(edit title) Making a payment without bank account Using an OCR number and bankgiro Options

[Chineras]

My family is moving to Sweden in June. I have not received my personal number or visa but it should be any day. In the mean time I need to make a payment to a group. They have provided me with a Bank giro, OCR number, and an amount. I am in the US at the moment but need to make the payment this week. Does anyone know how I can make this work?

Thanks

[Rick Methven]

The only way that you can do it is to make a bank transfer of the amount to the bank/giro number on the bill and use the OCR number as a reference

[Bender B Rodriquez]

Ask them if they can provide you with an IBAN number. Bankgiro and postgiro are Swedish systems and you can not use those numbers outside of Sweden.

[Johno]

To be 100% precise to make an international payment you are likely to need both the IBAN and the banks SWIFT or BIC identifier. The first is 25 or so characters, starts with SE and then includes the bank account number. The latter is 8 or 11 characters and is for example SWEDSESS for Swedbank. Take these to your bank to make the transfer. Once in Sweden you can go to any bank counter fill in a form and pay using the bank/postgiro and OCR system.

[KHal]

Just looked into sending a wire from my overseas account to pay a Swedish invoice... You need to ask them to provide a SWIFT/BIC code and an IBAN for the institution they have an account with. Bankgiros don't work overseas.

Once you're in Sweden though, you can pay from any bank, so long as you have ID with you.

edit: jeez... too slow. Didn't see the reply before mine

[gplusa]

That's been my experience also. Our Swedish bank requires a SWIFT code when transferring money both to and from Sweden. We needed the code for the receiving bank when shifting money from NZ to Sweden, and again when pre-paying for hotel accomodation outside of Sweden.

[Stickeroo]

Ok, here is a list of all the information you should have on hand before you go do a wire transfer. Different banks ask for different kinds of information. So it's good to have all the following:

Bank Name
Bank Address
Receiving Company/Person Name
Receiving Company/Person Address
IBAN
SWIFT code or BIC (Same thing)
Acct number (usually in the IBAN but good to have noted separately)
Currency code (SEK for Sweden)

Make sure whoever you are supposed to pay knows that you are paying by international transfer and not by BankGiro or whatever. Also most banks will allow you to attach a message to the transfer, so you should put something to remind the receiver as to what it is for.