paying USD bills in CAD

[locrian]

My question isn't directly about immigration, but it is related, I hope someone can help me.  I recently married a girl from the US and she is on visitor status with me here in Canada while we file an outland PR application.

I have enough money to pay her US bills for her (Chase Visa credit card, car insurance, car payments), but none of the companies will accept my Canadian funds.  Since they won't accept payment directly, I was considering transferring money to her US bank account and then paying the bills from there, but I'm confused about how to directly transfer money like that too.

Can anyone suggest a way to pay these US bills with Canadian funds that will work?

Thanks!

-Edwin

[toby]

Are you trying to pay by credit card? I have paid US companies with a Canadian dollar credit card. The card company makes the exchange into final currency (unfortunately not at an attractive exchange rate).

Another way would be to open a USD bank account in Canada, convert CDN to USD and transfer into the account (better echange rate) and use a credit card (or debit card) for the USD account to pay US bills.

[wilson]

Hi,

Most of the Credit cards are videly accepted for any international currency. I made USD payments, in US shopping malls, Food courts and many other places with CD Trust Visa Card and also HSBC Visa card. There was no problem at all.

[amsyul]

Another way is to go to any Canadian Post Office and ask and pay for a US dollar money order, then send those to the US. Should be no problem (I got my FBI and state police certificates that way) but check with the billers if they accept money orders that way (make clear to them that they are in US dollars). There will be a Post Office commission of a few dollars but for larger bills like rent that shouldn't be an issue.

Or if you're not far from the US border and a bank branch there, drive across, use your Canadian card to withdraw US dollars at an ATM and deposit them at the US bank.

[locrian]

Thanks everyone, those are all great ideas.  In fact I have been using my CIBC Canadian credit card to pay bills like car insurance and cell phones, but the problem is paying US Credit card bills.  For anyone who doesn't know, paying a credit card with another credit card is not allowed, so the money has to come from another source.

I've solved my issue, but I'd like to share my solution so if anyone else has the same question, they'll have a good direction to go in.

US drafts and money orders can be purchased from most banks and then mailed to the respective companies, but there can be complications depending on where the money order is cleared.  The Royal Bank of Canada actually has a US based bank account available to Canadians through it's US branch RBC Centura.

The RBC Access USA account is a US based account that you can transfer money to from an existing Canadian RBC account online or by phone without an expensive wire transfer, extra conversion fees or a long waiting period.  An RBC Access USA account comes with cheques that clear in the US and US Bill Payment.  Bills can be paid by accessing your RBC accounts online, instantly transferring money to the US account and setting up the US Bill Payment system like normal.

Hope that will help anyone with a similar problem in the future.

[heckerd]

I would use a currency exchange place and wire transfer the amount to her account. The place I use locally cost me $20 bucks if under 10,000 and $10 under 5,000. Plus the exchange rate is always better then the banks.