Send money from Australia to South Africa
Perth, Sydney's northern suburbs and the Gold Coast hold one of the largest South African communities anywhere outside the country, and most of it still has a bond, a set of rates or a parent to pay for at home. Grey converts your balance and credits rand to FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank or Capitec.
AUD
ZAR
-
Trusted by 3M+ people around the world
GOOGLE PLAY •22K REVIEWS
APP STORE • 12K REVIEWS
Who sends rand home from Australia
Most of this corridor is professional emigration that began in the early 1990s and never really stopped. Doctors, engineers, accountants, teachers and trades left Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria for Perth first, then the north shore of Sydney and the Gold Coast, and money has run back the other way ever since.
What it pays for is rarely groceries. It is a bond on a house nobody wanted to sell in a bad year, the municipal rates on it, a medical aid premium for parents who stayed, a term of school fees for a niece, and eventually frail care for someone in their eighties who will not be emigrating anywhere.
Behind the households sit Australian firms with a Johannesburg or Cape Town office and contractors who invoice in rand, and they want the same thing the families do: a figure agreed here rather than found out about later.
Three steps to a rand payment
Sign up
Verify once with an identity document and a selfie, the same short check whether you left Johannesburg in 1994 or landed in Perth last year. The free account opens in about five minutes and issues a USD account in your name, provided by Lead Bank.
Fund
Grey holds no Australian dollar balance, so the rand is bought from dollars, pounds or euro you already hold. Dollars, pounds or euro arriving from an overseas employer, a client or your own account abroad fill the balance instead.
Send
A rand payout needs the account number and the branch code, both of them. Enter them, read the ZAR figure and the fee on the confirmation screen, and send.
What a rand transfer actually costs
Grey puts the rate being applied next to the fee, with the rand your recipient will receive underneath both, before anything is committed.
On one transfer that is a courtesy. On a bond payment going out every month for the next decade it is the difference between a household budget that holds and one that quietly leaks.
The rate is fixed when you confirm
The rand moves on news that has nothing to do with you, and a payment priced on Monday that settles on Wednesday can land at a number nobody agreed to. Grey closes that gap by fixing the rate at the moment of confirmation.
Where the bill is written in rand, a school invoice or a rates notice, start from the rand. Enter the ZAR owed and the cost in dollars, pounds or euro is worked out and locked before the transfer leaves Australia.
Against an international transfer from an Australian bank
An Australian bank sends rand by SWIFT. The money leaves in dollars, gets converted somewhere along the chain at a rate you were never quoted, and can lose days to correspondent handling. You are used to Osko putting money into another Australian account in seconds off a phone number, so the contrast is hard to miss, and the fee is only part of it. Grey converts before the money goes and sends rand, so what the account in Durban receives is the number that was approved in Perth.
What the recipient in South Africa sees
An ordinary rand credit in the account they already have, presented the way any local electronic transfer is. They need no Grey account and there is nothing for them to collect.
The major banks
FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank and Capitec.
Account number and branch code
Both are required the first time, then saved for the next payment.
Timing
From a funded balance the rand typically lands within minutes.
Getting money into the Australian account
The rand leg is the straightforward half. The part worth planning is having the foreign currency in place beforehand, because there is no Australian dollar balance sitting behind it.
Salary or fees from abroad
USD, GBP or EUR pay credited into your Grey details without an Australian bank leg.
Your own transfer
Money you already hold offshore moved across into the balance.
A GreyTag
Another Grey user can top the balance up instantly and at no cost.
Bonds, rates and medical aid all fall due monthly and the foreign currency reaching you rarely lands on the same calendar, so keeping the balance a little ahead of the due date is the useful habit on this route.
What the money is for
Bonds, rates and levies
A bond on a Pretoria or Cape Town house kept rather than sold, with municipal rates and body corporate levies alongside it.
Parents and medical aid
Monthly support, medical aid premiums and, in time, frail care or retirement village fees for parents who stayed behind.
School and university fees
Term fees for nieces, nephews and godchildren in Johannesburg or Durban, paid on the school's dates rather than yours.
Business and contractors
An Australian firm paying a South African supplier, developer or agency in rand without opening anything locally.
Four things carry most of the value between Australia and South Africa, and not one of them is a one-off.
Why Grey on the Australia to South Africa route
The first payment gets watched closely. The tenth gets sent from a car park between appointments, and that is the one that shows whether the thing actually works.
By then the questions are small and specific: did the rand match the rates notice, was the branch code still saved, and did anyone in Cape Town have to ring and ask where the money had got to.
FAQs
Do I need a branch code as well as the account number to send rand to South Africa?
Yes. A rand payout needs both the account number and the branch code, and Grey stores them together after the first transfer.
Which South African banks can Grey pay from Australia?
FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank and Capitec are supported, and the rand arrives as an ordinary local credit in the recipient's existing account.
Can I pay a bond in South Africa from Perth every month?
Yes. Save the account number and branch code once, then repeat the transfer each month with the rate and fee shown before you confirm.
Does my mother in Cape Town need a Grey account to receive rand?
No. The rand lands in her existing South African bank account as a normal credit, with nothing to collect and nothing to sign.
Can I fund a rand transfer from my Australian bank account?
No. Grey holds no Australian dollar balance, so you fund a USD, GBP or EUR balance from money reaching you and convert from there.
How fast does rand reach a Capitec account from Australia?
From a funded Grey balance the rand typically arrives within minutes, and the transfer is trackable from confirmation until the credit lands.
Is the rate fixed when I pay South African school fees?
Yes. The rate is fixed at confirmation, so the rand shown on screen is the rand the school's account receives.
Can an Australian company pay a South African supplier in rand through Grey?
Yes. Enter the supplier's account number and branch code, confirm the ZAR figure and fee, and the payment lands as a domestic credit.
Why is a bank transfer from Australia to South Africa slower than Osko?
Osko never crosses a border. A bank sends rand by SWIFT through correspondents, which adds days and a rate you were never quoted.
Can I send rand to a South African medical aid or school account directly?
Yes, provided you have the account number and branch code. The payment reaches it the way any local electronic transfer would.
What identifier does South Africa use instead of an IBAN?
South Africa uses an account number with a branch code, unlike the BSB an Australian reader is used to, and both are required.
Get digital banking
at your fingertips
