Can ICBC remit money internationally?

Also, I'm at least theoretically concerned about relying on Chinese friends. Or for example, winding up with all the foreign affairs staff having all those transactions in their accounts. The Fox Hunt stuff going on presently and the concerns in the Party and elsewhere with capital flight... at some point China's tax and policing infrastructure is going to be an actual thing.

Yeah but I mean, for now? It isn't. I wouldn't be using party officials to transfer, but regular old people are not really under the microscope at this point. It is not illegal to transfer money out of the country in any case, for Chinese people. You can't exceed the limit, but I mean ... people have to pay, for example, tuition fees for kids studying overseas, or buy tickets for foreign travel. There are legit reasons why Chinese would need to take that money abroad. As long as they aren't party officials there's very little risk of trouble. I also tend to use friends who would never themselves actually need to take money out, so there's next to no chance that my random plebian Chinese friends will get investigated for transferring $50k out of the country once a year. If that actually ever becomes something to be truly concerned about, I think I'd have to think about not living here anymore.

I take your point. And the foreign affairs staff themselves don't appear to care. Anti-corruption safeguards are a thing though. In an entirely unrelated happening, the foreign affairs officer herself some months back explained she was very busy that particular week owing to what I took to be extra administrative procedures she had to go through related, she said, to anti-corruption. She wasn't cleaning house or anything. I took her meaning just to be that there was some extra meetings, and possibly activities, about due diligence in her department. Making sure everything was above board. I am of course extrapolating wildly from one instance of her using the words "anti-corruption", but it seemed significant.

You can find a willing student to use their ID. That way you don't have to prove where the money came from.  Make a cash withdrawal  from your bank.  Go to the main branch of a bank.  Do the wire transfer to your bank (Student does the paperwork).  Student hands them the cash and it is a done deal. 

Never tried wiring from ICBC myself.

Agriculture Bank does Western Union, both inbound and outbound.

In the past I've been content to use Bank of China to change and transfer money, or to have Western Union do the sending, but this time out the sum is more than I'm comfortable carrying around town, and more than I'm comfortable racking up fees on if those fees are based on the size of the transaction. Also, if this one-time transfer could be a model for future, more automatic, transfers, that'd be cool for me too. Thus, I'm trying to keep it in-bank, legal, and not too much dependent on the kindness of strangers.

So I have ICBC online banking access. It was set up three years ago and promptly forgotten. I logged in today for the first time in that long, and was presented with a bewildering array of seemingly all the banking functions. I saw wealth management products, investment stuff, and forex all seemingly right there to be used. Also, remittance options of all the kinds, including remittance to foreign banks. Before I start pressing buttons, would anyone care to comment on how this stuff all works? I have the impression some of the services have to be authorised, possibly by a bank visit, but if it all worked out, well damn, no more trucking huge sums around in my pockets.

Everything that it will allow you to do online, you can do online. Not sure about ICBC, but Merchant's will automatically cap your transactions at a certain amount. There's an absolute hard cap on what you can transfer out of the country, but then they will set their own soft caps for your protection, which you can go into the system and change.

My main account is a Merchant's gold card and with the gold card I don't incur any fees on transfers (on my end). I never go into the actual bank, but do all my transferring and shifting online.

You should also find options for purchasing those investment products or putting your money into interest bearing fixed term accounts.

Welcome to 2015.

Welcome to 2015.

Lol. Well, yeah. It took me a while to get here.

So today was my designated day for pressing buttons and hoping I don't lose everything down a bank wormhole. I found that with my ICBC account as it stands online, foreign exchange is possible, but the currency pairs on offer do not include CNY (Chinese yuan). That is, I can speculate on money, but not change RMB. Also, the bit where I can check how much foreign exchange I have in my account tells me "This service is not opened at present". Possibly I have to visit a branch and get a switch thrown.

Meanwhile, remitting money looks pretty straightforward. There's even a currency option. But it was greyed-out so presumably you have to have the alternate currencies first.

So as far as the main branch of the ICBC in this burg is concerned, me buying foreign currency from them online isn't going to happen. They proposed two ways to convert yuan. The first involved me bringing my contract, the second involved me bringing a student. (A third option was mentioned, withdraw cash and go see the Bank of China, but not pursued.) The bring-a-student method seemed to be their preference, so a mere TWO FREAKIN HOURS LATER, I exited that building having officially done nothing more than withdraw 200,000 yuan. Coincidentally, in a wholly unrelated transaction, the foreign affairs staffer standing next to me deposited 200,000 yuan cash and used it to buy Australian dollars, which, for reasons of her own, she sent to me in Australia. I was quite excited to see what 200,000 yuan looks like, but that didn't happen, which is probably a good thing. If word gets around that foreigners sometimes have life threatening amounts of money on their person, well...

So, yep, there's a cap, any one person can send no more than 50,000 USD per year out of China, and at least as far as my bank in my city with me and that particular translator are concerned, you can't use yuan to buy foreign currency online with ICBC. I did wonder aloud if a Chinese citizen could buy foreign currency online, but in the sleepy blur of waiting for assorted people to fill in assorted forms, I didn't get an answer.


ETA: 2 hours later, the money has not yet shown up in Australia. The nail biting begins.

Okay well this I could have been told yesterday: the money will take three business days to arrive in Oz.

e-banking: slower than catching a plane with cash in your pockets.

Miserably stupid banking experience today, and I don't know who to blame, myself, my school, or the bank. As per this thread, it was that time of the year again, the remittance of large sums of money time. This time a mere 80,000. Long story short, the bank made the student responsible for the transfer. Instead of having the foreign exchange teller do all the button pressing, they transferred the enormous sum to his account, gave him a usb key, and said go over there to the computers.....

Yeah so, he was responsible for counting out fees and who should repay what to whom between him and me, and he was responsible for entering destination bank details and oh my god jesus that was the stupidest thing I ever let myself get sucked in to. In the end, about four different bank staff were called in to actually make sense of their own system (which they didn't always successfully do) and ffs tellers were sitting there doing nothing. Amatuer hour at the bank of all the teeth grindingly stupid places to be amatuer....

They were being good company citizens. They were teaching this young man how to operate their online services. In the future when he wishes to do this again, he can. In the future, he will never do this again because it causes too much pain and by the time he's eligible, he'll be a graduate.

So, who do I blame? Myself, for letting myself into this. The school for pairing me with a damn student, though given I've almost hit the cap for one staff member's yearly international transfer, who else was going to get the duty. Or the bank, for some obviously (a) helping to funnel money out of the country but (b) not actually helping that much.

I shall blame the school (and myself), because I have a legal right to exchange 70% of my salary and remit it wherever I damn want, possibly without regard to this 50,000USD limit, if only I could get all the damn documents from the school... I don't even know what documents. Tax certificates, at least. What else? I shall have to goddamn find out.

Hi, I'm with ICBC as well.  I know I can go to one of their major bank locations and send money overseas.  But what about taking money out of my account and exchanging it to American dollars?  Does anyone know if this would be possible?  I want to exchange a small amount, like around 20,000 or 30,000 yuan.  Someone told me that I couldn't, that I would have to take the money to the Bank of China or some money exchange service.  Can someone please confirm?

Hi, I'm with ICBC as well.  I know I can go to one of their major bank locations and send money overseas.  But what about taking money out of my account and exchanging it to American dollars?  Does anyone know if this would be possible?  I want to exchange a small amount, like around 20,000 or 30,000 yuan.  Someone told me that I couldn't, that I would have to take the money to the Bank of China or some money exchange service.  Can someone please confirm?

Any of the Big 4 banks can handle foreign exchange not just Bank of China. There are rules and limits. you can read about that in other threads here. 20-30,000 in one go may not ben doable without additional paperwork from your school. In any event look for a branch of any bank that has the following sign posted on their door.

Most major banks (and even some provincial and even lower levels) can exchange currency in either direction.  Sometimes these things have to be done at a major branch and sometimes the local branch can do it.  For example, I live close to a DRC (Dongguan Rural Credit Union).  That branch can handle swapping to and from Hong Kong dollars.  I have to go to a much bigger branch of DRC if I need US dollars.

The alternative is to ask around with expats who've been in the city and travel a lot.  There are currency consultants who seem to be able to convert money from one form into another.

Calach, if you don't mind Western Union fees, a WU transfer can be sent from some of the big banks.  Convert the money into the non-Chinese cash first.  If necessary, convert to US dollars if you can't get it turned into Aussie bucks. If you do send as US dollars, your bank down under will grab a little to convert them.  Even if it costs a little extra, walking in with a pile of foreign currency and asking for a WU slip should save you wear and tear on your brain that watching a student trying not to accidentally wire your money to some random bank account can cause.

Obviously, test this out with a small amount of currency, in case the bank suddenly finds (or makes up) a rule saying they can only use RMB to fund a WU transfer.