How do multi-currency bank accounts work? What is the advantage?
Today typically a Business needs to hold accounts in more than one currency. Banks in certain countries are offering what is called a dual currency account. It is essentially 2 accounts with same account number but different currency. So One can have an account number say 123456 and have it in say AUD and USD. So the balance will always show as X AUD and Y USD. If you deposit funds [electronic, check or cash] in USD; your USD balance goes up. Likewise at the time of withdrawal you have to specify what currency you are withdrawing. Interest rates are calculated at different percentage for different currencies.  So in a nutshell it would like operating 2 accounts, with the advantage of remembering only one account number. Designate a particular currency as default currency. So if you don't quote a currency along with the account number, it would be treated as default currency. Otherwise you always quote the account number and currency. Of-course bundled with other services like free Fx Advice etc it makes the entire proposition very attractive. Edit: If you have AUD 100 and USD 100, if you try and withdraw USD 110, it will not be allowed; Unless you also sign up for a auto sweep conversion.  If you deposit a GBP check into the account, by default it would get converted into AUD [assuming AUD is the default currency]
There are short-term and long term aspects. In the long term, if you live and work in Australia and plan to continue doing both indefinitely, you might as well move all your cash investments there.  There would be no point bearing the exchange rate risks.  It may be worth keeping the account open with just enough credit to stop it being shut down.  There is no point needing to (think about) filing foreign tax returns just because you have an account earning a small amount of interest. In the short term, I think the more important question is practicality rather than exchange rate risk.  You want to have enough cash in both countries that if you suddenly have to pay say an apartment deposit or a bill, you won't be caught short.  So I would leave at least a few thousands dollars in a US bank account until at least a couple of months after the move, when I was sure everything was settled. Good luck. If the account is not dollar-denominated, I would say it does not make sense at all to have dollar-denominated statements. Such a statement would not even be accurate for any reasonable amount of time (since FX rates constantly fluctuate). This would be a nightmare for accounting purposes. If you really need to know the statements in USD, I think the best practice would be to perform the conversion yourself using Excel or some similar software. If I understand your question, you're misunderstanding the buy/sell spread, and at least in this instance seem to be in an unfortunate situation where the spread is quite large. The Polish Zloty - GBP ideal exchange rate is around 5.612:1.  Thus, when actually exchanging currency, you should expect to pay a bit more than 5.612 Zloty (Zloties?) to get one Pound sterling, and you should expect to get a bit less than 5.612 Zloty in exchange for one Pound sterling.  That's because you're giving the bank its cut, both for operations and so that it has a reason to hold onto some Zloty (that it can't lend out).  It sounds like Barclay's has a large spread - 5.211 Buy, 5.867 Sell.  I would guess British banks don't need all that many Zloty, so you have a higher spread than you would for USD or EUR. Other currency exchange companies or banks, particularly those who are in the primary business of converting money, may have a smaller spread and be more willing to do it inexpensively for you.  Also, it looks like the Polish banks are willing to do it at a better rate (certainly they're giving you more Zloty for one Pound sterling, so it seems likely the other way would be better as well, though since they're a Polish bank it's certainly easier for them to give you Zloty, so this may be less true).  Barclay's is certainly giving you a better deal on Pounds for a Zloty than they are Zloty for a Pound (in terms of how far off their spread is from the ideal). Here's what the GnuCash documentation, 10.5 Tracking Currency Investments (How-To) has to say about bookkeeping for currency exchanges. Essentially, treat all currency conversions in a similar way to investment transactions.  In addition to asset accounts to represent holdings in Currency A and Currency B, have an foreign exchange expenses account and a capital gains/losses account (for each currency, I would imagine).  Represent each foreign exchange purchase as a three-way split: source currency debit, foreign exchange fee debit, and  destination currency credit. Represent each foreign exchange sale as a five-way split: in addition to the receiving currency asset and the exchange fee expense, list the transaction profit in a capital gains account and have two splits against the asset account of the transaction being sold. My problems with this are: I don't know how the profit on a currency sale is calculated (since the amount need not be related to any counterpart currency purchase), and it seems asymmetrical.  I'd welcome an answer that clarifies what the GnuCash documentation is trying to say in section 10.5. The easiest options appear to be to open an account with one of the large multinational banks like Citi. They have options such as opening two separate checking accounts, one in each currency, and Citi in particular has an international account that appears to make mutli-currency personal banking easier. All of the options have minimum balance requirements or fees for conversion, but if you need quick access this seems to be the best bet. Even if this is a one-time event and you don't need the account, a bank like Citi may be able to help you cash the check and get access to the funds quicker than a national or local bank. http://www.citibank.com/ipb-global/homepage/newsite/content/english/multi_cap_bank_depo.htm Alternatively if you know anyone with a US bank account you can deposit it with them and take the cash withdrawal from their account, assuming they agree, the check isn't too large, etc. There is a service TransferWise through which you can send money from UK banks to EUR bank accounts in the EU for a 1 GBP fee (much cheaper then about 25 GBP for a SWIFT transfer). You send them a UK national GBP transfer to their UK HSBC account, and they send the equivalent amount in EUR from their Irish EUR bank account to your EUR account - for example in Germany. What is best, is that they use bare mid-market ForEx exchange rates, without any markup on the GBP to EUR exchange rate, which is usually in the range of 2% to 5% in banks, so you don't lose anything on the exchange rate. The big risk for a bank in country X is that they would be unfamiliar with all the lending rules and regulations in country Y. What forms and disclosures are required, and all the national and local steps that would be required. A mistake could leave them exposed, or in violation of some obscure law. Plus they wouldn't have the resources in country Y to verify the existence and the actual ownership of the property. The fear would be that it was a scam. This would likely cause them to have to charge a higher interest rate and higher fees. Not to mention that the currency ratio will change over the decades.   The risks would be large. "Echoing that bank fees are mostly ""because they can"", although partly this is because simply holding onto the money doesn't really pay enough for the physical infrastructure of branches, ATMs and staff. So like a budget airline they make it up on additional fees. But that document doesn't actually say they charge 3% for currency conversion! It's ""0.20% of transaction amount"" for currency conversion, which is not bad (although watch out for the ""spread"" between buying and selling rates). I see ""International POS/ATM Transaction Fee 3% of transaction amount"", which is very different. That's a card fee. The big issue with these is fraud - your card number suddenly being used in a different country will nearly always trigger extra fraud checks. It also involves a much more complicated settlement process. I'm more unimpressed with the monthly service charges and the huge $85 fee for international wire transfers." "See my comment below about the official exchange rate. There is no ""official"" exchange rate to apply as far as I'm aware.   However the bank is already applying the same exchange rate you can   find in the forex markets. They are simply applying a spread (meaning   they will add some amount to the exchange rate whichever way you are   exchanging currency). You will almost certainly not find a bank that   doesn't apply a spread. Of course, their spread might be large, so   that's why it is good to compare rates. By the way, 5 GBP/month seems   reasonable for a foreign currency (or any) acct. The transaction fees   might be cheaper in a different ""package"" so check. You should consider trying PayPal. Their spread is quite small - and publicly disclosed - and their per-transaction fees are very low. Of course, this is not a bank account. But you can easily connect it to your bank account and transfer the money between accounts quickly. They also offer free foreign currency accounts that you can basically open and close in a click. Transfers are instantaneous. I am based in Germany but I haven't had a problem with clients from various English-speaking countries using PayPal. They actually seem to prefer it in many instances." "Having savings only in your home currency is relatively 'low risk' compared with other types of 'low diversification'. This is because, in a simple case, your future cash outflows will be in your home currency, so if the GBP fluctuates in value, it will (theoretically) still buy you the same goods at home. In this way, keeping your savings in the same currency as your future expenditures creates a natural hedge against currency fluctuation. This gets complicated for goods imported from other countries, where base price fluctuates based on a foreign currency, or for situations where you expect to incur significant foreign currency expenditures (retirement elsewhere, etc.). In such cases, you no longer have certainty that your future expenditures will be based on the GBP, and saving money in other currencies may make more sense. In many circumstances, 'diversification' of the currency of your savings may actually increase your risk, not decrease it. Be sure you are doing this for a specific reason, with a specific strategy, and not just to generally 'spread your money around'. Even in case of a Brexit, consider: what would you do with a bank account full of USD? If the answer is ""Convert it back to GBP when needed (in 6 months, 5 years, 30, etc.), to buy British goods"", then I wouldn't call this a way to reduce your risk. Instead, I would call it a type of investment, with its own set of risks associated." It is a rather complex system, but here is a rough summary. Interbank tranfers ultimately require a transfer of reserves at the central bank. As a concrete example, the bank of england system is the rtgs. Only the clearing banks and similar (e.g. bacs) have access to rtgs. You can send a chaps payment fairly quickly, but that costs. Chaps immediately triggers an rtgs transfer once the sending bank agrees and so you can be certain that the money is being paid.  Hence its use for large amounts. Bacs also sits on the rtgs but to keep costs down it batches tranfers up. Because we are talking about bank reserve movements, checks have to be in place and that can take time. Furthermore the potential for fraud is higher than chaps since these are aggregrated transactions a layer removed, so a delay reduces the chance of payment failing after apparently being sent. Faster payments is a new product by bacs that speeds up the bacs process by doing a number of transfers per day. Hence the two hour clearing. For safety it can only be used for up to 10k. Second tier banks will hold accounts with clearing banks so they are another step down. Foreign currency transfers require the foreign Central Bank reserve somewhere, and so must be mediated by at least one clearing bank in that country. Different countries are at different stages in their technology.  Uk clearing is 2h standard now but US is a little behind I believe.  Much of Europe is speeding up. Rather like bitcoin clearing, you have a choice between speed and safety. If you wait you are more certain the transaction is sound and have more time to bust the transfer. I ended up just trying. I gave A the IBAN of B's account, which I calculated online based on the bank code and account number (because B claimed IBAN won't work, so didn't give it to me), and B's name. A was able to transfer the money apparently without extra difficulties, and it appeared on B's account on the same day. Contrary to some other posts here, IBAN has nothing to do with the Euro zone, nor is it a European system. It started in Europe, but it has been adopted as an ISO standard (link). As usual of course some countries don't see the urgency to follow an international standard :) XE.com has a list of all IBAN countries; quite a few are non-European. Here is even the list formatted specially for the European-or-not discussion: link. I think the one single answer is that the answer depends on the two countries involved and their banks' practices. To find that answer, you need to ask other expats from your country living in France and ask them for their experience.  Note that most expats do not know what fees they are paying. For example, in the Philippines, the lowest fee charged still involves waiting 30 days to get your money.  Specifically, I opened a US dollar savings account with the minimum of US $500 required (other rules are involved for opening a bank account), deposited a personal check drawn on my US bank account (no fee charged), and waited 30 calendar days to withdraw USD bills.  The Philippines bank did not have a branch in the US, but had financial arrangements with US banks.  After getting USD dollars in my hand, I walked to a nearby exchange business store (which usually offered a better daily rate than a bank, but a rate between the banks' buy and sell rates) and exchange the dollars for pesos.  Note that years ago, banks did not give USD bills, when dollars were scarce in the Philippines. However, this process does not work in Thailand, due to bank rules against private individuals opening a USD account, with exceptions.  And there are still fees involved. March 2017 For the first part of your question, I think the answer is a combination of three things:  (1) Bigger companies have leverage to negotiate better deals due to volume.  (2) Some of these companies are also taking bookings from outside the US for people traveling to the US (either directly or through affiliates).  This means that they also have income in other currencies, so they may not actually be making as many wire transfers as you think.  They simply keep a bank account in Europe, for example, in Euros to receive and send money in the Eurozone as needed.  They balance the exchange on their books internally in this case, without actually sending funds through the international banking system.  Similarly in other parts of the world. (3) These companies are not going to make a wire transfer for every transaction, in any case.  They are going to transfer big sums of money to an account abroad to balance things on a longer-term basis (weekly, month, etc.)  Then they will make individual payments to service providers out of the overseas account in between these larger, international transfers. For the second part of your question, I think there's probably no way for a new business to get the advantages of scale unless you've got significant capital backing your endeavor that would make it plausible that you'll be transferring in scale.  I don't see any reason in principle that the new company could not establish bank accounts abroad and try to execute the plan outlined in #2 above except that it would require some set-up costs to do the proper paperwork in each country, probably to travel, and to initially fund the various accounts. "In Europe in most of the countries there is also a thing called ACH. In UK there is a thing called BACS and in other countires there are other things. Essentially every country has what is called a ""Low value Net Settlement System"" that is used to transfer funds between accounts of different banks. In US there is rounting number, in UK there is a Sort Code, in Indonesia there is a sort code. Essentially a Bank Identifier that is issued by the Governing body within respective countires.   Certian identifiers like SWIFT BIC [Bank Identification Code] are Unique across world."