investment account or does it matter.

Thks


Cider30

etrade HKG told me that you need a brokerage account.
you can also have an etrade savings account, but the funds are transfered into the brokerage account, then you can move them to the savings.

i just did the first transfer from HSBC HKG to Etrade yesterday. It took a while to set everything up (including adding Etrade as a 'registered account' with Etrade), but it worked, and was all free.

Etrade HKG actually wires the money to Etrade USA for you, once you transfer the money from your HSBC HKG account to their HSBC HKG account.

I've done it also in the last day or so and it worked well. The $ appeared in my Etrade brokerage acct the next day as advertised.

Is there a way to get around the $1000 to open a brokerage account? I opened a savings account but I guess you need a brokerage account to transfer money from HK. Correct?

If you are changing HKD to USD within the E*Trade brokerage account, you will be paying their spot rate (E*trade determines this). This is the same way that currency changers in airports make money, buy low and sell high. For every $1000 HKD that you transfer, you will be paying about $10 HKD just because of the difference in the open market rate and the 'spot' rate that Etrade comes up with.

So, does anybody have insight on whether HSBC exchanges money at their spot rate or at the current trading rate? If so, what is HSBC's spot rate?

For instance, ETRADE's current 'spot' rate is 7.7506 HDK for each $1 USD vs the current exchange rate of 7.8294. This is almost $.08 difference.

any updates? Is this still the best way to get HKD to USD?