Receiving money from abroad in Cambodia: It’s doable but not seamless

You need to move some money from back home to here in Cambodia. And you’d like that to happen like it does at home, at the click of a button. Hard cheese my friend. The Kingdom is quite simply not as hooked up to global banking and financial infrastructure as you are used to. PayPal, for example, does not really work here, at least not how you need it to if you need to get some cash from home or elsewhere into your hands here. It is possible though to receive money from overseas via other methods though. It just takes a little extra hoop jumping and likely a wait for your funds to arrive or the coughing up of a high transfer rate…and sometimes, both.

Opening a Cambodian bank account

The most convenient way to receive money from abroad in Cambodia is to open a bank account. ABA is the retail bank in the country most expats use. It offers lots of branches and a sea of ATM’s (in the cities, not so much in the provinces). The cost of receiving money is 0.1 percent of the amount received or $20, whichever is higher. Transfers under $5,000 do not require verification of where they come from. If you need to receive a larger amount of money you will need to provide proof of its source to prove the transfer is legit.

Here’s the big caveat. You can only open a bank account if you have the correct visa. in Cambodia that would be a work/business visa. It is now relatively easy and cheap to change visas. To read how to change a visa click here. To read about opening a bank account in Cambodia click here.

Also, should you manage to get an account up and going? Note that it takes international transfers anywhere from three to seven days to arrive.

Withdraw money from ATM’s in Cambodia using an international credit card

The simplest method of accesssing your money at home is to make a withdrawal from an overseas account using a debit or ATM card. It is not the cheapest way of doing things though as most banks charge $5 per transaction regardless of how much you withdraw and higher amounts trigger higher fees. Your home bank will also likely charge you another fee for international service.

Using Western Union in Cambodia/Wing and other options

Western Union has been among the leading players in cross-border transfers for well over a century. They are by far the easiest option for receiving money sent from home as you can set up transfers from your home accounts or credit cards. As for picking that money up? Well, they don’t have that many physical branches in Cambodia so you might have to spend a little bit of time getting to one from wherever you are.

There are only three Western Unions locations in Phnom Penh but the company does have a partnership agreement with Wing. The good news? Wing agents can be found almost everywhere in the Kingdom. Seriously, walk 200 metres in any direction and you’ll see one. The not so good news? Only a small percentage of Wing agents have access to Western Union service. And the Wing website does not maintain an accurate listing of which of their agents do. You’ll have to find them by hook and by crook.

Moneygram and regional Ria Money Transfer are also available though, with the latter also a being a Wing partner. You’ll also see far more Wing agents offering Ria service than the ones equippped to handle Western Union transfers. And as mentioned above? With so may Wing agents about, you’ll stumble across one with Ria access pretty quickly. You can check out the Ria Money Transfer App here.

As for PayPal?

Sadly, Cambodia still isn’t fully trusted when it comes to a lot of financial institutions and PayPal is one of them. Which sucks for the digital nomad contingent here. And while technically you can open a PayPal account in Cambodia and send and receive money home and elsewhere, you can’t send money to a Cambodian bank account. There is talk of this being fixed at some point, but no real horizon we’ve heard of as for when that might happen.

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