Ask Headmaster Ken

Greetings. My wife has decided to go back to China and there is no MoneyGram or Western Union in her area.

How can I go about sending her money on a regular basis? A bank card is not a good idea with her and bank transfers are expensive.

If you don’t want to use a bank card or a private money transfer service, you have pretty much eliminated all of your options.

The easiest way to send money to China on a regular basis would be to open an account back home and obtain an ATM card that is on the Cirrus network. Then your wife could use that card to withdrew money at any Construction Bank of China ATM terminal.

The only other way that doesn’t involve the direct use of a bank card would be to have your wife open a Chinese PayPal account that is associated with a credit card. You could then regularly send a payment to the PayPal account and your wife, in turn, could then have PayPal transfer the money into a local account.

I’ll ask Ken if he has any other ideas.