Defining international banking for personal and business banking customers.

The term international banking covers a multitude of sins, from private banking to the range of foreign currency services required to run a business which trades in more than one country. All banks offer some international services, but certainly for private banking a specialist consultancy is usually recommended.

The term international banking now has an alarming number of meanings and uses.

To begin with, international banking often refers to the same suite of services as offshore banking. This means the investment and financial management solutions that are based in other countries, often countries with low or no taxation, to avoid Britains relatively high tax for high net worth individuals. In this respect, international banking is for quite rich people who want to pay less tax.

Equally, in primarily business but also occasionally for personal banking customers, many banks offer international banking services as covering the ways in which you can make transactions in foreign currencies. This includes international payment mechanisms, foreign currency accounts, travellers cheques and import/export advice. Despite being the 21st Century, international currency transactions can still vary wildly from bank to bank and currency to currency. In general, expect Euro, dollar and Swiss Franc transactions to be relatively simple; but go much further afield and you will enter a bureaucratic minefield!

Finally, returning to international banking as a plaything for better off customers, you will also occasionally find the term applied to foreign currency transactions as investments.