If you know the direction things are going, there’s lots of money to be made, FX is usually easy to leverage. (note: if you don’t know, it would be a bad idea to do that though)
If you have other bank accounts in EUR, or you need EUR anyway to pay something, you might want to go for it. If you want to speculate on the exchange rate, it might not work out.
To give you an idea: I bought EUR for CHF at 1.06 (“Great, EURCHF at 2y low. Let’s buy some”), then again at 1.04 (“Great, EURCHF at 7y low. Let’s buy some.”) and then again at 1.02 (you get the idea) last week. I still have some EUR bank accounts though, where I sometimes transfer some money.
A friend of mine has been trading Forex professionally for more than 10 years. He definitely knows what he’s doing (made a good amount of money after 2008), but the last 3 years he didn’t make any profit.
What I meant was, it’s (probably) a great time to change francs to euros, because of the CHF/EUR parity. But it might be a bad time to change euros into francs because you won’t get many francs for them. If history is anything to go by, the SNB will likely step in very soon and buy euros en masse to raise the euro’s value against the franc.
Indeed. I didn’t read your sentence thoroughly: you said that changing EUR to CHF now might not be a good time.
That’s what they also did until 2015 (keeping EURCHF at 1.20), but they had to stop it. We don’t know how long / if SNB will step in to keep the rate above 1. For people like us who earn their salary in CHF, it’s great. For the economy as a whole, it might not be great.
Hi,
Small question. Since 2020, when I went to USA for work, I have in my house 1K USD in cash. It’s just sitting there and I think it will be more convienint to invest that money as I am not planning to go to the USA shortly. My question is, what is the best option to exchange USD to CHF in Swtizerland? In a bank, a currency exchange? I am from Vaud and I have an account in the BCV.
Thanks
Peer to peer exchange with friends/colleagues/etc. seems to be the best option. Otherwise just exchange in any currency exchange outlet and be done with it. A somewhat more clever variation: take it to a vacation abroad and exchange it to the local currency there.
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When I needed DKK in cash a couple of years ago, the Coop Depositenkasse gave me the best rates. I had to call to get a rate (at the time they updated the rate twice a week) and looking at their website this is still the case.
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I’ve got a similar issue … I semi-regularly accumulate some cash in USD or EUR that I want to deposit into my account without getting totally ripped off. My current bank does not seem to allow to deposit / exchange / agknowledge the existence of USD in cash (although they do offer a private account denominated in USD …)
I’m not sure if there is a “better” way to get this cash into my account. I refuse to go to a currency exchange and pay through the nose … the rate I was offered on the euro bills was laughable. I’ve searched through & can’t really come up with anything clever, does anyone have some advice?
Basically there’s a reason this thread is so short.
Apart from using when on holiday or “trading” with friends, there isn’t really a reasonable way. And even if you get this USD cash into a swiss bank account, usually the USD account costs some fees and the interest is miserable, you’re better off keeping the USD cash under your pillow and using it on your holidays. (the interest is miserable since these foreign currency accounts are current accounts, there’s no USD savings account or similar available AFAIK).
For example Migrosbank USD interest on their USD account has been 0% since at least 2013, currently still 0%, and costs CHF 3 per month.
At Interactive Brokers we’re currently at 4% interest for USD’s.
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You may rethink your definition of getting ripped off. Cash handling costs money, handling of foreign cash even more, and in addition there’s an FX risk.
Out of curiosity, what would be your average transaction amount for foreign currency cash deposit and/or exchange and what would you consider a „fair“ cost or fees?
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I have about 5k cash in EUR that I want to convert to CHF and transfer to my neon account. What would be the cheapest way to do that? I already have an UBS account in CHF and could open one in EUR, but they take 1% when depositing EUR cash into an EUR account.
Is there a better way? Or should I just bite the bullet, see which bank has the best exchange rate and convert it the old-fashioned way?
I don’t have a Postfinance account (apparently they have no fee when depositing EUR), and I’m not sure the difference is worth my time to open an account and then close it again.
Just realised. You actually have bank notes
How would that work with cash?
EDIT: yes 
I think cash deposit would not be easy and exchange rates in physical shops would not be best anyways. Just check with UBS what rate would they give you if you deposit Euros but you want money in CHF account.
They might give you a reasonable rate.
P.S -: Euro account in UBS costs 5 CHF per month as far as I know.
Not worth it.
Sure. Find someone who needs cash EUR and make an exchange.
Or at least someone ready to swap EUR account balance for EUR cash.
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Well exchanging a few hundred € would work, but to be able to exchange 5k would be a bit tedious.
I think depends on your network, this seems to be a fairly popular way to exchange cash at my workplace.
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keep them and spend them in europe during vacations ?
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Good idea, but I already keep nearly 1k for those purposes. Spending a total of 6k would take me ages.