I am moving to Poland and would like to change some of my hard-earned Euro money into Zloty. The euros are presently on a foreign (non-Polish) account.
Which method would give me the best rate?
(I am fine transferring small amounts over time or all at once and could do it via a Polish bank account if required.)
Depends how much money you want to exchnage.
The best exchange rate would be at a kantor - forex exchange booth; just make sure you compare the exchange rates between booths, these can be bad if close to major tourist attractions. And if you want to exchange a lot (>1000 euro), you can get a special rate.
However, I suspect you don't want to travel with wads of cash on you, so what you can also do is open a bank account in Poland and set up an associated extra EUR subaccount (in many banks it's free of charge). Next, send the money from your current bank via SEPA (make sure it's SEPA and not SWIFT, SEPA is by far the cheapest option; and check the cost beforehand). Once it's on your Polish EUR account, you could transfer it directly to your PLN subaccount, but I wouldn't recommend that, since the rate is not very good.
Instead, you can use an online kantor , such as http://www.walutomat.pl . Basically it's a marketplace where you exchange money with people who want to do the reverse exchange (well, an anonymous exchange of course). The rate is pretty good. But since walutomat is just a regular company and not a bank, it's always safer to exchange in batches (1000 PLN seems a good compromise between safety and costs).
Thank you for the reply.
Do you know what improvement of rate I could expect if I exchange a lot at a kantor? Am not close to any major tourist attraction, so that should not be a problem.
Walutomat looks interesting, with buying/selling rate almost equal. As far as I remember, yesterday's kantor rate was 4.00 and Walutomat has 4.077 today.
I am not familiar with Poland in particular but in general there are a few options.
I am not familiar with Walautomat, which sounds good. Also, the spreads for cash sound low in Poland compared to those in Western Europe.
#5 - If you use a debit card to pay (or perhaps withdraw money from an ATM), and your card is tied to a foreign EUR account, the exchange rate is established by Mastercard or Visa, and it's quite acceptable.
But if you exchange money by transferring money between bank accounts, the bank exchange rates are used, and these are not very favorable. For example mBank has exchange rates of 3.9441/4.1881, which by the definition of forex spread that I used is 3%. So it's actually the worst way of exchanging money. Cash exchange in a kantor is the best way to go for small amounts, and it's hassle-free.
However, bank transfers between accounts in EUR (SEPA) are pretty cheap, and between PLN accounts they are usually free.
For example mBank has exchange rates of 3.9441/4.1881, which by the definition of forex spread that I used is 3%.
As I said, i am not familiar with Poland in particular and my comments were more general. in general a spread of 3% is not great, but also not extremely bad. E.g. If you are bringing cash USD to Western Europe and change them at an exchange office you will come across spreads of 10%. For reference, Visa/Mastercard charges about 1%
So it pays to check with your bank what rate they use. May bank uses a transfer rate comparable to the ATM (visa/mastercard) exchange rate. But the specialized currency traders that i mentioned will generally undercut the banks.
It seems that Poland is different through (probably due to its proximity to Euroland, both geographically and politically) as a commission of 0.3-0.6% is pretty darn good. But like i said, that is not always the case.