Disclaimer: this post is not a paid review or advertisement, but is my personal experience that I would like to share with those who are in the same position as me. However, the company Xoom does have a referral program that will give you and I $25 if you use their service via my referral link at the end of the post, but you are not obligated to do so.
Recently, PayPal announced they have acquired money transfer company Xoom for $890 million, and the news reminded me of my experience with Xoom and would like to share it with you.
For those of us who live in US, when we need to send money to someone in US, there are many companies we can choose, such as PayPal, Google Wallet, Amazon Payment, and so on. And they made the money transfer service as easy as providing the receipt’s email address. But when it comes to sending money internationally, it is a different story.
Several weeks ago I needed to send some money to someone in China and I asked some friends how they have done it, and their recommendation is to use Western Union. Western Union is a widely used service for international money transfer service because they have been in this field for a long time. So I signed up on Western Union’s website and started to fill out the transfer form, but I didn’t get too far before I had to stop because it asked me to provide some information of the receipt’s bank account, such as SWIFT/BIC, bank name/address and bank account name/number, and all information needs to be in English. Well, the problem is my receipt does not speak any English and also it was the receipt’s first time to receive money electronically, so it was really hard for both of us to get the right information.
During the frustrating process, I said to myself “there’s gotta be a better way to do this.” So I started searching Google about international money transfer service and Xoom came on top of my search. I was especially attracted by its simple and easy process to send money to China: it only needs the receipt’s UnionPay card number and the cardholder’s name appeared on the card when transferring the money. UnionPay is the most popular (and the only domestic) bank card in China, and of course my receipt has one. I hesitated for a bit because I thought it is too easy (or too good) to be true, until I noticed they have a money-back guarantee policy, which allows me, if my receipt doesn’t get the money I transferred, to cancel the transaction and get my money back. Now I am sold.
The whole process is indeed simple and easy. I enter the receipt’s UnionPay card number and the receipt’s name, the amount of money being transferred in US dollars which Xoom will automatically convert to Chinese currency RMB, and then choose my payment information ( you can pay with major US credit card or bank account), then click Send. That’s all.
The next day I got a phone call from Xoom to ask me to verify the transfer either because it is my first time to transfer money to China or some other reason that triggered their verification system. The whole verification process took about 5 minutes and then the transaction was complete. About 5 days later, I was notified by the receipt that the money was deposited.
How much does Xoom charge for transferring money? It depends on where you transfer money to. Xoom’s transaction fee is usually much lower than Western Union, but Xoom also uses a lower currency conversion rate to make money when transferring money to another country, so overall you will spend the comparable amount of transaction fee no matter you use Xoom or Western Union, but Xoom’s service is much much simpler and easier. For the exchange rates and fees, visit Xoom’s help center web page.
As I mentioned in the disclaimer, Xoom has a referral program and if you think my experience helped you and you decided to use Xoom, I would appreciate you using my referral link so we both can get a $25 Amazon.com gift card. Here is my referral link: http://refer.xoom.com/v2/share/6168822216059225358/6a6566667265797a68656e67406c6976652e636f6d
