Advice - Banking Issues #2

Tip - Funds transfer from Canada to the U.S.

If you've moved to Canada as a Permanent Resident there is a good chance you are doing so debt free. If you have immigrated on a temporary work permit in relatively quick fashion like myself, you may still have U.S. debt. If so, that debt still needs to be paid off each month and you may find that you have an agreement with your U.S. creditors to do so only in U.S. funds and ONLY from an account in a U.S. bank. In other words, your U.S. creditor may not accept payment using your Canadian U.S. dollars checking account. And, as mentioned in a previous post, one might wish to keep their U.S. checking account open for just such a situation.

If need be, getting money into that U.S. account from Canada might prove frustrating. Money transfers between Canadian and U.S. banks take approximately 21 days and you'd better hope nothing goes screwy. You may not make your payment due date if it does. 

We found Paypal to be a quicker, painless method for transferring money from our accounts in Canada to the U.S. Using Paypal can cut the transfer time from 21 days to as low as six or seven. The funds transfer from your Canadian account to Paypal takes approximately six days. It may be the same day to an additional couple of days to move your money from Paypal to the U.S. bank account. Paypal will do a conversion. When we checked the rate it was one penny higher than that published on the internet. Verify the bank and Paypal links by transferring an insignificant amount of money the first time.