Over the years, banks have traditionally been the mainstay of foreign exchange and money transfer services. Consequently, they tend to be the first place people who are intending to buy overseas property turn to.

However, private client transactions are often viewed as one off deals and as such are usually subject to uncompetitive exchange rates, which enables the banks to generate sufficient profit in their deals.

In addition, a transfer within Europe can often take 3 or 4 days and information flows are scarce and trading hours limited to branch opening times.