An English Teacher in China

Banking in China can be a challenge to say the least. Most employees speak limited English and customer service is a very new concept here in China. But, I have recently discovered a relatively easy way to stay connected and pay bills in another country.

At first, I was worried about paying some of my bills back in Canada, like my accounting designation, or minor things. And when I asked around I heard some scary ideas of how to transfer money, “Go to the guy outside the bank give him 20,000RMB and he’ll exchange it for USD.” That thought wasn’t very appealing to me.

So I was quite excited when I was looking online at my bank Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and found out that I could transfer money out of China to Canada.

You can transfer up to $500 USD per day to an overseas bank. (the website say $50,000, but I don’t know how you can do that. As a teacher you’ll probably never have that much anyways!) You’ll need your passport (which you need to do any banking in China). You will also need your account number you want to transfer to:

Institution number-Branch number-Account number

000-12345-8888888

If you aren’t sure your numbers you can call your bank back home (over Skype). If you already do bank transfers through ING you will be familiar with these numbers.

Plus you need the address of your bank in Canada or home country.

So, what I normally do is as follows.

1. I get a ticket for the non-RMB business.
   
2. Then get an Application for Funds Transfers (Overseas) and fill in all the above information.  Usually then the girls at the help desk send me to a table where a women helps me fill in the form and checks that I do it right.
3. Then I go to the window and a teller fills in many forms and stamps, 30 minutes to 1 hour later I’m done.

The result?

Now that the Canadian dollar is higher than the USD I can send out $495.00

My Canadian bank charges me a fee for this remittance $25.00

My net amount that I can transfer at one time is $470.00

On the Chinese side my last transaction also cost RMB 61 (about $8.00)

So, while this may not be the cheapest option it is one option to send money back to Canada. When I learned I was able to this it put my personal financial situation more at ease. Now my challenge is earning and saving more money and sending more back to Canada.