Today Barclays Bank in London would not wire money to us.

[femmedem]

My husband owns a small business, and he has a British customer who tried to wire us money today. Barclays refused because they said they weren't wiring anything which would be converted to dollars. It was a smallish amount of money, around $500.

I don't pretend to know much about economics--only slightly more than McCain--but this struck me as frightening.

[phantom power]

1. Hey, would you want to mess with unstable 3rd-world currencies?

[jberryhill]

2. Ummmm.... I do international wires on a regular basis

Including two transactions over $10K this week.

Methinks the explanation was confused. If your husband's customer has a consumer account, his bank might not do a dollar-denominated transfer, period. Typically, an international wire can be converted at one end or the other end, and the banks will try to upsell the customers at either end on the currency conversion plus the wire.

[femmedem]

3. I hope that is the explanation!

I will forward this to my husband. I am going to PM you with a question rather than have my economic ignorance showing all over the board. :)

[femmedem]

4. Mr. Femmedem just came home and he said it was coming from a personal account.

However, the customer said he tried to buy the dollars there, then wire them here, and that this was something he had done before from the same account. He is going to try again tomorrow.

[jberryhill]

5. Yup...

I handle a lot of escrowed transactions, and have seen all kinds of weirdness happen. I saw a couple million dollars go into limbo for three days one time while the two banks involved pointed fingers at each other. My guess was that they were playing the float on a currency exchange, and telling me a good story in the meantime.

[femmedem]

12. Do you think it has anything to do with this?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4028582

[galileoreloaded]

6. could do it this way

Edited for stupidity on my part.

[holboz]

7. Oh please don't say that

My husband just started his new job in London and gets paid next week - he'll have to wire money through HSBC so I can pay the bills. (we have HSBC accounts in both UK and US, hopefully we won't run into any problems...?)

[kaygore]

9. I haven't and I have an account on the Isle of Mann in both Euros and Pounds

and I have had not problems with transfers to my US account in dollars. However, the dollar is stronger now than it has been, so the exchange rate isn't too good from pounds to dollars.

P.S. I spend several months in London this past winter and spring and loved it!

[femmedem]

11. The customer is going to try again today.

I'll let you know what happens. Congratulations on your husband's new job!

[kaygore]

8. I just wired $7000 to Paris for a friend in financial difficulties and there were

no problems. Dollars to Euros would seem to be more of a problem than the other way around.

[morgan2]

10. they may be using all their us dollar holdings in

their bid to buy whatever bank that is..