I'm not aware of any exchange charging 1% for a one-way exchange. That would be very high. Most tend to be around 0.5-0.6%, with some as low as 0.2% Actually, many of the Chinese exchanges are currently 0% to trade, though they charge to bring money in or out of their systems.
It's also worth noting that many of the exchanges have fees that get lower if you trade larger amounts in a given time frame. If you're a high volume trader, the difference can be significant.
Coinbase is probably the most popular US exchange (no source on this, sorry... I just use them) and they charge $0.15+1%.
I think I have read that if you are a merchant and establish a merchant account that you can get the first 1 Million Dollars (USD) free of fees. I am not sure what bar you must pass to earn merchant status, but I do have a link[1] to back this up. Presumably it's not more complicated than "accept payments for services" -- you could probably fudge it if you were simply in the business of cashing out bitcoins up to $1M. I haven't looked into it further because I'm not a merchant and I have been more interested in buying than selling at Coinbase.
Are the Chinese exchanges still bringing money in and out? I thought I read this was forbidden, and that was the reason for the great dump of $1000USD prices a few weeks back.
The Chinese exchanges still have money coming in and out through a variety of methods. The primary method is internal bank transfer from your account to their account, using one of the state banks. It's not clear if this is a permanent solution, but it's how things work as of now.
The main thing that happened a few weeks ago was that 3rd party processors were forbidden from dealing with bitcoin. The transfers from banks to exchanges were handled by 3rd party processors, so for a few days there was no way to get money into the exchanges.
Ah. So this is something like US DHS coming to raid the accounts of Mt.Gox affiliate Mutum Sigillum at Dwolla.
The Chinese exchanges are then adopting the practice of Coinbase, the situation sounds much the same (Coinbase initiates ACH transactions with your bank and makes you wait the 5 days until it clears to actually receive and withdraw your Bitcoins.) Mt.Gox works the same way now, except last I heard their Japanese bank was limiting them to some absurdly low number of ACH transactions to USA, like on the order of a maximum of 10 per week. Coinbase, being a US company with their choice of banks, obviously does not have this restriction.
It's also worth noting that many of the exchanges have fees that get lower if you trade larger amounts in a given time frame. If you're a high volume trader, the difference can be significant.