How to send money across borders physically and inexpensively, but not via cash?
Traveller's cheques. That's exactly what they were intended for. Their usage has dropped a lot since everyone can use ATMs in foreign countries, but they still exist. I assume the same criteria apply for this as your previous question. You want to physically transfer in excess of 50,000 USD multiple times a week and you want the transportation mechanism to be instant or very quick. I don't believe there is any option that won't raise serious red flags with the government entities you cross the boundaries of. Even a cheque, which a person in the comments of OP's question suggests, wouldn't be sufficient due to government regulation requiring banks to put holds on such large amounts. There are checks, international wire transfers (SWIFT), depending on country pair remittance services.
A USD bank draft from any of the major Canadian banks is a good solution. They clear quickly in the U.S. I use them frequently and have never had a problem depositing them in a U.S. bank account.  If you carry more than $10k across the border, even as a cheque, be sure to declare it. "At this point, a great deal of the world's wealth exists only in electronic form, and just as you can write a check or pay by debit card and trust the banks will handle it, banks can conduct wire transfers"" through higher-level banking networks. In the US, when there is a need to convert physical money to electronic or vice versa, it is typically handled by armored car and armed guard transfer between a bank and the local Federal Reserve Bank office. Physical money is moved around only when necessary, and for as short a distance as possible, to the most secure facilities possible, to minimize risk. I can't vouch for how it's managed elsewhere in the world, where the networks and repository banks may not be as available. I would presume (I would hope!) that the same general concepts and approaches are followed." Beside standard Swift (which may be registered and checked for money laundering) there are the money transfer companies (Western Union) and the electronic currencies like bitcoin.  Besides that is buying something very expensive (gold / diamonds) and sell them again a possibility to transport vast amount of value. The simplest thing to do is still one of the oldest: Write a check.  If you don't have a checking account, you can still probably enter the payment in your bank's online bill pay - In this case they will send him a paper check. There's an irrational desire these days to avoid checks at all costs, which I don't understand.  There's a time and place for electronic transfers and there's no doubt they're often very useful.  This is probably not one of those cases, however, since neither you nor your friend are set up for it. I would imagine that a wire transfer would be the best way to transfer large amounts of money without the risk of carrying cash or dealing with plastic. You can use a service like Transferwise to send money. The trick is that they allow sending money to yourself, from a GBP account to an EUR account, effectively making it an exchange shop. Their rates are usually very good, with the transfers happening on the same day most of the time. Maintain your U.S. bank accounts. Use xe.com to transfer money back and forth. This question was asked three years ago, but now that it's 2017 there is actually a relatively easy, cheap and fast solution to at least the first half of your question. To cash the check: I've done this a half dozen times while abroad (from the US) without any problems. I've spoken with a number of expatriates in Canada and Canadian bankers over the past few days.  Here's what I've been able to piece together. This was surprising to me.  As I understand it, the only sure-fire way to wire transfer funds from an arbitrary bank to another arbitrary bank on a different continent on the first try  is by using the IBAN number of the destination account.  IBAN seems to be the only account number format that is anywhere close to a worldwide standard.  If the destination account does not have an IBAN number (like those in Canada and USA), then you rely on a degree of wisdom on the part of the sending bank(er) to format your numbers (account/institution/transit/etc) in such a way that the transfer successfully reaches the destination account. If any given sending bank has not sent funds to another given non-IBAN bank recently, then there is an element of uncertainty as to how the destination account's numbers have to be entered into the sending bank's system.  The de facto practice seems to be to develop the wisdom of what works and what doesn't by attempting to transfer small sums until they succeed.  Then the sending bank uses the exact same method to transfer the large sum as they used for the small sum that succeeded. It seems like there are some things you can do pro-actively increase your odds that a wire transfer to a non-IBAN account will succeed.  Ultimately you want to provide four different pieces of information that are especially important for non-IBAN wire transfers: All of your numbers in all applicable compositions - Wire transfer number formats are often actually multiple fundamental numbers that are concatenated, prefixed, and suffixed.  I suspect that some wire transfer senders actually need to enter the fundamental numbers separately or in different compositions.  Suppose the sending bank needs, for example, the institution identifer.  The ABA routing number does contain, among other things, the institution identifier.  However, you should provide the institution number separately in your wire transfer instructions because the sending bank might need the institution number and will probably have no idea how to extract it from the ABA routing number. For Canada, I think the number you should provide are as follows: The best, cheapest and safe way is to wire transfer that money from their Bank Account to yours. Ask your bank about information regarding inbound international wire transfer and provide those details to your dad. About how much amounts can he do so : if the amount is more than $10K, you need to provide enough information about where the money is coming from, sources and other legal details. Whatever way you chose, never do transfers in small chunks (which is called structuring), to avoid the legal hassle - as that might result in more issues and every bank has checks in place to find out this way of structuring. I would suggest wire transfer all the money, through proper channel, through the banks. It's better to pay some fees, follow the law and live peacefully than to go through some improper channels to avoid paltry fees and get into serious issues. "I've been doing a bunch of Googling and reading since I first posed this question on travel.SE and I've found an article on a site called ""thefinancebuff.com"" with a very good comparison of costs as of September 2013: Get the Best Exchange Rate: Bank Wire, Xoom, XE Trade, Western Union, USForex, CurrencyFair by Harry Sit It compares the following methods: Their examples are for sending US$10,000 from the US to Canada and converting to Canadian dollars. CurrencyFair worked out the cheapest." You could use: SWIFT transfer : ask your counterparty for his bank SWIFT code and beneficiary account numbers; you can do a SWIFT transfer to most countries from your Indian bank). You will need to fill a form where they ask you what you're transferring the money for, etc. Most Indian banks provide this facility. Western Union: I'm not sure if WU is in China, but they are very simple to use. Paypal: They charge heavy fees, but may be the fastest way to get your money across. Give a cheque.  You can. Your friend would have to deposit this in a Bank that does this service. Not all Banks offer this service in US. It generally would take 1-3 months for the funds to reach.  Give a dollar-denominated cheque You can NOT write check on a Rupee account and put USD. You can definitely buy a USD Draft generally payable in the US. There would be some charge for you here and send it by courier, post. It would get paid into your friends account in about a week. Do a SWIFT transfer Yes you can. You may need to walk into a Branch and fill up forms. If the amount is more than specified limit a CA certificate is required. Am I correct in understanding Yes Use my ATM card in the US Yes you can.  Specialised money transfer services like Western Union Transfer money out of India is not allowed by Money Transfer services You can go to any Canada Post office and ask for their money-transfer services (they use a company called Money-gram). You can see more details here: http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/productsservices/shop/moneygrams.jsf At least to send money to Brazil and other south-american countries, it's the cheapest service I've found, and it's very reliable. I am looking at size by revenue.  Looking at market capitalization gives a much different list.  I don't think market cap is a good metric for this discussion.  According to market cap Telsa is the largest automotive company in the US, but that is because it is expected to do well in the future by the investment community.  According to market cap what is reddit worth?