Foreign Exchange Explained
Timing is Crucial
Timing is crucial when you are exchanging large amounts of currency. Whether you are buying a property, a car, or making regular currency transfers abroad, trading at the right time will mean your money goes a lot further.
Rate Fluctuations
With exchange rates fluctuating constantly, it is better to buy or sell currency when rates are in your favour. Fluctuations of up to 10% can occur relatively quickly and if such a move is not in your favour this effectively adds up to 10% to the cost of your transaction.
Planning Ahead
Planning ahead can save you significant sums of money. If you leave payments to the last minute you will have to accept the rates that the markets offer that day, whatever they may be.
What's Right For You?
You don't have to worry about watching the markets as that's our job. We offer a number of products which will help you to manage your international payments to ensure that you get the best exchange rates.
Limit Orders
This is where you set a target exchange rate at which, if achieved in the markets, you will buy (or sell) your currency. Limit orders are useful if you have upcoming payments but are not restricted by tight deadlines and therefore have time to try and achieve a better exchange rate than is available at the current time.
Stop Loss Orders
This is where you set a minimum exchange rate which, if achieved in the markets, you will buy (or sell) your currency at.
Stop loss and limit orders are often run together. This enables people with no particular time restrictions to aim for a favourable exchange rate, whilst also ensuring that, should the markets turn against them, they don't lose out.
Spot Payments
This is where you buy or sell a currency which you need immediately. For example, if you need to make an international payment urgently and are purely seeking the best exchange rate possible, then a spot payment with Moneycorp is suitable for you.
Forward Payments
This is where you fix an exchange rate at the present time on a payment or payments which you are planning to make in the future (up to two years ahead). Forward contracts can protect you from adverse exchange rate movements and also help you to lock into a favourable exchange rate, even if the funds are not available at the time.
Swift Payments
Moneycorp is also a member of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), the global platform for instant wiring of domestic and international money transfers. This provides us with increased speed and efficiency as well as more control over your transfers as we are not relying on third parties to send payment instructions.
Why use Moneycorp? >>
"Moneycorp helped us avoid paying more than necessary when we had to make a Euro payment to France. On Moneycorp's suggestion we fixed an exchange rate on the payment a few months prior to when we needed to send the money. If we had not done this our payment would have cost us over £10,000 more due to a change in the exchange rate."
Mr Steven and Mrs Janice Dring