In Reply to: Helping Balinese family - financially posted by We_Luv_Bali on Sunday, 1. March 2009 at 16:19 Bali Time:
We've tried several methods over the years for my husband to send money back to his family. For your situation the best way would be to open a low fee account in your name. Get two cards and send one to your friends. Phone or sms them the pin number. The bank will not recommend this method - they can't - but it works fine.
Deposit money and they can withdraw from an ATM in Bali. Most banks charge $5 per transaction and the exchange is similar to what you get for cash in Bali.
The only trap with this method is overdrawing the account. You need to put enough in so that the $5 fees are covered, and you need to get them to use an ATM that will give them up to 3 million per withdrawal - if they use one of the lower limit ATMS, it can cost a lot if fees as they make multiple withdrawals and overdraw the account due to the fees, which then costs you a fortune in additional fees. Also you need to make sure they understand not to empty the account, to leave the fees money in there.
The other alternative is to TT money to them directly to a bank account in Indonesia. In that case you transfer AUD and it gets converted to Rupiah at the other end. TTs cost anywhere between $22 to $30 depending on the bank, so expensive for small amounts.