What Hungarian forint actually arrives in Hungary when someone sends Australian dollars, at the live mid-market rate. We explain the process; we never recommend a provider.
| They send (AUD) | You receive at mid-market (HUF) |
|---|---|
| 500 AUD | 113,700 HUF |
| 1,000 AUD | 227,400 HUF |
| 2,000 AUD | 454,800 HUF |
| 5,000 AUD | 1,137,000 HUF |
Mid-market equivalents, not transfer quotes - the sender’s provider deducts its margin and any fees before the money reaches you. STRUCK 11:00 AEST · TUE 13 OCT.
A landlocked Central European country with a language unlike almost any of its neighbours, Hungary sits on so many hot springs that Budapest is dotted with grand thermal baths and calls itself a city of spas.
Three equal horizontal bands of red, white and green. Article I)(2) of the Fundamental Law assigns the meanings in the same sentence that describes the flag: the bands run red, white and green from top to bottom as the symbols of strength, loyalty and hope respectively. That clause is recent. The constitution the Fundamental Law replaced described the same three bands and assigned them nothing, and neither did the bill that became the Fundamental Law.
A continent pretending to be a country - Australia is the only nation that fills an entire continent, with most of its 27 million people clinging to the coast while the red-dirt interior does its own thing.
A blue field with the Union Jack in the canton, a large white seven-pointed Commonwealth Star below it, and the five white stars of the Southern Cross at the fly. Six of the big star's points stand for the states and the seventh for the territories; the Southern Cross marks Australia's place in the southern sky.
The forint trades in the hundreds per Australian dollar and is quoted without decimals, its fillér subunit having been withdrawn from circulation. It has historically been among the more movement-prone currencies in the region.
The exchange rate is set on the sending side - by the service the sender chooses in Australia - so the most useful thing a receiver can do happens before the transfer: share the live mid-market rate on this page so the sender can judge the margin in their quote. How the money arrives in Hungary determines any local receiving charges - bank-to-bank transfers can pass through intermediary banks that deduct handling fees.
Sending rather than receiving? The sender’s view of this corridor covers the same rate from the other side. The AUD/HUF converter page handles any amount. Receiving money from overseas explains the process end to end.
In Hungary the speed of a forint transfer is set by decree, not by a bank. Article 17(3) of Magyar Nemzeti Bank Decree 35/2017 requires the payer's payment service provider to have the money credited to the payee's provider within five seconds of receiving the order. Article 6 gives those transfers an uninterrupted twenty-four hour business day on every calendar day, so there is no cut-off to miss and no weekend to wait through. The system underneath went live on 2 March 2020 with every bank on it from the first day.
The rule carries a condition, and it decides what happens to money arriving from another country. Article 35(1) treats an order as an instant credit transfer only where it is debited from the payer's own forint payment account, is submitted electronically without manual handling, carries no future date, and stays under the value ceiling, which has been twenty million forints since 1 September 2023. A payment from Australia fails the first of those before any of the others are reached, and is handled instead under the decree's chapter on cross-border payments, where the timing is the business day following receipt.
The forint-account border runs through the way people in Hungary address each other's money too. Article 4 lets an account holder register a mobile telephone number carrying an EEA country code, an email address or a tax identification code as a secondary account identifier, and be paid by that instead of an account number. It works because the paying account is Hungarian and inside the domestic system. Somebody sending from outside it needs the full twenty-eight character Hungarian account number the decree fixes in Article 3.
Hungarian tills have not emptied. On the central bank's own measure, electronic payments were 38 per cent of all payments in the Hungarian economy by number in 2023, against 13 per cent in 2015, so most of the country's money still moves some other way.
Sources: Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Decree No. 35/2017. (XII.14.) on the Execution of Payment Transactions · Magyar Nemzeti Bank, instant payments · Magyar Nemzeti Bank, the value ceiling for instant payments rises to twenty million forints · Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Payment Systems Report 2024, key messages
How much Hungarian forint will I receive in Hungary?
A little less than the mid-market figures above. The service the sender uses in Australia sets the rate and fees; local receiving banks in Hungary can also apply their own charges depending on how the transfer arrives.
The sender asked for my details - what will they need?
Whatever their transfer service asks for on the receiving side - typically your full legal name and local bank account details in Hungary. Give the name exactly as your bank records it; mismatches are the most common reason a transfer is delayed.
Why did I receive less than the rate on this page suggests?
A quote is the mid-market rate with the provider’s margin taken out of it. Because that margin is expressed in the rate rather than itemised, it is easy to miss and is usually the bigger half of what a transfer costs. On a bank-to-bank transfer an intermediary bank can also deduct a handling charge in transit.