viable alternative to sending $$ home?

[ajax]

i have an idea about transferring cash back home w/o spending money on transfers.

1/ get a credit card with a PIN number that you can access internationally through the ATM
2/ treat the credit card as a bank card. deposit money into the credit card account.
3/ go home and withdraw the cash

e.g.
credit card has a limit of $1,000
- don't charge anything and don't make any cash advances
- deposit $2,000 into the account (at a teller / with a cheque / transfer from bank account)
- back at home, withdraw the $2,000.

since you didn't actually make a real cash advance on the card (that is, the cash you withdrew was not from the credit card account, but from your own pocket to begin with), the credit card company can't charge you interest on it. you only pay the $2 or $3 service charge for using the ATM.

i do the reverse of this (i.e. deposit in home country, withdraw abroad) when i travel sometimes, and also did it when i did a work-term abroad and it worked out well then with no unexpected service charges.

but this being japan, i wonder if there's something i'm missing and will get gouged for later.

are there any drawbacks to this system?



Post Edited (04-15-04 18:21)

[Glenski]

No idea if that works or not, but why not pay the 700 yen for a postal transfer?

[U99A]

Won't you still have to pay a service charge to pay money into your credit card account? And I can't imagine which option that would be at the ATM machines in Japan. There is no button to pay into a credit card acct based in a foreign country!

[ajax]

hmmm... i have never done a postal transfer. but i thought up to now that everyone said lloyd's was a better deal than the P.O., so i thought paying $2-3 had to be better than the lloyd's service charge of a few thousand yen per transaction.
does the P.O. give better exchange rates than the credit card companies?

about the service charge to deposit into credit card - i don't know about that either. when i did it at home, there was never a service charge. but then again, there were no service charges for cashing cheques in local currency when you had an account with the bank either, and that sure is not the case here!

as for the button to pay into a credit card account in a foreign country - what if i got a japanese credit card?

i was very surprised to be able to do this: deposit money into someone else's account at another financial institution using my own bank card in the ATM!
i.e. used a tokyo mitsubishi bank card at a mizuho bank, hit the "remittance" button, keyed in my friend's bank account # & name in katakana, and the money went into my friend's account (i had to pay about 200 yen to do this, and was also given the option to have them the service charge from debit my friend's account if i didn't want to pay it). i don't think you can do this through the ATM at home. (maybe you can, but i never had a reason to find out.)

[truth hurts]

You won't get a Japanese credit card without a sponsor (Japanese) and they prefer you have PR status or at least married.