Banking Swiftcode - China purchase?

[MElliottUK]

Hi,

Im trying to purchase some goods from china, the payment method is via a newyork bank swiftcode, is this normal practice and what the hell is a swiftcode.

Can i just pay online via my online banking or do i need any special services?

Thanks

[mcflurry]

A swift code is just the banks identifying number - bit like a UK sort code. Whether or not it's safe only you will know...

[MElliottUK]

Thanks

[maser_spyder]

What are you buying?

Please please please tell me it's not an iPhone or iPad or laptop or something....

I have office/staff in China, and know the place well, might be able to advise.

[MElliottUK]

no its a batch of electronics prototyping boards

[maser_spyder]

China factories often have a Hong Kong company and bank account for business/tax reasons, but it's not normal for them to have a US based account.

It may be that you're dealing with a large factory who has a US presence, or possibly it's a US owned factory. Not impossible, but not strictly 'normal' either.

Are we talking a lot of money? Can you afford to lose it?

[wibble cb]

whats the currency you are paying? If USD, it has to go via a bank in the US, Which bank code did they give you?

[Kudos]

wibble cb said:

whats the currency you are paying? If USD, it has to go via a bank in the US, Which bank code did they give you?

Nonsense

[wibble cb]

^^ ?

Seeing as I do this for a living, I rather think not..... in 99.9% of all USD transfers involving swift, the money passes through a US bank, so if the OP has been quoted say, BOFAUS3N (bank of america san francisco) or maybe IRVTUS3N (bank of new york, new york), then maybe its genuine, hell I would be more worried by someone quoting a chinese/hong kong bank only, as this is in my experience bound to be wrong.

You may not realize it but most international currency transfers involve the funds passing through the country of origin for the currency involved, so USD via the US, CAD via Canada etc, you may not be told that by your bank, but trust me, its what happens. Only in some very rare or odd instances will a currency transfer not go via its 'home' country, one I can think of is CHF, which both bank of america and citibank in london can accept direct transfers.

Edited by wibble cb on Sunday 18th July 17:03

[maser_spyder]

But in reality, a factory in China wouldn't have a US based bank account.

But hell, what would I know either.

[wibble cb]

if it wanted to receive USD, it could have an acct with a local bank, or if they wanted, direct with a US bank, the difference would be the local acct would be fed via a correspondant bank ( in the US...)

[MElliottUK]

INTERMEDIARY:
BANK OF NEW YORK,NEW YORK
SWIFT CODE:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
BENEFICIARY' S BANK:
SHENZHEN DEVELOPMENT BANK CO., LTD.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
BENEFICIARY:
A/C NO.: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Just small value to start (mainly to see if they turn up!) then might increase the order 10 fold if sales go well.

[wibble cb]

Sometimes banks have more than one USD correspondant bank, depending on the type of remittance your sending.


Shenzhen's website mentions citibank NY :

http://www.sdb.com.cn/website/page/66696c6573/7763...


but, if they gave you bank of new york, that could work as well, its up to you.

Edited by wibble cb on Sunday 18th July 17:32

[maser_spyder]

wibble cb said:

^^ ?

Seeing as I do this for a living, I rather think not..... in 99.9% of all USD transfers involving swift, the money passes through a US bank, so if the OP has been quoted say, BOFAUS3N (bank of america san francisco) or maybe IRVTUS3N (bank of new york, new york), then maybe its genuine, hell I would be more worried by someone quoting a chinese/hong kong bank only, as this is in my experience bound to be wrong.

You may not realize it but most international currency transfers involve the funds passing through the country of origin for the currency involved, so USD via the US, CAD via Canada etc, you may not be told that by your bank, but trust me, its what happens. Only in some very rare or odd instances will a currency transfer not go via its 'home' country, one I can think of is CHF, which both bank of america and citibank in london can accept direct transfers.

Edited by wibble cb on Sunday 18th July 17:03

Reading this again, it's so spurious as to be only half believed.

Why do you think a Chinese factory would have a bank account in the USA?

The OP is buying goods from a Chinese factory. The bank account would normally be in China (or Hong Kong if it's a larger company, where banking restrictions are more relaxed).

SWIFT is basically a Belgian based system for international money transferring. It's like a global 'sort code' system, they run interface software to allow country to country bank transfers, along with a messaging system.

As far as making an international transfer goes, it's unlikely you'll be able to make this online yourself, unless you have a business account with HSBC (who allow online international transfers), and a couple of others (I THINK Lloyds now has recently introduced an online system too). It's very unlikely your personal account will have a facility to make international transfers.

Making an international tranfer (normally using SWIFT or BIC) is similar to making a UK online transfer, but you also require the SWIFT or BIC code, which identifies the receiving bank (in the same way a sort code does in the UK).

There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the basics.


Part of the reason I think wibble is talking, well, wibble, is that SWIFT does not actually do bank transfers, so wouldn't have any say over where funds are routed. SWIFT is basically a messaging system that requests payment orders between financial institutions. It has nothing to do with actually routing funds.

[maser_spyder]

MElliottUK said:

INTERMEDIARY:
BANK OF NEW YORK,NEW YORK
SWIFT CODE:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
BENEFICIARY' S BANK:
SHENZHEN DEVELOPMENT BANK CO., LTD.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
BENEFICIARY:
A/C NO.: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Just small value to start (mainly to see if they turn up!) then might increase the order 10 fold if sales go well.

Is the company based in Shenzhen?

If so, I could always ask my staff over there to check them out, we have offices in the city.

[maser_spyder]

wibble cb said:

if it wanted to receive USD, it could have an acct with a local bank, or if they wanted, direct with a US bank, the difference would be the local acct would be fed via a correspondant bank ( in the US...)

This is just utter BS.

Chinese factories do not have US based bank accounts. Neither do they generally want or need to.

The pretty much default currency for business in China is USD, it's very seldom trade is carried out in RMB unless you have local staff like we do.

[maser_spyder]

This has been made a bit clearer now....

The beneficiary does not have a US based bank account. They have a China based bank account, with (effectively) a US partner bank.

That makes a lot more sense than a Chinese factory having an account in the US.

Wouldn't worry about it, sounds OK to me.

[wibble cb]

maser_spyder said:

wibble cb said:

^^ ?

Seeing as I do this for a living, I rather think not..... in 99.9% of all USD transfers involving swift, the money passes through a US bank, so if the OP has been quoted say, BOFAUS3N (bank of america san francisco) or maybe IRVTUS3N (bank of new york, new york), then maybe its genuine, hell I would be more worried by someone quoting a chinese/hong kong bank only, as this is in my experience bound to be wrong.

You may not realize it but most international currency transfers involve the funds passing through the country of origin for the currency involved, so USD via the US, CAD via Canada etc, you may not be told that by your bank, but trust me, its what happens. Only in some very rare or odd instances will a currency transfer not go via its 'home' country, one I can think of is CHF, which both bank of america and citibank in london can accept direct transfers.

Edited by wibble cb on Sunday 18th July 17:03

Reading this again, it's so spurious as to be only half believed.

Why do you think a Chinese factory would have a bank account in the USA? - they would have an account where its logical to have an account, so if they want to receive USD, why not the States?

The OP is buying goods from a Chinese factory. The bank account would normally be in China (or Hong Kong if it's a larger company, where banking restrictions are more relaxed).

SWIFT is basically a Belgian based system for international money transferring. It's like a global 'sort code' system, they run interface software to allow country to country bank transfers, along with a messaging system.

As far as making an international transfer goes, it's unlikely you'll be able to make this online yourself, unless you have a business account with HSBC (who allow online international transfers), and a couple of others (I THINK Lloyds now has recently introduced an online system too). It's very unlikely your personal account will have a facility to make international transfers.

Making an international tranfer (normally using SWIFT or BIC) is similar to making a UK online transfer, but you also require the SWIFT or BIC code, which identifies the receiving bank (in the same way a sort code does in the UK).

There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the basics.


Part of the reason I think wibble is talking, well, wibble, is that SWIFT does not actually do bank transfers, so wouldn't have any say over where funds are routed. SWIFT is basically a messaging system that requests payment orders between financial institutions. It has nothing to do with actually routing funds.

I make international transfers from my accounts all the time, its not weird, there are many banks in the world with the capability of transferring money internationally, they all have in house systems that interface to swift.


OP's bank (whoever that is) will do an fx ticket to take GBP out of his account, then use the resultant USD (if thats the currency he needs to transfer) to submit a swift transfer to the US bank, this is done in 2 parts, the first via swift mt103 ( non financial institution swift transfer) to Shenzhen giving them the details of the transfer, in turn his bank will also send another swift (mt202cov - financial institution transfer) to their own US bank, telling them to give the funds to the US bank that Shenzhen use, telling them to put XXX usd in Shenzhen's USD account, Shenzhen will get the mt103, it will tell them where they are getting the USD from, its up to them to check the funds are there, once they are happy, they will release the funds to the beneficiary.


'Why do you think a Chinese factory would have a bank account in the USA?' - they would have an account where its logical to have an account, so if they want to receive USD, why not the States? they can all sorts of accounts in either their local bank or direct with a bank in the country of that currency, in most cases the local accounts will still need intermediary accounts to get the funds there, in the link above you can see shenzhen take their EUR via Dresdner frankfurt, a bank in the EURO zone, and their GBP via standard chartered, in the UK.......

• and breathe*....

but I only do this with 6 billion dollars worth of currency a day, thousands of times a week, what do I know......

[wibble cb]

maser_spyder said:

wibble cb said:

if it wanted to receive USD, it could have an acct with a local bank, or if they wanted, direct with a US bank, the difference would be the local acct would be fed via a correspondant bank ( in the US...)

This is just utter BS.

Chinese factories do not have US based bank accounts. Neither do they generally want or need to.

The pretty much default currency for business in China is USD, it's very seldom trade is carried out in RMB unless you have local staff like we do.

Mass - I do not know you, or wish to start a fight, but you clearly know nothing about international monetary transfers, so please refrain from describing a process I do for a living as BS, the international currency for business is USD, no doubt, and most large international companies I deal with on a daily basis have accounts set up as I describe.

Edited by wibble cb on Sunday 18th July 18:19

[maser_spyder]

wibble cb said:

maser_spyder said:

wibble cb said:

if it wanted to receive USD, it could have an acct with a local bank, or if they wanted, direct with a US bank, the difference would be the local acct would be fed via a correspondant bank ( in the US...)

This is just utter BS.

Chinese factories do not have US based bank accounts. Neither do they generally want or need to.

The pretty much default currency for business in China is USD, it's very seldom trade is carried out in RMB unless you have local staff like we do.

Mass - I do not know you, or wish to start a fight, but you clearly know nothing about international monetary transfers, so please refrain from describing a process I do for a living as BS, the international currency for business is USD, no doubt, and most large international companies I deal with on a daily basis have accounts set up as I describe.

Edited by wibble cb on Sunday 18th July 18:19

But small Chinese factories are not the same as the 'large international companies' that you deal with.

The OP is dealing with what we're assuming is a small, Chinese factory, not a multi-national. They will be very, very unlikely to have a US bank account.

So we can take it as this;

You are a worlds expert on money transfers but no almost nothing about doing business with the far east.

I know little about the mechanics of money transfers other than the systems in place to allow it, but know a heck of a lot about dealing with the far east (and most importantly, where to smell a large, whiskered rat).

Between the two of us, we should probably be in business.