International transfer from Chile to BUNQ SPAIN.

New-Scarlet-Bunny-621072035

Hi bunqers! I’m having a problem with an international transfer and maybe you could help me with/sharing your experience.

I made an international transfer from Chile to my bunq account in Spain 20 days ago. The money has not arrived yet. Bunq has informed me that the money hasn’t been received for bunq after doing a payment investigation using the SWIFT.

Also bunq is telling me that they don’t have/use an intermediary bank, but from Chile, by protocol, the banks must process the international transfers through an intermediary bank. I think this could be the problem as the intermediary bank could be having problems in finding a route to pay to my bunq account.

Please, if someone have information regarding this subject, I will appreciate your opinion. Many thanks!!

Jakob-Y

Martina but from Chile, by protocol, the banks must process the international transfers through an intermediary bank

Intermediary banks are mainly used to convert currencies. Your Chilean bank is probably not able to send Euro transfers, and bunq is not able to accept anything but Euro transfers (on Euro-accounts at least). Without an intermediary bank, currency cannot be exchanged. Therefore, in these cases a normal SWIFT transfer is simply not possible. The information from bunq is true: they do not have an intermediary bank that they work with, so never try to send SWIFT transfers that aren't in the correct currency and aren't sent directly to bunq.

It's better (and cheaper) to look into third-party alternatives that facilitate transfers to the SEPA instead of using SWIFT. I cannot recommend any certain platform, as Wise, which I normally use, does not offer sending money from Chile to other countries, but a quick web search netted Currencybird and Global 66 as potential services to have a look at (but definitely no specific endorsement from me).

New-Scarlet-Bunny-621072035

Jakob Hi Jakob! I wrote the answer directly on the post by mistake. Could you take a look at it? Many thanks for your time!

New-Scarlet-Bunny-621072035

Hi Jakob! How are you!? Many thanks you for your time! The transfer was made in EUROS directly from Chile. The bank (Santander) transferred EUROS directly. We made the conversion before sending the money. But they used an intermediary bank. In that case, isn’t possible anyway? And if so, knowing that regular banks in countries like Chile use an intermediary bank, I think that the information in bunq is not enough to avoid committing this kind of mistakes… I am looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks again!

Jakob-Y

Martina In that case, isn’t possible anyway?

Keep in mind this is the community forum, so I'm just another bunq user. And while I do international payments regularly myself, I haven't dealt with payments to or from Chile before. As you have indicated that you have already spoken to bunq support, they are the better reference. However, I have searched through older threads on this forum to see if there is any more relevant information that might be of interest.

I found this thread: https://together.bunq.com/d/39367/8 It seems like this customer was able to successfully receive a transfer from a Mexican bank and the information that Tim got from bunq there indicates that as long as the payment has been made in Euro and the payment reaches bunq (whether through an intermediary bank or not), it can work.

To track down your specific payment, though, it seems to me like the best idea is to work with support of both banks to try and track it down.

New-Scarlet-Bunny-621072035

Jakob Hi Jakob. Many thanks for all the information and help, I really appreciate it. That thread is very interesting considering my situation. Anyway, what I realize in this moment is that regulars SWIFT transfers made to bunq takes much longer on arriving to the receiver (if they do) than the transfers between commons banks. So I don’t recommend to wire money from abroad to a bunq account using SWIFT. I have been waiting for the money for 20 days.

I will ask to the sender bank to revert the operation. I think they could do that and retrieve the money into the bank account in Chile. Do you know anything about this?
Thank you again! 😊

Jakob-Y

Martina I think they could do that and retrieve the money into the bank account in Chile. Do you know anything about this?

My hunch would be that whatever happens, the payment will either go through eventually or bounce back to your Chilean bank account. Whether that process can be expedited, I don't know.

I don’t recommend to wire money from abroad to a bunq account using SWIFT

Indeed bunq itself recommends to use services like Wise when dealing with transfers from out of the SEPA if possible, as they're often cheaper and much faster than relying on the SWIFT network. In your case Wise wouldn't be a possibility but the alternatives that I've found earlier seem interesting to me on a first glance.

That said, I have received SWIFT transfers on my bunq account without much problems already in the past. In general it does work and my experience has been that it takes a few business days, but not much longer than at other banks.

New-Scarlet-Bunny-621072035

Jakob Jakob, many thanks for sharing all your experience with me. We will see what happens. I have the same hunch.

I will take in consideration the other options to transfer to bunq from abroad, and another bank for swift transfers. I will let you what happens finally once this is resolved. Thank you!