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China Banking And Currency Exchange: Free Is One Of The Few Words I Always Understand

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

A really good friend of mine who works at Bank of America is always touting its China solutions. He occasionally emails me beautiful brochures with beautiful graphics, presumably detailing how I can move my firm's paltry earnings between the US and China, and vice versa. My reaction has always been to think that every big bank can do that. Appears I was wrong. Transpacifica has a post today, entitled, "Bank of America and China Construction Bank, or No-Fee USD Withdrawals in China," explaining how BofA's ownership stake in CCB translates on the ground to allowing one to "move USD into RMB with no ATM fees, no exchange rate adjuncts, and generally few headaches:"

Many international travelers are familiar with the pain of double-barrel ATM fees ? one from the machine that gives you money, and one from a U.S. bank penalizing you for using someone else?s terminal. Worse yet is the percentage of the withdrawal charged as an ?exchange rate adjunct.? Before I discovered the BoA-CCB deal I was losing almost 7 percent on my USD withdrawals in China. Now, I withdraw money from a BoA checking account with the debit card I received in the United States with no fees whatsoever: It transfers at market rate from USD to RMB and gives me cash.

My firm banks at Wells Fargo because it has a branch right in our building. We will be moving into a new (and bigger and better) office come July 1, one block from our present branch and one block from a Bank of America branch. I am going to see if Wells Fargo has anything comparable and if it does not....

Full post as published by China Law Blog on May 28, 2008 (boomark / email).