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Ask HN: How to deal with the pain of receiving payments when living in Ukraine?

by amativos on 2/4/15, 5:31 PM with 3 comments

Hi. I live in Ukraine and work for an american company as a programmer. I receive money via a wire transfer every month, in addition to the 10% transer fee I am faced with ridiculous policies every time. The bank I'm using requires all money to be exchanged to UAH on every transfer, using a very low exchange rate. If I then need dollars, the only option is to exchange the money back but this time using a crazy high exchange rate. In the end I lose about 35% on every transfer and deal with lots of pain in the butt that comes with it.

I'm not experienced with this kind of stuff, but I imagine there must be a better way to receive money. Perhaps it would be possible to create a bank account in the US or Europe and then withdraw the cash at 1-2% fee? I would really appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks.

by TimSchumann on 2/4/15, 8:26 PM
Sounds like you're getting a pretty raw deal. I wonder how common problems like this are. Anyway, here's some thoughts on the matter.
You probably thought of these:
```
  Find a new bank in Ukraine that will allow you to hold USD denominated deposits.
  Find a bank in the US that will allow a nonresident to open an account.
  Find a bank in another country with USD denominated deposits.
```
I'm not sure if the inverse problem is true, but I know that as an american creating a bank account in another country can be a headache. Mostly due to compliance issues with US federal regulations. Maybe that's the case all around, I'm not sure. There is no real incentive for any country to do anything but force their particular brand of kool-aid on you so I'm guessing it's going to be hard to find anywhere outside the US that allows someone of average means (read not really rich) to keep funds on deposit that aren't denominated in local scrip.
Might not have thought of these:
```
  Bitcoin (Yes, Seriously)
  Trusted Friend or colleague 
  Other Financial Instruments like stocks, bonds, money market accounts
```
Also, just a reminder to do your own due diligence on the legal aspects of all of this wherever you're operating.
by jhildings on 2/5/15, 7:58 AM
Bitcoins and then sell them on sites like localbitcoins and then purchase things you can (like tech equipment) for them online also
by vdaniuk on 2/5/15, 1:54 PM
Opening a bank account in the EU for an Ukrainian citizen is quite problematic. There are several alternatives.
Open an offshore bank account in British Virgin Islands, etc. You can go the digital citizenship route in Estonia. https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/become-e-citizen-estonian-di...
Payoneer. An option used by many freelancers in ex-CIS to get payment from US/EU http://www.payoneer.com/