In a recent exchange with Ario Tamat (@barijoe), I was seeking a solution for a friend that needed to wire transfer money from Vietnam to Indonesia fast.

Below is an excerpt of the email that @barijoe replied to my tweet. He does a good job of describing what worked for him. Your situation may be different.

Nevertheless, I think it's useful to share this information, in case, you or someone you know comes across this in the future.

Because of my job, I have a contract, work permit etc and a Vietcombank bank account from the office.

I then brought my work contract etc to Commonwealth Bank, where I opened a VND account. They asked for contract, temporary resident card, passport to open the account.

Any time I want to transfer money to my Commonwealth Bank account in Jakarta, I withdraw the money from Vietcombank (keeping the receipts/ATM slips), and bring it to the teller and fill out a deposit form and a remittance form. The  receipts/ATM slips are to prove that I withdrew money from my Vietcombank account (sometimes they photocopy my ATM card as well), following my work contract of which they have a copy, and I am allowed to transfer as much as my salary every month. I usually use AUD as the remittance currency as USD is a bit tricky in Vietnam... and by the end of the day, the money is received in my Jakarta account.

That's pretty much it. I've researched alternatives through HSBC, ANZ, Citibank etc, and the Commonwealth Bank is the most consumer-friendly (i.e, don't need USD 2000 just to open the account).

For one-off transactions, though, it's a bit tricky. There are several forms you need to sign and basically you can't send over USD 5000 if I'm not mistaken, but services like Western Union usually can help you.

I hope this helps those of you facing similar situations. If you know of other alternatives, please share them below. 

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