Convert USD to CHF in the most efficient way

Banks, Insurances & Third Pillar
1

The question was asked a lot in the context of investing, mostly converting CHF to USD in order to buy US ETF or stocks. But here it’is a bit different and not covered in previous posts.

I would get more than 3000 USD per month in shares from my employer, locked on a special brokage account in US where I can only sell spot past a certain duration (unlocked each month) and transfer in USD. I have to receive these USD on an account under my name. And in the end I want it converted to CHF to a Swiss account under my name as well.

I tested with a smaller amount, I could get the USD on my Revolut free account (after it got blocked a week for additional verification…). Now I can convert in Revolut and send the CHF too my Swiss IBAN, but then above 1250frs per month I have 1% fee on top of Revolut rate (0.15% markup as I read), so fees would cost slightly more than Revolut Premium subscription that have no fee for any amount but still the markup. But would they bother that I don’t spend these CHF on my Revolut card and just transfert them further ? Is there a risk they block my account or it’s normal usage ?

I could as well transfer to my Interactive Broker (IB) account and exchange then at a slightly better rate than Revolut for a fixed 3 USD fee (if I’m right). But then I don’t want to invest much more now, or maybe a small fraction of this amount, like 5% top, or even zero some month. So most of the converted CHF will be send back to my Swiss account.

Again, is it allowed by IB or will they block my account by doing so ?

Other options : use Kraken to convert the USD, there is a fixed fee of 3 USD to receive USD. I could even convert to USDT from Revolut with no fee and send to my exchange wallet (for a fee this time) and then buy CHF with it and transfer to my Swiss account (for 1 CHF fee). Real USD transfer + convert to CHF is the second cheaper after IB, assuming it’s allowed.

I checked Wise (with Neon or directly) but fees are much higher.

I checked ibani too. It says 0.4% fee when I check now but the total CHF output given I estimate a spread on the rate of about 0.05-0.1%, so it’s not really good either but still slightly better than Revolut Premium for these amounts.

Also is there any of these scenario that would put me under the “professional trader" flag from tax point of view ?

2

My gut feeling: if you already have an investment portfolio in IB, such transfers would less likely get flagged. Of course, the higher the IB portfolio, the less significant a 3000 USD transfer. Check this forum but I don’t think there are many (if any) reports of IB accounts being blocked due to money transfer.
On the other hand, if you are invested in IB, there is more damage if this account gets blocked.

Did you check the FX rate plus fees? Or just the fees? There are reports that Revolut has an internal spread which they don’t disclose.
I personally use Wise to transfer money from Switzerland to Denmark. They advertise money transfer, so blocking of your account is probably least likely when compared to Revolut and IB.

No. Check the discussions in this forum, professional trader status is very hard to archive, even if you are FIREd and make your income from dividends and capital gain. I don’t think there is a single user here who ever become a professional trader unexpectedly.

3 Likes
3

Do you actually need this for expenses or do you just want to defer investments as part of market timing? If the latter, have you considered leaving the converted CHF cash at IBKR until the point in time when you want to invest it?

1 Like
4

not sure how much spread you are willing to pay but Alpian multi currency account might be a solution for you.

You transfer from US brokerage to Alpian free of charge. And then convert to CHF for 0.20% markup.

I have tried Fidelity to Alpian USD transfer and it’s free.

1 Like
5

Interest rate in CHF at IBKR is very low, maybe you want to take out a year on credit and then pay it back with the monthly contributions. No idea how much that would cost, but I suppose the better Forex rate pays for it. And you don’t need to be afraid to get kicked out as IB makes some money too.

6

Yeah, I would also suggest checking Alpian, WillBe, Saxo Bank CH.

You can also swallow Revolut fees, doesn’t sound excessive. This provided that they don’t block you every time. Sorry, lost an order of magnitude. 15 CHF per month does sound like a lot.

On the other hand, money are tangible, so you can use USD transfers to IB to invest, while keeping your CHF for other purposes.

You can also try to trick IB by withdrawing first on margin and depositing later to repay your debt. It should not trigger a currency exchange warning. I was thinking about it as plan B if I suddenly need a large amount in foreign currency.

7

You can buy CHF for USD at Kraken (0.2% fee) and send it to your Swiss bank account (with fees). I think it is a pretty usual use case.

8

Wasn’t it usd for chf? Curious about kraken fees / spread.

9

Fees are, like I said, 0.2% for fiat and stablecoin trading pairs. Spreads are OK, haven’t checked specifically for USD/CHF.

10

I’m tired.

11

Officially, this is not allowed by IB and they definitely have automated checks in place. I don’t know exactly what triggers these checks but I wouldn’t count on that solution.

12

I have converted about half the value of my ETF portfolio from CHF to EUR in 2023/2024 in my IB account. They didn’t say a word.

I know a company who used IB only for Forex, so there was no portfolio with securities. Yes IB sent a polite message after a while. But I haven’t heared of people being blocked right away for this

13

The specific case that triggered a warning for me from IB was:

  1. Deposit funds in currency A
  2. Convert to currency B
  3. Take the funds out quickly after.

I received a warning even when the amount was fairly small compared to the overall invested funds.

5 Likes
14

For what it’s worth:
I’ve had a standing order for depositing monthly (same amount) into IBKR for years.
I’ve also had a recurring withdrawal with them for years - also monthly, and for a similar amount in another currency.

Never had an issue and can’t remember them complaining about it.
That said, I have a diversified portfolio with them, the monthly deposits/withdrawals have been small in relation to that, and I only convert every 3 months or so.

1 Like
15

Thank you all for these amazing responses.

Randomly answering some points here, yes I took into account all fees, I even did an excel table to compare, IB is by far the cheapest but I will probably get flag as I have only a very small amount invested in my account that didn’t move for a couple of years, total is even less than what I plan to convert each month, didn’t have enough saving to buy more currently, I’m even over spending a bit for a couple of years due to special circumstances. So I will exclude the IB route, to avoid issues and getting friendly warning. I guess the credit option and margin stuff are out of reach if I have so low invested amount in the account (and I don’t want to take an extra risk here).

Unfortunately I cannot afford to invest a large part of this amount, at best 5-10% of it from later in the year. I have bill to pay and to take advantage of this stock purchase program I will need to use some saving to cover the blocked period until the new shares are free to sell. Otherwise I would either keep the shares from my company for longer than the minimum blocked period and pay the 25USD fee to transfer them like once per year to IB and sell from here then reinvest or convert to CHF to withdraw. (Or even buy Bitcoin at these lower price if I really had spare money).

The second cheapest option is indeed Kraken, slightly more than twice the cost of IB but still 2 to 3 times less than Revolut with the Premium account with spread of 0.15% that I estimate and confirmed by some Reddit posts. Spread on Kraken is very good, right now it’s below 0.05%, if I calculate correctly (best ask - best bid / avg of both, is it correct?).

Note that USD much be sent directly from Revolut to Kraken, without converting to USDT, even if the conversion to stable coin is free at a 1:1 ratio, the fee to send out the USDT to another crypto wallet is much higher than sending and receiving USD to Kraken. I didn’t check other cryptoexchange as I don’t have verified account elsewhere and don’t want to open too many if possible.

Right behind Kraken, is ibani or Wise, depending on the time (as offers vary on ibani) and amount to exchange. Wise is penalized by it’s >6USD fee to receive USD + >2CHF fee to withdraw the CHF, but with higher amounts, it might be as good if not better than Kraken, with less hassle, so it’s really a matter of amount to convert and how much hassle I’m willing to accept.

Hopefully it might help others in the future.

16

Why not “send directly” from one non-Wise IBAN (in USD) to another (in CHF)?
Unless you “don’t control” the sending bit (and I think you mentioned that the “intermediary” needs to be in your name?).

I recently did ~10k CHF-EUR “real bank” IBAN to IBAN, and it cost ~0.25%,
with a competitive forex rate
(Revolut would have charged ~100CHF more in total).

17

I don’t know how you arrive to >2 CHF fee, they charge me 1.34 CHF per transfer since forever. Also, wise has never charged me to receive money, is this related to USD specifically?

18

This could be a fee for intermediaries, pretty common if not standard for USD and in general currency transfers outside of their native territory.

19

I just checked the fee page on their website. Wise Fees for Sending Money

You enter 100CHF to get CHF and the fee is 2.08CHF (same for 1000 or 10000CHF so it’s fixed)

And if you check receive money, in USD wire and Swift (only option for my case) it’s 6.11 USD. I found it strange as well.

20

Ah, but you have to specify paying with your wise account:

Screenshot 2026-02-04 at 10.18.59
Screenshot 2026-02-04 at 10.18.59577×667 26.1 KB