Transferring Money from US to Canadian Bank

[vtwxgrad]

Hi all!

I'll be starting my M.Sc. at McGill in the Fall and have been trying to find information about banking in Montreal but am coming up with many different opinions. In particular, does anyone have advice on transferring money (probably ~$5,000-10,000 US total) from my US bank account to my future Canadian bank account? Are there particular banks that will allow me to do this more easily and with the lowest possible fees? It seems like most have $2500 limits at least in 24 hours. I've also seen online services like Xoom - not sure if anyone has experience with these?

Thanks!
Chris 

[iphi]

They will place a hold on anything over $1k for a check, I assume $2500 is for wiring it. I don't have much advice, does your current US bank have any partners in Canada? You could keep the majority of money in your US account (if you use a credit card or something with no international fees then you only need a Canadian account for cash). That's what I did. I use my credit card for almost everything since I get such good rewards from it, then use the Canadian bank account for direct deposit from the university.

 

If you do switch over everything, look into an Airmiles card and use it for everything!

 

eta: Also some Canadian banks are in the US: BMO (my recommendation) and TD as far as I know. Scotia Bank may have a partnership with Bank of America, but I didn't like banking with them ad switched in favor of BMO.

Edited April 6, 2015 by iphi

[vtwxgrad]

They will place a hold on anything over $1k for a check, I assume $2500 is for wiring it. I don't have much advice, does your current US bank have any partners in Canada? You could keep the majority of money in your US account (if you use a credit card or something with no international fees then you only need a Canadian account for cash). That's what I did. I use my credit card for almost everything since I get such good rewards from it, then use the Canadian bank account for direct deposit from the university.

 

If you do switch over everything, look into an Airmiles card and use it for everything!

 

eta: Also some Canadian banks are in the US: BMO (my recommendation) and TD as far as I know. Scotia Bank may have a partnership with Bank of America, but I didn't like banking with them ad switched in favor of BMO.

 

Currently I have a small local bank, but I could potentially open one with TD or BMO. Since I'm in the Northeast, TD has a strong presence. I do have a no-foreign transaction fee credit card however since the USD is relatively strong at the moment I was thinking it could be good to transfer at least some of money to Canadian as it would give me a few hundred $ extra CAD. Using the credit card is actually probably a good idea in general though for most transactions! I'll keep that in mind.

[TakeruK]

When I went the other way (CAD to USD), I didn't have any banks that were in both Canada and California. So, I just got a US dollar bank draft. The bank held some of it for a week, but since a US dollar bank draft is drawn on a US bank, there is little delay. You can do the same when going the other way! You'll also get to take advantage of the currency exchange rate

 

But as you and others said, TD has a fairly efficient way to transferring funds. Too bad that didn't work for me!

[Carthage32]

I second the TD recommendation. When I moved to the US from Canada, I opened a TD Bank account in the US (I already had a TD Canada account). You can actually open a TD US account via phone/mail, and don't need to go to a branch.

 

Once you have both a TD US and a TD Canada account, transferring money is a breeze. They don't charge any transaction fees, and all it takes is a 5 min phone call when you want to transfer.

[vtwxgrad]

Thanks everyone! I opened up a TD Student Checking account (US) online earlier so that whenever I'm able to get one opened up in Canada it should be simple to transfer. 

[zupgiusto]

I'm late to the party, but was also going to recommend TD. They have a lot of US/Canada programs and my experience with them has been all positive. Plus their mobile banking apps are great. I was just thinking the other week how American students here must be killing it in terms of getting discounts on their tuition with how awful our dollar is. 

I wanted to leave this link here, which students at my school wrote to help Canadian students working in the US. There is a whole section on ways students might consider transferring money from US accounts into Canada, and some tax stuff: https://stephenholiday.com/Unofficial-Waterloo-USA-Intern-Guide/