Introduction
I travel to the USA frequently, both for conferences and for business/meetings. On each occasion, I spend anything from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand (sometimes the hotels are paid in dollars, sometimes part of the airfares, plus all the spending for the duration of the visit).
Over the years, I occasionally received payment from USA companies, although in the past year this has become more frequent. Obviously, it’s stupid for me to pay the exchange rate premium twice (once in each direction) AND pay commision (twice!) AND pay any bank-specific charges for the priviledge – when I’m actually guranteed to spend those dollars sooner or later as actual dollars.
I asked my UK bank (Halifax) about opening a dollar account. They claimed to have never heard of such a thing, and had the temerity to open a browswer window and go surfing on Google to try and find out if it’s a service they offer (they offer at least three different services along those lines – Halifax’s head office should probably put a call through to the Brighton branch-manager and ask why they have untrained staff manning the branch at the moment).
So I went looking into the alternatives myself. The main things I need are:
- Deposit money in dollars (preferably by transfer from other people’s USA accounts)
- Deposit money in sterling (I’d avoid this, but it might be necessary if I have a lot of USA spending to do at some point)
- Withdraw dollars from ATMs in the USA
- Transfer money in dollars to other people’s USA accounts (payment for services etc)