Transferring funds to Brazil

Hi Floripabound,

I would recommend HSBC and I have used them several times in the past. Bringing funds into Brazil is almost as bureaucratic a process as sending funds out so it will take several hours in the bank branch to arrange.

If you are really only talking about making regular withdrawls I would recommend not even doing a transfer. Set up an HSBC account and place the bulk of your funds there. You can withdraw funds (R$800 per day) using your debit/ATM card at any HSBC terminal in Brazil. If you need to make larger transfers at some point in time you should be able to arrange that without any problem. I routinely arranged this via e-mail directly to the manager of my home branch in Canada, giving the information of the local HSBC Brazil branch where the funds were to be received.

I would highly recommend NOT making large transfers of funds, since as a foreigner unless you have a permanent visa you cannot open a bank account in your own name in Brazil. That would put you in a position where you would have to entrust the funds to somebody else (really risky) or keep large amounts of cash at home (extremely dangerous).

If you have any questions as to what you should do please feel free to PM me. I can give you some info and tips as to what to do. It would be useful (in the PM, not here) to know what amount you are thinking of transferring since over R$10 thousand the bureaucracy is stepped up a notch.

Cheers,
William James Woodward - Expat-blog Team