Wealth Strategy

If you are trying to send or receive funds through a money transfer but are not in your home country, then get ready to deal with a lot of issues when you do not have a bank account in the country you are in.

Don’t worry though, there are systems that let you wire cash to the other person through a location based service which requires recipients to know a password in order to retrieve the cash.This system has been massively tightened as a result of the attacks on September 11 as this was the easiest way for terrorists to wire funds around the globe. Now, usually both the sender and recipient must present identification to take advantage of this form.

Brazilian immigrants based in the U.S. consistently transfer money an average of just one time per month. Experts estimate it averages out to 400 U.S. dollars a month.

The U.S. isn’t the only major nation transferring into Brazil, however. Brazil also receives remittance from Japan at the same average of once a month. Japan however, averages the equivalent of 600 U.S. dollars a month, making it one of the highest contributing nations.

So how exactly do people even get that money there? Some use a bank’s wire service, which requires both people to have an account with the bank. This doesn’t always work considering the sender may not be able to open an account because of their immigration status, or the receiver may not be in a state where they can open up any kind of account in Brazil – a huge reason why people leave the country for countries like the U.S. or Japan.

People also turn to courier services or even mailboxes. However, not only do options like these take anywhere from days to weeks before the money arrives, there is also the question of how safe the system really is. Oftentimes, money wired through systems like these never even arrives.

Those needing to send money to Brazil may do so using one of the numerous offline services. Beware though, the exchange rate converts one U.S. dollar into two Brazilian Reais while also charging an additional 10% fee – give or take a few percentage points. After all is said and done you’ll have less than if you were to just wire the cash within the United States.

Yet another option is to wire cash with a pre-paid ATM or debit card. The sender simply buys the card and sends it through FedEx, a well-known courier service.

The card only costs about and you are permitted to send up to $1000. You can also trust that the funds will arrive safely and your recipient will not be forced to wait around checking the mail every day or even have to drive all the way to one of the location-based companies to go pick it up. The even greater perk of this method is that to add money the sender simply jumps on the phone or on the web to transfer money onto the card in just minutes. It’s no wonder so many more people are turning to this option – it is by far one of the fastest, most convenient forms of money transfer. This way seems to be much safer than traditional methods that have survived for decades.