My brother-in-law went halves with us on a present for a family member so he now owes us his half – the thing is, he lives in California.

So – what is the cheapest way for him to pay us? I was thinking he could do a PayPal payment but they take a silly %.

Any *cheap* alternatives?

He did suggest ‘buying’ us an Amazon gift voucher which we could save and use to buy presents for other people in the future, but I would prefer the money now TBH.

Bank transfer.

IBAN or whatever it is called. Give them your bank details and send them to their branch.

Cost £10 to do it from pounds to dollars although the daft bint at the RBoS kept sending me away for more info, I ended up googling the branch number for the bank in USA.

Well we Paypal ourselves money all the time…but maybe it’s because we have accounts on both sides that it’s cheap?

Unless you are moving large quantities of money the simplest way will be to go the gift voucher route. Anything else will charge a silly % for what its worth and a crap exchange rate. Avoid the high street banks at all costs.

For moving large sums of money we use a proper broker, we can set up transfer orders in advance for when a particular exchange rate is reached and there are no fees.

It’s not much – just about £80 I think towards a present.

I shall have to ask if he has a PayPal account I think.

Can’t you send him a request for money in the event he doesn’t have an account?

No idea, can I?

Assuming you’ve got a Paypal account, then yes.