The 35$ per transfer is normal, the 5% is not. It'll probably be cheaper to send the money directly in USD without currency exchange, the european bank will the

The 35$ per transfer is normal, the 5% is not. It'll probably be cheaper to send the money directly in USD without currency exchange, the european bank will then deal with it and their rates are usually cheaper (at least for french banks). You can also maybe suggest to the people you work with to setup a USD account with their bank. That's what I did with my bank in France, it was quite easy and allows me to exchange all the payments from USD to Euros in one go. Another services I've heard some good things of but haven't tested is Xe.com Transfers [1] and Xoom [2] [1] http://www.xe.com/fx/ http://www.xe.com/fx/ [2] https://www.xoom.com/ https://www.xoom.com/