The ability to make and receive international money transfers (IMTs) is fast becoming a must-have feature in a bank account. This feature comes in especially handy for those who have family who live or work abroad.

If you have an account with ING Australia, the ability to make international transfers is no longer available. For those who hadn’t used this service, you may have not noticed the change, but for those that did, we will try and shed some light on why ING Australia stopped offering this service. We’ll also introduce you to Wise, an alternative option you can use to send money abroad.

Learn more about Wise money transfers

ING Bank Australia (ING), formerly ING Direct, is a subsidiary of the ING Group that is based in the Netherlands. ING has been in operation in Australia since 1994 and is now Australia's fifth largest bank servicing more than 2 million Australian customers.¹

ING Australia does not support outgoing international transfers. This means that ING customers can not send international money transfers (IMTs) overseas from their ING account. However, customers with an Everyday Orange account, or a home loan account can receive IMT’s from an international bank using the SWIFT network.

ING specifies in their FAQ section that if a customer needs to send money abroad, they will need to access a third-party service.²

This service was alleged to have ended in July 2019. Prior to this, it was possible to make international transfers with ING Australia through an organised partnership with OzForex (OFX).³

Unfortunately, despite ING and several third-party sites confirming that customers can no longer make IMT’s with ING Australia, an official announcement or disclosure from ING is unable to be found. The reason for the end of the partnership with OFX is also unable to be found either.

Although we are unable to present too many details as to why ING stopped IMT services for their customers, we can offer a solution to those that need to send money abroad. Wise is that alternative.

With Wise, you can send and receive money from abroad by opening an account online. Let's take you through the steps on exactly how to do this.

If you want to see how much a transfer will cost before you open a Wise account, you can do this as well. To make things easier, we’ll do a quick example transfer below to break up the fees. Here you’ll be able to see exactly how much it will cost you if you were to send 1000 AUD to a mate living in the UK in GBP.

*Rate checked on 23 August 2022

As you can see, when you use Wise to send an international transfer, your friend will receive a total of £583.35 GBP into their GBP bank account. They will also not have to worry about paying any intermediary fees to actually receive this transfer, as the only fee that is incorporated into the transfer is paid up front by the sender.

Another way you save with Wise is in the conversion as the real exchange rate is used on all conversions. This means that you are not charged any commissions or margins by Wise. In total, you could save around $38.70 AUD in comparison to using a banking alternative.

You can check it out yourself on how Wise compares under the pricing calculator.

There are a few ways to contact ING Australia. If you are located in Australia, you can call 133 464.

ING also offers free international calls from certain overseas destinations, you can check their website if the country you are planning to call from is included. If not, you can call ING Australia from overseas on +61 2 9028 4077.

To check how else you can make contact with ING, you can visit the ING website here.

So there you have it, sadly, ING Australia does not support international transfers at this time. What we can be sure of is that if you do need to send money overseas, Wise makes the process easy and cheaper than many of the major banks.

You can also open a Wise Multi-currency account, where you can hold, convert, send, and receive currencies from all over the world.

Open your Wise account in minutes 🚀

Sources:

Sources checked on: 24 August 2022

This publication is provided for general information purposes only and is not intended to cover every aspect of the topics with which it deals. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content in this publication. The information in this publication does not constitute legal, tax or other professional advice from TransferWise Limited or its affiliates. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. We make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether express or implied, that the content in the publication is accurate, complete or up to date.