Transferring money abroad online can be a scary process, especially if it’s not something you do regularly. In this article we’re going to take a look at some of the security features that online money transfer companies have in place and try to set your mind at ease with regard to the process. Safety and security is obviously a huge part of transferring money overseas and you want to make sure that it gets to its destination quickly and easily, so here is a step by step guide with everything you need to know about the process.

Online Money Transfer Security: The Basics

There are a number of things that online money transfer companies have in place to ensure that your funds transfer takes place quickly and securely. These range from encryption on their websites to collecting a range of personally identifying information about both parties, before the transfer is made. Here is how you complete an online money transfer:

1. Log on to your preferred transfer provider’s website

Even from the moment that you access a website you can quickly and easily identify if the website has encryption in place to protect the information that you’re sending to it.

When you connect to a properly secured website you’ll see green text in the browser bar and the website domain name will be preceded by https:// just like in the above snap of the secure orbitremit.com website. If a website displays like this then you are dealing with a provider that has what is called an Extended Validation Certificate. Without going into the technical explanation of this, it means that everything that you send to the site is encrypted and information the site sends to you is heavily encrypted and very secure. You should not deal with any money transfer providers that don’t have a green https:// before their domain name in your browser bar.

2. Set up your overseas money transfer

The exact mechanics of this depend on the provider you select, but we’ll use our system as an example here. We’re going to ask you for some identifying information about both yourself and the recipient of the funds. This information is an important part of preventing fraud. Once again, throughout this process, you can have confidence in the extended validation certificate providing end to end encryption to secure the information. It is very important that you don’t send money to people whose details you haven’t verified, in order to protect yourself against online scammers.

3. Transfer your funds to the money transfer provider

Once again we are going to use our system as the example here, although other providers may do things slightly differently. With OrbitRemit we don’t allow you fund transfers using credit cards – you instead transfer the funds into our local bank account in your country. This is another important security feature. In order to obtain a bank account we need to go through certain procedures with the bank, meaning they have properly identified us and recognise us as a secure and trusted transfer provider. The same is not always true of online credit card merchant providers.

We will give you all of the instructions for the transfer. The easiest way is to perform the transfer through your online banking system. It’s always best practice to check the address bar when you sign into your online banking platform to make sure that you are definitely giving your username and password to the right website. You need to check that the address is actually that of your bank and that the connection is secured in the same way as your connection to our servers is (again, look for the green colouring in the browser address bar as shown in the image above).

4. Tell the recipient to watch for the funds

No matter which provider you use you’ll be given an indicative time-frame of how long the funds will take to transfer. If the funds have not arrived within that time-frame it is really important that you contact the provider to make sure that nothing has gone awry. Remember that public holidays and weekends are not counted as banking days when you’re working out when your funds will arrive. At OrbitRemit we provide 24 hour support and an online tracking system to help you keep an eye on where your money is through every step of the transfer process.

We hope this article has helped clear up a few details how to transfer money online securely, and shown you some of the security measures that are in place to make sure things go according to plan.