I received a check in Euros that is large enough for me to care about the precise exchange rate when converting to Dollars. Many US banks have poor currency conversion rates. I’ve seen banks with as bad a rate 10% below the ~1.12 rates listed on XE.com or x-rates.com , so if I cashed the check at that bank, I’d lose 10% of the balance to conversion fees. The best conversion rate I’ve seen among my area banks is about 4% worse than XE.com. Losing 4% of the balance is obviously better than losing 10%, but I’d prefer a better rate.
Does anyone have ideas about how I could cash the check with a better Euro/Dollar conversion rate? I am open to non-traditional options besides banks, as well as things like exchanging the check for Euro bills without a conversion. Note that I live in the US and do not have access to European banks.
You should ask if any bank will cash the check for you if you don’t have an account with them. Besides currency exchange rate, you may encounter service fees as well. My non-HSBC bank charges me $40-$50 service fee to deposit an HSBC check in US currency but the account is not US based…
I’m planning to open an account at whatever bank or other option has the best conversion rate. The banks I’ve contacted seem happy to do this… I’ll probably continue to use the account for other non-US currency transactions, maybe for wires too. My usual bank is Wells Fargo. They have a much lower one-time fees for non-US checks than you listed (I’ve never heard of $40-$50 before), but charge something on the order of $20 per received wire, which can be a large percentage of smaller wires. However, for larger amounts, like the check, I’m not concerned with fees like this that don’t scale with the deposit size.