RetireJapan

I have been using Sony Bank for a couple of years now and really enjoyed it. Good rates, decent interface, generally good service etc., but I have recently being having a world of trouble with them trying to make payments outside Japan.

My daughter recently moved to Australia for university, so I want to send her a monthly allowance (not a huge amount), but they are demanding my tax statements, salary statements, details of her living expenses, her utility bills (which she does not have as she is in halls) etc.

Has anyone had an similar experiences?

I know that the answer is just use Wise/Paypal etc., but I do like to be loyal where possible.

Just use Wise

Just use Revolut - mostly free for relevant amounts.

I'm totally unclear on Wise. My wife has an account with Mitsuisumitomo bank and is it as simple as selecting my USA bank as source and her Japanese bank as target. Is this how the service works?

I used Wise for the first time a week back, as an alternative to my old way, using SMBC Prestia with a forex broker here to do the conversion (which is still a good method for lowering cost on big transfer amounts)

Wise was a nice smooth experience, that went a bit like this:

- I have a bank account in my home country.
- I have a bank account here.

I created a Wise account, did the online KYC procedure with my smartphone.

Then I said “send this much money in currency XYZ to JPY”.
Wise then showed me the converted amount, and after I confirmed, they sent me the details of a bank transfer I should make back in my home country. I made the domestic bank transfer as instructed.

The next morning, the converted amount showed up in my Japan bank account.

There were a few emails during the transfer process to let me know the status.

For “small” transfer amounts, this seems to be the way to go. The cost was acceptable for the ease of use.

(I have not tried Japan to overseas yet, but I assume it is similarly smooth…?)

They might ask for this for anything over a million yen a month, but you say it is a small amount. I had to go through this process with Shinsei to get permission to send over a million yen a month. Once granted it is quite plain sailing.