Halifax International Transfer: Fees, Limits and How to Send Money Abroad (2026)
Halifax charges £9.50 to send money outside the UK, sends euros into Europe for nothing, and lets you move up to £100,000 a day from the app. On the fee and the limit it holds up well against the rest of the high street.
If those numbers look familiar, there is a reason. Halifax sits inside the same banking group as Lloyds and the international price list is identical, band for band, down to the 1.50% floor above £250,000.
The charge that decides the argument is the one that never reaches your statement. Halifax adds 3.55% to the exchange rate on anything under £10,000, which is the highest published margin of any major UK bank and roughly four times the size of the fee itself.
This guide sets out what a Halifax international transfer really costs once both charges are counted, which account escapes the fee, the 3pm cut-off that decides whether money moves today, the limits, the timings by destination, and where the same money goes further.
Find the Best and Cheapest Way to Send Money Abroad
A published fee table tells you the rules Halifax applies. It cannot tell you what today's rate does to your amount on your route, and that is the number that decides how much money actually lands at the other end.
Enter your amount and destination below. The comparison shows what each provider delivers to the recipient, which is the one figure that already contains the fee, the exchange rate margin and any deductions on the way.
Run it before anything over a few hundred pounds. On a £5,000 payment it routinely shows a gap of around £190 between Halifax and providers such as Wise and Xe, which is more than most people expect from a bank charging £9.50.
How Halifax Sends Money Abroad
Halifax routes payments down two different systems and the price follows the system rather than the distance. Euros going into Europe travel on SEPA at no fee. Everything else travels on SWIFT, costs £9.50, and passes through correspondent banks that can each deduct a charge before the money arrives.
Euros to Europe Cost Nothing
A euro payment to a country in the European Economic Area, or to the UK, carries no transaction fee and normally reaches the recipient the next working day. SEPA makes that possible by applying one shared set of rules across the whole area, which removes the correspondent chain that slows and shrinks every other route.
If you pay rent in Spain, invoice a supplier in Ireland or send money to family in Portugal, this is the cheapest thing Halifax offers and the speed is competitive. The catch is that money leaving a sterling account still has to become euros, and the 3.55% lands at that moment. A free £2,000 euro payment therefore costs about £71. The same £2,000 through Wise costs around £9. Holding the euros already is the only real fix, which is what the guide to a euro account in the UK covers.
Everything Else Costs £9.50
Any other currency, and any payment leaving Europe, costs £9.50 regardless of the amount. A flat fee behaves very differently at the two ends of the range: it is nearly 5% of a £200 payment and effectively invisible on a £20,000 one, which is why fee comparisons reach opposite conclusions depending on the amount they choose.
The money then travels on SWIFT, which is a messaging network rather than a payment rail. It leaves Halifax, passes through one or two correspondent banks that hold accounts with each other, and only then reaches the recipient's bank. Each can deduct £10 to £25 on the way, which is why a round number so often arrives as an odd one. The mechanism is set out in the guide to telegraphic transfer fees.
Basic Account Customers Send Sterling Free
Halifax Basic Account holders do not pay the £9.50 on payments sent in pounds, which is a genuine exception rather than a marketing one and it is easy to miss because it appears nowhere in the headline pricing.
The waiver covers sterling only. Send dollars, rupees or euros from a Basic Account and the £9.50 returns in full. The 3.55% exchange rate margin applies to every account and every currency, so a fee free payment is still not a free payment unless the money is already in the currency you are sending.
Sending sterling abroad is less common than sending the local currency, so the exception helps fewer people than it first appears. It matters most when you are paying someone who holds a sterling account overseas, which usually means a landlord, an international school or a UK company operating abroad.
Check which Halifax account you actually hold before assuming any of this applies. The Basic Account is a specific product aimed at customers who cannot open a standard current account, not the everyday account most Halifax customers have.
Branch and Phone Payments Cost More
Sending in a branch or by phone to a country outside the UK and Europe triggers a correspondent bank charge on top of the £9.50. It is £12 for the USA, Canada and non-EEA Europe, and £20 for the rest of the world, charged to you rather than deducted from the money in transit.
A Branch Payment Costs £20 More
Same £1,000 to a country outside Europe, sent two different ways.
- In the app: £9.50 fee plus £35.50 on the rate. About £45.
- In a branch, rest of world: £9.50 plus a £20 correspondent charge plus £35.50. About £65.
- In a branch, USA or Canada: £9.50 plus £12 plus £35.50. About £57.
- What to do: use the app unless you genuinely need help with the details.
The extra charge applies only outside the UK and Europe, so a euro payment made in person is still free on the fee. It is worth knowing which side of that line your destination sits on before you queue.
Halifax International Transfer Fees
The Halifax international transfer fee is £9.50 for most payments and nothing for euros into Europe. Sitting on top of that is the exchange rate margin, which starts at 3.55% and falls only in stages that most customers will never reach.
The 3.55% Exchange Rate Charge
When sterling becomes another currency, Halifax applies its own rate rather than the mid-market one banks use between themselves. The gap between the two is the charge. Halifax publishes the full tier structure, which is more transparency than Barclays offers, and the transparency does not make the top rate any lower.
Amount you send | Exchange rate charge | What that costs you |
|---|---|---|
Up to £10,000 | 3.55% | £35.50 on £1,000, £355 on £10,000 |
£10,000 to £50,000 | 3.55% down to 2.40% | about £1,200 on £50,000 |
£50,000 to £100,000 | 2.40% down to 2.10% | about £2,100 on £100,000 |
£100,000 to £250,000 | 2.10% down to 1.50% | about £3,750 on £250,000 |
£250,000 and above | 1.50% | £7,500 on £500,000 |
The first row is the one that matters, because it covers almost every payment an ordinary customer makes. HSBC and Nationwide both charge 2.2% on the same transfer, which is £13.50 less on £1,000 and £135 less on £10,000. Monzo charges under 1%, and Wise converts at the mid-market rate with no margin at all. How banks construct these rates is explained in the guide to the mid-market exchange rate.
What £1,000 to US Dollars Costs
Setting the fee against the margin shows why one gets discussed and the other does not. The £9.50 appears on the confirmation screen before you commit. The £35.50 is nearly four times larger and appears nowhere at all, because it is built into the rate rather than added beside it.
You Pay £9.50 in Fees. You Pay £45 in Total.
Sending £1,000 from a Halifax account to a US dollar account, online.
- Fee: £9.50. You see this before you send.
- Exchange rate charge: 3.55% of £1,000, so £35.50. Hidden in the rate.
- Total: about £45.
- Same £1,000 with Wise: about £6.50, and the whole price is shown up front.
Halifax is among the more expensive major UK banks on an ordinary payment, and roughly four fifths of what you pay sits in the part no statement will ever show you.
How to Send Money Abroad With Halifax
You can transfer money abroad with Halifax through the mobile app, Online Banking, by phone or in a branch. The app is the cheapest of the four, because branch and phone payments outside Europe carry the correspondent charge that online payments avoid entirely.
How to Send Money in the Halifax App
The Halifax send money abroad flow takes a couple of minutes once the recipient is saved. Open the app, choose to make an international payment, select or add the person you are paying, then enter their country, the currency they should receive and their bank details. Type the amount, review the rate and confirm.
The review screen is the only point where the exchange rate is visible before the money is gone. Search the same currency pair on Google, which returns the mid-market rate, and compare it against the number on screen. The gap is the 3.55%, and seeing it once in pounds changes how much attention the £9.50 deserves.
Send Before 3pm to Move the Same Day
Money leaves your account the same day when the payment is set up before 3pm on a working day. After 3pm, or at a weekend or on a bank holiday, it leaves the next working day, which pushes the whole delivery window back by a full day rather than a few hours.
That 3pm deadline is earlier than several competitors and it catches people out at exactly the wrong moment. If a payment has a completion date, a visa fee deadline or a rent due date attached, set it up in the morning and treat the afternoon as already too late.
What You Need From the Person You Are Paying
The details required depend entirely on the destination, and supplying the wrong set is the most common reason a payment fails outright. Europe needs an IBAN. Most other countries need a SWIFT or BIC code alongside a local account number. The United States adds a nine digit routing number, Australia a six digit BSB, and Canada separate institution and transit numbers. The full checklist is in the guide to what bank details you need to transfer money.
You also need the recipient's full legal name spelled exactly as their bank holds it, which is often not the name they use day to day. A missing middle name bounces payments in several countries. When a payment returns it comes back short, because every correspondent bank that touched it keeps its charge whether the payment succeeded or not.
Send Pounds or Send the Other Currency?
Halifax lets you send sterling and leave the recipient's bank to convert, or convert before the money leaves. The two options look nearly identical on screen and hand the pricing decision to completely different institutions.
Send pounds and the receiving bank applies whatever rate it chooses, at a margin it has no duty to disclose and usually does not. Foreign banks converting inbound sterling commonly take 3% to 4%, which is no better than Halifax and entirely invisible from your side of the payment.
Convert before it leaves and at least the price is on your screen where it can be checked. Neither option is free, but only one is visible, and Wise removes the decision entirely by converting at the mid-market rate where the stated fee is the whole price.
Why Small Payments Are the Worst Value
The £9.50 does not shrink with the amount, so its weight rises sharply as the payment falls. On a £50 transfer the fee alone is nearly a fifth of the money, and adding the 3.55% brings the total to about £11.30 to move £50 abroad.
Banks are built around occasional large payments rather than small frequent ones, and the pricing reflects that design honestly enough. Wise charges roughly £0.60 on the same £50 because its fee scales with the amount. If you send small sums regularly, a bank is the wrong tool and the arithmetic is not close.
If You Send Money Every Month
A single payment and a monthly commitment are different problems, and the second is where a 3.55% margin turns into real money. Sending £800 a month costs about £341 a year in exchange rate margin, plus £114 in fees, which is over £450 a year on £9,600 sent.
The same £9,600 through Wise costs roughly £60 to £70 across the year, because a mid-market conversion has no margin to compound. That is the largest single saving on this page, it takes about ten minutes to set up once, and it repeats every year afterwards without further effort.
Halifax International Transfer Limits
You can send up to £100,000 a day online or in the app, which is among the highest online ceilings on the high street. By phone the limit drops to £10,000, in a branch there is no maximum at all, and the smallest payment Halifax will send is £1.01.
£100,000 Online Is Unusually High
Most UK banks cap online international payments somewhere between £20,000 and £50,000 and push anything larger into a branch appointment. NatWest stops at £20,000 a day, TSB at £75,000, and HSBC at £50,000 per payment. Halifax allows £100,000 from the app.
For a property deposit or the proceeds of a house sale, that matters more than any fee difference, because the two failure modes are not comparable. A high fee makes a payment expensive. A low limit makes it impossible, and the discovery usually happens on the day the money is due rather than a week before.
Phone Is Only £10,000
The telephone limit is £10,000, a tenth of the app ceiling, and it catches people out because the assumption runs the other way. Most customers expect phone banking to handle the payments that are too large for an app, and at Halifax the reverse is true. Above £100,000 you need a branch, where no maximum applies but the correspondent charge does if the destination sits outside Europe. Before moving an amount that size, read the guide to transferring large sums internationally.
Why Halifax Asks Questions About Big Payments
Above roughly £10,000, expect to be asked where the money came from and what it is for. That obligation comes from anti money laundering law rather than from Halifax's own policy, every UK bank operates it, and being asked is not a signal that anything about your payment looks wrong.
What to Have Ready for a Big Transfer
If Halifax holds your payment, it usually goes through in a day or two once you send documents. The delay comes when they ask after the money has already gone.
- Where the money came from: a house sale statement, an inheritance letter, a sale confirmation, or recent payslips.
- What it is for: the contract, invoice or deposit request with the person's name on it.
- Who the person is: how you know them, especially if the account name looks unrelated.
- Tell them first: calling before you send is always faster than explaining after.
On a large payment the margin deserves the same scrutiny as the paperwork. At £100,000 Halifax takes about 2.10%, which is £2,100, and a specialist charging a stated fee on the mid-market rate normally lands well under a quarter of that.
How Long a Halifax International Transfer Takes
Euros into Europe or the UK arrive the next working day. Other currencies into Europe take up to four working days, North America and the Far East take up to four, and everywhere else takes up to five.
The Timing by Destination
Halifax publishes its delivery windows by region rather than by country, which is honest about the fact that the timing depends on the payment chain rather than the distance. The spread between the fastest and slowest route is four days on payments that all leave the same account on the same morning.
Where the money is going | How long it takes |
|---|---|
Euros to Europe or the UK | Next working day |
Other currencies to Europe | Up to 4 working days |
North America and the Far East | Up to 4 working days |
Everywhere else | Up to 5 working days |
Notice that the first two rows cover the same continent and differ by three days. A euro payment to Lisbon lands tomorrow, and a Swiss franc payment to Zurich can take four working days despite the shorter distance, because the euro payment stays inside SEPA while the franc payment leaves it for SWIFT. The mechanism is explained in the guide to how long an international money transfer takes.
Weekends and Bank Holidays Do Not Count
Working days exclude weekends and UK bank holidays, and the destination country has its own calendar on top of that. A payment set up on Saturday morning is a Monday payment, a UK bank holiday pushes it to Tuesday, and a public holiday at the far end can add another day after the money has already arrived in the destination banking system.
Rent, tuition and school fees usually fall due at the start of a month, which is exactly when bank holidays cluster in the UK calendar. Count backwards from the due date using working days rather than calendar days, and add the 3pm cut-off on top, because missing it costs a full day before the delivery window even begins.
Why the Timings Differ So Much
The number of banks handling a payment sets the pace, not the geography. A dollar payment to a major US bank often clears at the fast end of its window because sterling to dollar is one of the most heavily traded routes in the world and the correspondent relationships are direct.
A payment in a thinly traded currency may need two or three intermediaries, each adding a processing cycle and each entitled to deduct a charge. That is why the same £1,000 can arrive in one day or five depending entirely on which currency you asked Halifax to deliver.
If Your Payment Is Late or Goes Missing
Halifax can trace a payment that has not landed, and the tool that makes it possible is the SWIFT reference, also called the UETR. That is a unique tracking number attached when the payment leaves, and any bank in the chain can use it to show exactly where the money is sitting and which institution is holding it.
Contact Halifax through the app, Online Banking or the number on the back of your card, with the date, the amount, the recipient's account details and the reference ready. Most traced payments turn out to be waiting at a correspondent bank on a compliance check rather than lost, and they normally release within a few working days once queried.
Receiving Money From Abroad Into Halifax
Halifax does not publish a fee for money arriving into a personal account, but that does not make an incoming payment free. Correspondent banks can deduct their own charges on the way, and any currency your account does not hold gets converted into sterling at a margin.
Why Less Arrives Than Was Sent
Ask the sender what left their account and compare it with what landed in yours. A gap was taken on the route, usually by a correspondent bank neither of you has heard of, and Halifax cannot refund a charge it did not take. A shortfall of £15 to £40 is almost always this rather than a Halifax fee.
If the payment arrives in dollars or another currency, it gets converted into sterling and you pay the margin on that conversion. Inbound conversions are harder to notice than outbound ones, because no confirmation screen shows you a rate beforehand and no decision is put in front of you at all.
Anyone paid from abroad regularly is carrying this cost every month without seeing it as a line. On £2,000 arriving monthly, a margin in the region of 3% is over £700 a year taken from income that was already earned, which is more than most people pay in outbound fees across their whole life.
How to Give Someone Your Halifax Details
Being paid from abroad needs three things: your full name exactly as Halifax holds it, your IBAN, and the Halifax SWIFT or BIC code. All three appear in the app, and the sort code and account number you use domestically are not enough on their own.
Copy and paste rather than typing or dictating them, because one wrong character in an IBAN usually triggers an automatic rejection and occasionally does something worse. An IBAN that happens to be valid for a different account sends real money to a real stranger, and recovering it can take weeks with no guarantee.
Tell the sender which currency to send as well, because that single choice decides whether a conversion happens at all. Sterling arriving from abroad needs no conversion and costs nothing on the rate. Anything else is converted on arrival at a margin nobody ever quoted you.
If You Get Paid From Abroad Every Month
Sending money gets checked. Receiving money almost never does, and that is where the quiet cost sits.
- £2,000 a month arriving in dollars: the rate charge alone runs into hundreds a year.
- Banks in the middle: can take their own cut before it even reaches Halifax.
- Into an account that holds dollars: nothing gets changed, so you pay nothing on the rate.
- Who this hits: freelancers, landlords with property abroad, and anyone on an overseas pension.
Wise issues local account details in several currencies at no monthly cost, so dollars arrive into a dollar balance and stay there until you decide the rate is worth taking. The alternatives for dollar income are compared in the guide to the best USD bank account in the UK.
Halifax vs Other UK Banks
Halifax sits near the bottom of the table on cost. The £9.50 fee is mid-range and unremarkable, but the 3.55% exchange rate margin is the highest published figure of any major UK bank. Free euro payments and a £100,000 online limit are the two things it genuinely does better than most.
Halifax and Lloyds Are the Same Price
Halifax operates inside the same banking group as Lloyds and the international pricing is identical rather than merely similar. The fee is £9.50 at both, euros into Europe are free at both, and the exchange rate table matches band for band down to the 1.50% floor above £250,000. Even the £12 and £20 correspondent charges are the same.
Switching between the two to save money on international payments therefore achieves nothing at all. They are one price list behind two brands, which is worth knowing if a comparison has ranked them differently on anything other than the numbers above.
What Each UK Bank Charges
Read the second column before the first, because on any payment above roughly £250 the margin exceeds the fee at every bank on this list. Halifax charges a smaller fee than Santander and costs about the same in total, purely because 3.55% extracts more from £1,000 than £25 does.
Bank | Fee to send | Exchange rate charge |
|---|---|---|
Halifax | £9.50, £0 euros to Europe | 3.55% under £10,000 |
Lloyds | £9.50, £0 euros to Europe | 3.55% under £10,000 |
TSB | £10 to £17.50, £0 euros to EEA | 3.20% to 3.65% by currency |
Santander | £25 | 3% to £10,000, then 2%, then 1% |
NatWest | £0 standard, £15 urgent | Up to 2.75% |
HSBC | £5 online, £0 on some routes | 2.2% up to £50,000 |
Nationwide | £15 SWIFT, £0 SEPA | 2.2% out, 0.5% in |
Starling | 0.4% plus a delivery fee | 0.4% |
Each of these is broken down in its own guide: Lloyds, TSB, Santander, NatWest, HSBC, Nationwide and Starling.
What Halifax Does Not Offer
Halifax has no multi-currency account, which means you cannot hold euros or dollars with it and convert when the rate suits you. Every payment is converted at the moment it moves, at whatever rate applies that day, with no ability to wait out a bad week.
It also cannot fix a rate for a payment you will make in the future. For anyone exchanging contracts on a property abroad and completing three months later, that gap matters more than every fee on this page. A 4% currency move on a £300,000 completion is £12,000, and no UK high street bank offers a forward contract on a retail account.
Halifax and Wise on the Same £1,000
Pricing one identical payment both ways removes the ambiguity. Halifax charges £9.50 plus 3.55% of the amount, landing at about £45. Wise converts at the mid-market rate and charges a stated fee, landing at roughly £6.50 on the same £1,000 to US dollars.
The gap scales in both directions and neither end is small. At £200 it is about £15, which is 7% of the money and a worse proportion than the larger payment despite being fewer pounds. At £5,000 it is about £190, which is the difference between a bank transfer and a return flight.
When Halifax Makes Sense
Halifax is not the cheapest, but there are cases where it is the right choice.
- Euros to Europe: free on the fee, next working day.
- A very large one off payment: £100,000 a day online, and no maximum in branch.
- Basic Account customers sending pounds: no fee at all.
- Where it loses: 3.55% on anything under £10,000 that is not euros.
The larger and the more regular your payments, the more that 3.55% compounds against you, because it scales with the amount while the £9.50 does not.
How PayPal Compares With a Halifax Transfer
PayPal charges 5% of the amount to send money internationally, with a minimum of £0.99 and a cap of £2.99. It then adds roughly 3% above its base exchange rate whenever a currency change is involved, and that second charge has no cap at all.
The Rare Case Where PayPal Beats a Bank
Most UK banks overtake PayPal once the amount passes a few thousand pounds, because a fixed fee stops mattering while PayPal's 3% keeps climbing. Halifax is one of the exceptions, because its 3.55% margin is higher than PayPal's 3%, so PayPal stays cheaper across almost the whole range.
Amount | PayPal total | Halifax online | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
£100 | about £6 | about £13 | PayPal by £7 |
£1,000 | about £33 | about £45 | PayPal by £12 |
£5,000 | about £153 | about £187 | PayPal by £34 |
£20,000 | about £603 | about £610 | Roughly level |
The two only converge near £20,000, where Halifax's tiered margin finally drops below 3%. That is an awkward result for a high street bank, because PayPal is not a money transfer specialist and has never claimed to be a cheap way of sending money abroad.
Where Each One Belongs
PayPal works when you have an email address and no bank details, or when the recipient already uses it and moving them elsewhere is the real obstacle. It cannot handle a £100,000 property payment, which is precisely the case where Halifax is genuinely useful.
Neither is a cheap way to move £1,000 abroad. Wise charges about £6.50 on that payment at the mid-market rate, roughly a fifth of PayPal's price and a seventh of what Halifax takes. The two are set against each other directly in the PayPal vs Wise comparison.
Cheaper Ways to Send the Same Money
Specialist providers price the two costs separately instead of merging them. They convert at the mid-market rate, the one banks use between themselves and the one Google returns, then charge a stated fee on top. That removes the margin layer entirely, which is where £35.50 of a £45 Halifax payment currently goes.
All three below are authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and required to safeguard customer money in segregated accounts held apart from company funds. None is a bank, so the protection model differs rather than being weaker, and the distinction is worth understanding before moving a very large amount.
Wise
Wise converts at the mid-market rate and shows the fee before you confirm, so the entire price is one visible number rather than a modest fee with a large margin behind it. On the £1,000 to dollars example running through this page, Wise costs about £6.50 against Halifax's £45.
Wise also issues local account details in several currencies, which fixes the receiving side as well as the sending side. Money arriving in dollars lands in a dollar balance and stays there until you choose to convert, rather than being converted on arrival at a margin nobody quoted you.
The limitations are real and worth stating. Wise is not a bank, so your balance is safeguarded rather than covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, and it has no branch network. Halifax also offers a £100,000 daily online limit that Wise will not match without additional verification on a first large payment. The full assessment is in the Wise review.
Remitly
Remitly is built around remittance corridors rather than general transfers, which makes it strongest for South Asia, the Philippines, Latin America and much of Africa. It delivers to cash pickup points and mobile wallets, neither of which Halifax supports, and on those routes the delivery method often matters more than the price.
Pricing is a deliberate choice between speed and cost on every payment. The express option arrives within minutes at a higher price and the economy option takes a few working days for less. Halifax charges the same £9.50 whether the money is urgent or not, so you pay for speed you may not need every time.
It is weaker outside its core corridors and on single large payments, which is not what it was designed for. For a fixed amount sent to family monthly it is frequently the cheapest option on this page. For a property deposit at £100,000, Halifax's limit makes it the more practical choice.
Xe
Xe covers a very wide currency range and is built for larger amounts, with rate alerts and the ability to fix today's rate for a payment you will make later. Halifax has the limit to handle a large payment but cannot lock a rate, which is the risk that actually matters at that size.
On a £300,000 property purchase, a 4% currency move between exchange and completion is £12,000, which is larger than every fee discussed anywhere on this page combined. Forward contracts exist for exactly that problem, and no UK high street bank offers one on a retail account.
For small everyday payments Wise and Remitly usually beat it, because per transfer economics favour providers built around volume. Xe earns its place on large or scheduled payments where the rate matters more than the fee does.
Find the Cheapest Option for Your Amount
Which provider wins depends on the amount, the currency, the destination and the rate on the day, and it genuinely changes between them. On euros into Europe from a Halifax account, staying put is defensible on the fee. On £5,000 to dollars the gap to Wise is about £190 and it is not close.
Check your own numbers rather than trusting any general rule, including the ones on this page.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Halifax international transfer fee?
The Halifax international transfer fee is £9.50 for most payments. Euro payments to Europe or the UK are free. Halifax Basic Account customers do not pay it on payments sent in pounds. Branch and phone payments outside the UK and Europe cost an extra £12 for the USA, Canada and non-EEA Europe, or £20 for the rest of the world. On top of any fee, Halifax adds 3.55% to the exchange rate under £10,000.
How do I send money abroad with Halifax?
Open the Halifax app or Online Banking and choose to make an international payment. Add the person you are paying with their IBAN, or their SWIFT code and account number. Enter the country, currency and amount, check the exchange rate on the screen, then confirm. Set it up before 3pm on a working day and the money leaves your account the same day.
Do Halifax and Lloyds charge the same?
Yes. Halifax and Lloyds are part of the same banking group and the international payment pricing is identical. Both charge £9.50, both send euros to Europe free, both apply 3.55% under £10,000, both use the same £12 and £20 correspondent charges, and both allow £100,000 a day online. Switching between them saves nothing.
Is Halifax expensive for sending money abroad?
On most payments, yes. The £9.50 fee is fair, but the 3.55% exchange rate charge under £10,000 is the highest published number of any big UK bank. HSBC and Nationwide both charge 2.2%. On £1,000 the total with Halifax is about £45, against about £27 with HSBC and about £6.50 with a specialist.
Does Halifax charge for sending euros to Europe?
There is no fee for euro payments sent to a country in the European Economic Area or to the UK, and they normally arrive the next working day. But the 3.55% exchange rate charge still applies if the money starts in a pounds account. On £2,000 that is about £71, on a payment with no fee at all.
What is the Halifax international transfer limit?
You can send up to £100,000 a day online or in the app, which is one of the highest online limits of any UK bank. By phone the limit is £10,000. In a branch there is no maximum. The smallest international payment you can send is £1.01.
How long does a Halifax international transfer take?
Euros to Europe or the UK arrive the next working day. Other currencies going to Europe take up to 4 working days. North America and the Far East take up to 4 working days. Everywhere else takes up to 5 working days. Set the payment up before 3pm on a working day or it leaves your account the next working day.
What are the Halifax receiving money from abroad fees?
Halifax does not publish a fee for money arriving into a personal account, but banks in the middle can take their own charge before it reaches you, and Halifax cannot refund that. If the money arrives in a currency your account does not hold, it is changed into pounds and you pay on the rate. That conversion is usually the bigger cost.
What is the cheapest way to send money abroad from Halifax?
Sending euros to Europe from a euro balance costs nothing at all. For anything that needs a currency change, a company using the real exchange rate is usually cheaper, because it does not charge the 3.55%. On £1,000 the difference is about £38, and it grows with the amount.
Is Halifax safe for sending money abroad?
Yes. Halifax is a division of Bank of Scotland plc, which is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority, and your money is protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to the normal limit. Safety is not the issue. The 3.55% on the exchange rate is.
Should You Use Halifax to Send Money Abroad?
For euros into Europe, Halifax is a reasonable choice on its own terms. No fee, next working day, and nothing to think about beyond checking the rate and the 3pm cut-off. If you need to move a very large amount in one go, the £100,000 online limit is among the best available and it solves a problem fees cannot.
For everything else it is expensive. The 3.55% margin is the highest published figure of any major UK bank, and it is nearly four times the size of the £9.50 fee that gets all the attention. On £1,000 you pay about £45, of which £35.50 appears nowhere on your statement.
And remember it is the same price list as Lloyds, so comparing the two is comparing one set of numbers twice. Compare against something outside the group instead, where the gap on £1,000 is about £38 and on £5,000 close to £190.
Sources
Every fee, charge, limit and timing on this page comes from Halifax's own published material and was checked in August 2026. Bank pricing changes with little notice, so confirm the number that applies to your payment before you send it.
- Halifax, Send money outside the UK, the £9.50 fee, free euro payments, correspondent charges, margins, limits and timings.
- Halifax, Receive money from outside the UK, what happens to money arriving from abroad.
- Halifax, Send and receive money outside the UK, how international payments work and what details you need.
- PayPal, UK consumer fees, the 5% international fee with its £0.99 minimum and £2.99 cap, and the 3% conversion charge.
- Financial Conduct Authority, Financial Services Register, check Halifax, Wise, Remitly and Xe are approved.
- Financial Services Compensation Scheme, what is covered for banks and building societies, how much of your money is protected.
Prices for Wise, Remitly and Xe were checked on the same day against the same £1,000 to US dollars payment. The method behind those calculations is in the guide to how banks charge for money transfers.
Mohammad Humaid
Verified AuthorMo is the founder of MoneyTransferStore. As an expat who has experienced the challenges of sending money across borders himself, he set out to help others like him avoid hidden fees and unfair exchange rates on international transfers. With a background spanning fintech, payments, and Web3, Mo brings years of practical experience to building a platform focused on transparency and trust.
