What sensible alternatives are there for PayPal with international money transfers? Is a plain wire transfer too expensive? In Europe, I'd just do a BIC+IBAN transfer to another European country.
European banks have arrangements which make that economical, but transfers between e.g. Japan and the United States or the UK and the United States cost about $60. Also, American banks put consumers through a wringer to actually effect a transfer, since it is one of the highest fraud risk operations a bank is capable of and typical American consumers do international wire transfers very seldom.
