I am going to stay in Australia for a couple of months but my account is located in Europe. Converting money from EUR to AUD and paying in stores / withdrawing money etc shouldn’t be a problem.
My question is, can I pay e.g. rent easily via bank transfer (from AUD to AUD) or will that be a SWIFT transaction, costing me various fees?
You may want to take a look at TransferWise; they offer an AUD local bank account. They also offer a debit Mastercard that would allow you free payments and 200AUD (I think) of free cash, similar to Revolut. However, there is a fee for bank transfers, even if no currency conversion takes place (which is a bit ridiculous).
It should work, but you have to pay 0.5 % transaction fee if you convert EUR to AUD. It sounds much, but it still is the cheapest and easiest way. Transferring money to an Australian account will then cost an additional fee of 0.6 € per transaction.
If you open a local bank account in Australia and transfer money from your European home bank, the fees are just ridiculous…
@Elipv If you do this, you will still use the SWIFT network when sending out your AUD to TransferWise, so there will be fees. (Revolut doesn’t have local AUD, so no other choice than using SWIFT)
I would also suggest TransferWise in general, they’re a good alternative to :r:, especially for those cases where you need a local USD/AUD account.
The fees are quite low, and you will save a lot compared to a regular bank/using the SWIFT network.
Their debit card program was in closed beta until a week-ago or so, anyone should be able to get one now (beware: it’s a very bright color )
Suggested steps for you:
Send money in EUR or GBP from Revolut to TransferWise
Convert into AUD in TransferWise
Use TransferWise’s local AUD account to pay rent etc.
Please note that :r: will “land” in Australia soon, maybe in the next 6 months or so, providing local AUD to everyone Keep an eye out
There are different fees for different currencies (both for conversion and transfers to bank accounts) with conversion fees around 0.5% - 1% and transaction fees between 0.5 and 1 Euro. Just check their website, it lists all fees in a table.
Revolut definitely is nicer with regard to fees, but unfortunately they don’t offer local bank accounts in many currencies yet