What's the cheapest way to transfer funds to India from USA?

Question

We have recently moved to US on a long term assignment and we have a home loan account in India, which would need monthly payments to be done. In order to do that we will have to send the dollars earned in USA back to India as INR. While we have some commercial agencies like PayPal(Xoom) which makes it really convenient and fast to send the dollars to an Indian bank account, but it does come with a heavy fees.

Since our payments are scheduled, we could plan it a couple of days before and carry out the same so time is not much of a concern for us. So basically which is the cheapest and hassle free way of doing it? The Swift Code concept looks good, but I am not exactly sure how it works. Any other ideas that could help us!!

Edit

Let's look at the cheapest options available at the moment because as said by Mark, cheapest is not always the most hassle free, so unfortunately we can't have both!

Answer 1

The cheapest might be Bitcoin. You can buy it at very low cost in the US with free ACH transfer from your bank, and transmit it to India for free. The main cost then would be whatever the receiving party has to pay (or will charge you). Presumably you'd need someone on the ground in India to sell the BTC for INR and submit the payments.

Alternatively (or rather, mainstreamly), you could put money into a retail FX account like Oanda offers, again using ACH which is free (but US-only). Then trade USD for INR, and wire it out. The main issue there is the wire fee (maybe $40), which will be more bearable if you can do a lump sum transfer once every six months or so.

Answer 2

You can have a bank account in the USA and withdraw from it using an ATM card in India. There will be daily limits on withdrawals (limits set by the bank) and/or annual limits set by the US/Indian government on financial transfers (either hard-wired into the ATM network or that you must nevertheless obey as a result of tax laws and anti-money laundering regulations).