Receiving money in Japan from Abroad

As an expat, transferring and receiving money to/from other countries is one of the core procedures of life. While the information here is targeted specifically at Japan, similar logic applies to other countries. This is the first part in a series about transferring/receiving money.

Table of Contents

• Remittance Services

  • OFX

  • Wise

  • XE

  • Remitly

  • Revolut

• Interactive Brokers

• Fun with Banks!

  • Shinsei Bank

  • Sony Bank

  • SMBC Prestia

• Conclusions

Before we start, a great resource for anything Japan and finance related is r/JapanFinance. The community is active and helpful, and they have a comprehensive wiki for common topics.

What is the “best” way to transfer money to Japan? Well, “best” is a combination of factors, cost, convenience, and timing. This article by TokyoCheapo is reasonably comprehensive, though glosses over some details I want to cover, such as notes on few online remittance services as well as receiving directly to Japanese banks.

Remittance Services

Most likely for smaller amounts of <$1000 USD you will likely want to use a remittance service for convenience and low fees. Avoiding some of the worse ones, the best services have a fee around 0.6-1%. Also, due to Japanese law, if your account country is set to Japan, you can only transfer a maximum of 1,000,000 JPY or the equivalent in other currencies at a time, though this limit doesn’t apply to residents of other countries sending money to you.

OFX

As OFX is mentioned as the recommended service by the TokyoCheapo article, a few things should be mentioned. First, they don’t offer services to long-term residents of Japan, so you can only use OFX if you live elsewhere or pretend to live elsewhere. I was never actually able to set up an OFX account properly, as I got stuck in the document verification process, so there does seem to be some customer service issues.

I got this quote on October 18, 2023 with a mid-market rate of 149.77 JPY/USD, giving a difference of approximately 2.5%. The exchange rate did seem to get better with higher amounts, but still less than competitors. Without being able to proceed with account opening to see if there are better rates, I cannot currently recommend OFX.

Wise

Wise is a popular choice as well as my personal choice for smaller amounts. I used Wise numerous times to send money from Japan as well as for other people to send money to me in Japan. They even have a nice comparison page between different remittance services to compare fees. Transfers happen within a few days either directly to a Japan bank account if given those details or to your Wise balance.

If to your Wise balance, Wise currently charges a fee of 200 yen to send to your Japan bank account. You don’t actually link your bank account currently, you just register it as a bank account to send to.

If your account is registered in Japan, you are limited to sending the equivalent of 1,000,000 JPY. Otherwise with a non-Japan account, amounts above 1,000,000 JPY are sent via SWIFT, which typically is seen as an incoming foreign remittance and leads to extra procedures and time to actually receive the money.

I got this quote on October 18, 2023 with a mid-market rate of 149.77 JPY/USD, giving a difference of approximately 0.88%, which is quite good.

XE

XE claims to offer convenience and low rates. This is quote I got with a mid-market rate of 149.77 JPY/USD, giving a difference of 2.1%, which isn’t great!

Furthermore, the Japan bank details page only takes a singular account number and bank lookup by SWIFT code, which is strange. Hopefully transfers don’t actually happen by SWIFT, as that would be more expensive and procedurally more annoying to receive.

Remitly

Remitly is another option. There seems to be a new user promotion for certain countries giving better exchange rates up to a certain amount and waived fees. With the new user promotion sending from USD, I actually got a rate better than the mid-market rate! However, amounts above the promotion amount reverted back to the worse rate of 148.34 JPY, and subsequent transfers have fees, making the fee worse than 0.95% + the transfer fee.

Receiving options are either cash pickup, or bank transfer. The available banks seem to be out of date - I could not find Shinsei, GMO Aozora, or Prestia.

Revolut

I used to use Revolut quite frequently to send money from Japan to the US as there was a generous fee free limit with rates close to mid market rates. Revolut is strange in that you first fund your Revolut balance, then you convert and send it to the destination. Unfortunately for sending to Japan from other countries, you can’t seem to link other countries’ bank accounts nor get details on the bank details of your other currency accounts if you have already registered your account in Japan.

Furthermore, if a Revolut user sends JPY to your account balance, you are limited to transferring 100,000 JPY monthly to your bank account before a fee of 2.0% applies. So if another Revolut user based outside of Japan is sending money directly to your Japanese bank account, they may be able to get quite low fees of 0.5% or less, but there is a complicated system of fees that Revolut introduced in 2023 that may add additional costs.

Interactive Brokers

You might have heard of Interactive Brokers as a way to convert currency, as they are a majority international brokerage with financial links in many countries so that you can deposit in one currency and withdraw in another. Interactive Brokers charges extremely low commissions for currency conversion and offer near spot rates, getting rates as low as 0.02% difference from the mid-market rate or even lower. However, there are numerous reports of Interactive Brokers warning accounts or restricting currency withdrawals of people who deposited large amounts of currency, converted, and withdrew it in another currency without any sort of other market activity. I would personally avoid this method if you can, or use it infrequently mixed with legitimate trading activity.

Fun with Banks!

Many sources say transferring money directly with banks can be an expensive and cumbersome procedure. This is because many banks charge a fee of 2000 JPY or more to receive foreign remittances, intermediary banks may take a cut, and the conversion rate to yen given may not be good. However, with certain tricks, this can actually be the least expensive method, though still fairly cumbersome.

The remittance services above are convenient, but tend to charge at least 0.7% or more in fees or via a worse exchange rate. For large transfers, this fee becomes more noticeable. Is there a way to do better? Yes!

The way to do so in Japan currently is to separate the sending of the money with converting the money, and finding a bank that can accept the remittance with little or no fee, and convert at attractive rates. This only works if the Japanese bank has a multi-currency account which accepts your currency.

Also, you are subject to currency fluctuations in the time it takes from when you send the money to when it is actually received in the Japanese bank. While the remittance services listed above take between 2-5 days to receive the money in Japan, receiving foreign remittances generally requires filling out forms about the source and purpose of the money, taking extra time and taking anywhere from 4 days to a few days, depending on how diligent you are in going through the procedures and how responsive the bank is.

The best banks for this seem to be Shinsei Bank and Sony Bank. SMBC Prestia and SBI Net Bank / NEO Bank also can accept foreign currencies but seem to have worse fees or exchange rates.

Ideally, the overseas money is sent from a bank that charges low or no fee to send money abroad in the same currency. If not, Wise can send international transfers for low fees by first doing a cheaper domestic transfer from your overseas bank to Wise, then sending it to the Japanese bank via SWIFT.

Shinsei Bank

Shinsei Bank is a bank known for their English support, online services, and reasonably helpful customer service. Shinsei has customer stages, with more money deposited or other banking relationships with Shinsei, the higher the stage and the better the benefits. For stage Silver and up it is free to receive foreign currency into your account, with Silver only requiring 1,000,000 JPY in your account or 1 salary deposit monthly. Exchange rates are close to mid-market and get better with higher stages. For example, with the same 149.77 JPY/USD mid-market rate, Silver and Gold has a fee of 0.09 yen per USD, giving a yen buy exchange rate of 149.68 JPY/USD which is a difference of 0.06% from mid-market, and Platinum and Diamond has a fee of 0.09 yen per USD, giving 149.7 JPY/USD which is a difference of 0.046%, meaning a $1000 transfer would only cost you $0.60 USD or less (ignoring currency fluctuation).

So far I’ve received multiple transfers to Shinsei Bank. Funds are not received automatically - you first get a notification email asking you to fill out a form with details about the transfer and supporting evidence about the source and purpose of the funds. When transferring funds from myself as a transfer of savings, all I needed was 3 months of my source account bank statements and it was accepted fairly quickly after 1-2 days.

Shinsei also accepted a transfer from my relatives as well as a business partner, but required photo ID, 3 months of the source account bank statements, and evidence of the purpose of the funds and usually took some back and forth about acceptable evidence, taking 1-1.5 weeks or so.

Sony Bank

Sony Bank is a relatively new online bank know for their useful online interface and friendly customer service. They offer a multi-currency account and it is free to receive foreign currency at any stage. Exchange rates are good and get better with higher stages.

For example, with no level the exchange fee is 0.15 yen per USD off the mid-market rate, giving 149.62 JPY/USD rate with a mid-market rate of 149.77 JPY/USD, which is a 0.1% difference from the mid-market rate. Silver has a 0.10 yen fee, which gives 149.67 JPY/USD rate, which is a 0.07% difference from the mid-market rate. That’s cheap! A $1000 USD transfer would only cost $1 or less (ignoring currency fluctuation). Higher stages give even better discounts, but are more difficult to achieve, requiring 5 million yen or more in foreign currency deposits.

I was easily able to transfer to myself from my accounts abroad by providing online evidence after an email notification of the incoming transfer, with the funds received after 3-4 days. You’re only able to do the final exchange during Japanese business hours though. Unfortunately, I tried to received money from my business partner and it was rejected due to him not having a defined relationship like family with me. It’s possible I made a mistake, but when calling customer service, they said the bank account is supposed to be for personal use only, not business use.

SMBC Prestia

SMBC Prestia is a bank frequently recommended to foreigners for their English language support, however I have found that they aren’t very compatible with online services and it is harder to reach higher statuses to waive fees. It’s free with any Prestia account to receive in multi-money, but the rate seems to automatically include a 1 yen spread in either direction from the mid-market rate, unless you reach higher statuses. At a 149.77 JPY/USD mid-market rate, that gives a 0.6% fee to convert currency with Prestia.

Conclusions

At smaller amounts like less than $1000 USD or the equivalent, it is fairly cheap and convenient to use remittance services. I found that currently Wise offers the lowest fees in general while being very convenient.

At larger amounts, you can consider whether saving the money on fees is worth doing direct transfers to Japanese banks with low fees and near mid-market exchange rates, such as Shinsei and Sony Banks.

You can try using international brokerages like Interactive Brokers for extremely low cost conversions, but this may be against their terms of service.

For more questions, you can always reach out at [email protected]. Remember you can support this publication by becoming a paid subscriber or becoming a Patreon!

As a side note, I recommend my friend Dexter’s newsletter Money Abroad on financial advice as an expat which will often contain related content.