[alasdair_]

I’ve done plenty of SWIFT international wire transfers. Total cost in practice is much higher than the “cap” of $35, especially when both parties costs are taken into account.

The biggest hit is usually the foreign currency conversion spread which is enormously unfavorable compared to the forex spot rate.

Then there are lots of problems if your bank doesn’t have a direct correspondant bank relationship with the Hong Kong bank and instead relies on other banks to handle that for them - this can lead to delays of up to a week and quite often leads to a link in the chain rejecting things for some reason (perhaps fraud checks or “know your customer” issues or perhaps one bank stripped all leading zeroes from the account number).

International wires are a pain in the ass, especially for relatively low sums like a few thousand dollars.

Personally, I use TransferWise for most international transactions now - it’s fast and the spread is much better.