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Buying from APMEX in the USA with bank wire


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Many of us have the need to purchase from leading suppliers in the USA like APMEX from time to time. Often the postage, or customs fees or other unknowns make if challenging and sometimes the lack of a USA address can be a killer problem. I wanted to give you the benefit of my experience and if you would like to add your own to this thread it should provide a good reference to what works and what doesnt and the perils and pitfalls of international transactions.

APMEX like many others provide better rates for cheque or bank wire transactions. Most people dont have the patience to wait for cheques to clear so they use bank wire. APMEX used to have a very high minimum value and make it very difficult to transact but this aspect of dealing with them has been improved recently.

So you go on the web site and choose your coin and ideally choose a USA address as delivery to USA addresses is normally free.

There will be two prices quoted Check/wire or CC/paypal.

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If you want to use the wire you need to then find a way to convert from your currency into $. Normally I use Currencyfair https://www.currencyfair.com/ which is one of my favourite companies and they have a great app too. I have set up the currencyfair inward £ account on my banking app so i can just make an easy payment to them. To do this you go to Currencyfair and tell them how much to expect from where and they can then match this to the inbound payment. The process take 2-3 hours generally and then on completion you get an email saying funds have cleared. You then go to the APP or desktop and exchange currency using either a quick exchange or say what rate you are prepared to exchange in the marketplace. Having exchanged you can send a cheap payment to any USA bank account, or pay to SEPA Euro Accounts or many other places.

So I set APMEX up as a bank account and sent the money for a 1/4oz gold proof libertad. ... So far so good...

Two days later the payment returned to my Currency Fair account and Apmex did not get the cash...

WHY? 

It seems that there is a type of USA transaction called ACH (Automated Clearing House) like our BACS etc that APMEX do NOT allow!!!

So how do you do a transfer that APMEX will allow?

I bank with RBS - So I thought i would use my bank app to make the transfer - the cheapest was £22 and this could take up to 3 days!! Think again Numi

I opened a new account with https://www.hifx.com/ and they have a slightly different business model and in this case a better way to make a wire payment to APMEX

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The process was simple  and it works by letting you make a one step international transfer via debit card (0 extra cost) or by credit card (3.5% extra) to any bank account as a regular SWIFT bank wire transfer. I added the APMEX account, bank details and ABN (Routing number) and made a transfer for £9 only. 

I received confirmation within 2 hours that APMEX had received the funds.

Now you will have to work out for yourself which is the best way to do this and if it is worth paying by Paypal - my thinking is that I often use Paypal and fund the transaction from my AMEX card to earn miles - Paypal are not that great with currency conversion rates, my AMEX card takes $ transactions and imposes a currency charge as well so the actual amount of extra cost is more then one would imagine just by factoring in only the Paypal Fee.

Often its much better to use a currency conversion specialist to buy the currency you need (much more control) and I have no hesitation to recommend both Currency fair and HIFX depending on individual circumstances.

 

 

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Currencyfair use to make US transfers as swift payments but they stopped that sometime ago.

I've had a HiFX account setup for sometime now but never used them as the rates quoted back when I opened the account was very poor but I've just plugged in some numbers and it works out around 1% + fee which is very reasonable.  I think I'll give them ago.

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For those who ever use paypal, make sure to check whether it is cheaper to use paypal's exchange rate, which is the default setting, or your credit card exchange rate. In my case, where I live wont let me link pp to my bank account so everything is by cc and the cc exchange rate is a much better deal than pp's rate.And I get cc points. Of course, I pay off he cc total every month so as not to incur any interest charges.

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