In Reply to: Transfer money to Bali posted by swansea on Wednesday, 31. March 2010 at 09:51 Bali Time:
It is essentially a TT, but done via the internet, so sounds like something you have looked into before. We use ANZ to BCA. It is weird calling it a telegraphic transfer as it obviously is not done using a telegraph!, and on the ANZ site they call it an International Transfer. But it is not like a 'pay anyone' transfer direct into another bank account. That is not available legally due to controls put in place to monitor money laundering, and other compliance issues around the sum of money you can transfer in/out of the country.
We have used a number of methods -
"TT" into a BCA account in Indo - using the internet, effective, but expensive for small or frequent amounts.
Deposit into an account here and give the person at the other end a card and they can withdraw from ATM - expensive if they overdraw the account, or draw out small amounts that are still hit for the overseas transaction fee, and not suitable for large sums of money.
Western Union - expensive but fast and good for emergencies.
We also have a BCA account set up in Indo and leave a good amount of money in there earning interest (rotten rate) and then transfer to other Indo accounts from that. It is the least expensive and most cost effective way, the forgone earnings on the money is way less than fees for transferring. But you need to be a resident to open an account.