Most Efficient Way to Transfer Money from Israel to the USA?
Check with stock brokers. Some of them will offer ILS->USD conversion at a very beneficial rate (very close to the official), without any commission, and flat-priced wire transfers. For large amounts this is perfect. I know for a fact that Gaon Trade used to do that ($15 for a wire transfer of any amount), but they are now defunct... Check with Meitav (their successor) and others if they still do these things. If you're talking about relatively small amounts (up to several thousands $$$) - you may be better off withdrawing cash or using your credit card in the US. For mid range (up to $50K give or take, depending on your shopping and bargaining skills) banks may be cheaper. A quick note about what jamesqf has mentioned in his answer... You probably don't want to tell your banker that you're moving to the US. Some people reported banks freezing their accounts and demanding US tax info to unfreeze, something that you're not required to provide according to the Israeli law. So just don't tell them. In the US you'll need to report your Israeli bank/trading/pension/educational/savings/insurance accounts on FBAR and FATCA forms when you're doing your taxes. How much are we talking about here?  My own experience (Switzerland->US, under $10K) was that the easiest way was just $100 bills.  Alternatively, I just left a bunch in the Swiss bank, and used my ATM card to make withdrawals when needed.  That worked for several years (I was doing contract work remotely for the Swiss employer, who paid into that account), until the bank had issues with the IRS (unrelated to me!) and couriered me a check for the balance.
I regularly transfer money from the US to Europe, and have found a simple US check a pretty useful way (if you are not in a hurry): you write a US dollar based check to yourself, and deposit it to a bank in your new location (which implies you open an account in France, yes). It takes some days (somedays 7 days), and then the money will be deposited. The local bank will convert it (so you can walk around and pick a bank that has a rate concept that pleases you, before you open the account), and there will be no fees on the US side (which means you can get every last dollar out of the account). Also, you have the control over how much you pull when - you can write yourself as many checks as you like (assuming you took your checkbook). This was the best rate I could get, considering that wire transfers cost significant fees. There are probably other options. If you are talking serious money (like 100 k$ or more), there will better ways, but most banks will be eager to help you with that. Note that as long as you make interest income in the US, you are required to file taxes in the US; your visa status and location don't matter. "Ugh. Follow the money trail. Who stands to make  $$$ off of the fake climate crisis? It's the same group that are lying 24/7 on all news outlets, using MSM NSA/CIA to influence elections- remember Wikileaks verified the NSA/Deep State has the capability to hack and leave a ""Russian footprint."" Which it's what's happening now. I'm not sure who the hell bilderbergs are but most seem to be Anglo, as does grovers.  Somebody is pulling all the strings for a world government and it won't be long before our sovereignty (USA) is history.  Russia is moot. A distant 4th to USA, Britain, Israel The Deep State rules the world out of America." Many European countires allow you to an account for non-residents. You have to appear in the bank personally to open it, some of them even to get your own tax number for non-residents from the local government.  I'm not sure if you get a Visa (Electron) chip card immediatelly or you have to wait for like 3 months before being issued one. I've heard that getting a tax number for non-residents and opening a bank account is easily done in one day in Brezice, Republic of Slovenia. They seem to have agile local bureaucracy and banks, since many pople from neighbouring (non-EU) countries (used to) come there to open an EU bank account. Funds can be transfered via Internet banking - US banks have that, do they? SWIFT and IBAN codes are used for international money transfer. But it takes some time (days!) for it to arrive to destination. Tansfers below $20000 per month or per transaction are considered normal, but for amouts above that the destination bank might ask you to explain the purpose, to prove it is not illegal. Some of them accept the explanaiton in writing (they forward it to the regulator that tracks such large transfers), some of them ask you to appear there in person for an interview and to sign a statement. Can't believe US banks are still issuing paing magnet stripe cards like it's still 1980s. I'd expect Europe to be 10 years behind USA in technology, but this seems to be a weird reverse. I've beed using Internet banking with one-time passwd tokens and TAN lists for almost 10 years, and chip cards exclusivley for over 5y. Can't remeber the last time I've seen mag stripe card only. American Express (event the regular green one) got the chip at least 5 years ago. And it is accepted regularly in Europe. Alegedly it's more popular in Europe (although Mastercard is a definite #1, with Visa close to that) that in USA. Can we wire transfer money from my NRE account to USA checking account? Yes you can Is there any restrictions for transferring money? Nothing in India Hopefully someone else will answer the US side of questions. I'd worry about being robbed or losing the money en-route. Is it likely? Probably not. But wow, I wouldn't want to lose serious money in one shot. I have fond memories of the time I was serving as treasurer for a non-profit organization and I was taking $30,000 in contributions to the bank. As I walked across the parking lot with all that money in my brief case, I thought, I would really hate to be robbed right now. When I've moved long distances in the past, I've simply written myself a check from my old account and then deposited that amount to my new account. These days I presume I'd do an electronic transfer. I live in the US so I don't know what the conventions are in Europe, but around here, 5% would be an outrageous fee. I once paid $20 for an electronic transfer of around $3,000, and I considered that an excessive fee. I can understand the bank charging a few bucks, but. I'd check around if there are not other banks with more reasonable fees. Probably the easiest to do is to do an international transfer via online banking. You will need to give your IBAN and BIC/SWIFT code of your bank to your friend, he should then be able to transfer the money from his bank. At least, I think they use IBAN in Israel as well. The money will be converted to the currency of your account. There are some fees, but they are not too big I think, and depending on the choice of transfer they can be paid by sender, shared, or by receiver. Contact your bank for precise details. Edit: if you really need to be paid in USD this may not be the best option though. Use a remitting service such as Ria Money Transfer. Almost all these services allow you to transfer upto $2999 at a time. So, you would be able to transfer the entire amount of $4500 within 2 business days(There is a monthly limit too, but it will definitely be more than $4500). There are no fees to use these services, but they do scrape off a bit on the currency rate. As of today you are getting 624 GBP for $1000 whereas the market rate is $641.95. You still save roughly $17 and 4 transactions, which adds up to more than $100. Here is a link to Ria's website. Other services, include Xoom, Western Union, Money Dart and Money Gram. "I'm not sure I understand your question, but I'll try to answer what I think you're asking. I think you're asking this: ""A US bank receives a wire transfer from a Chinese bank. How does the   US bank ensure there's any money in fact arriving before crediting the   destination account?"" Well, the way wire transfers work is that the US bank would debit the senders' account with that US bank. So the US bank in fact transfers the money between two internal accounts: debit to the Chinese bank's account with that US bank and credit the destination customer account. If the Chinese bank doesn't have an account with the destination US bank - a third party intermediary is used that both banks have accounts with. Such third party will charge an additional fee (hence sometimes the wire transfer fees are slightly higher than you initially know when sending the money, the third party would debit from the transfer amount). ""Regular"" IBAN/ACH transfers work through regulatory channels that ensure integrity and essentially use a regulatory bank as that third party. But because they're done in batches and not on-line, they're much cheaper, and the accounting is for the whole batch and not each transfer separately. But batch processing means it will take a day or two of processing, while wire transfer takes hours at most."