Best multicurrency (£-€) account?

Tefal

Tefal

Tefal

Caporegime
Joined
30 Jun 2007
Posts
68,860
Location
Wales
Any recommendations for the best multi currency bank accounts for Europe (mainly italy) and theuk.

Looking for no fees for changing between or cash withdrawls in either and being able to transfer to others accounts

Already have credit card but needactual account serves now.

I'm too much of a peasant for hsbcs one
 
Starling Euro account if you still have a UK presence. There is a 0.4% fee when swapping money between GBP and EUR.

Revolut, but you are limited to £1000 exchange a month unless you pay the £8.99 for premium.

Will you pay any direct debits in Italy? If so you might need a local account if they are practicing IBAN discrimination, which is rife in Italy, Spain, France and Germany despite being against EU law.

N26 will give you an Italian IBAN if you sign up with Italian address (not checked) and tax number (which is actually just made up of your name and dob etc..).

There is always the Wise account. I can't speak much for that though.
 
englishpremier said:
Starling Euro account if you still have a UK presence. There is a 0.4% fee when swapping money between GBP and EUR.

Revolut, but you are limited to £1000 exchange a month unless you pay the £8.99 for premium.

Will you pay any direct debits in Italy? If so you might need a local account if they are practicing IBAN discrimination, which is rife in Italy, Spain, France and Germany despite being against EU law.

N26 will give you an Italian IBAN if you sign up with Italian address (not checked) and tax number (which is actually just made up of your name and dob etc..).

There is always the Wise account. I can't speak much for that though.
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No i won't have bills, mainly its for being able to withdraw cash (credit card charges) and transfer to my partners account but in future it will be for work etc but that's a long way off.

I will have my Italian tax code soon.

My italian partner uses n26 and she has a German IBAN which seems to be the norm for n26 here? (Edit: sorry apparently that was a few years ago and now it's Italian these days)

Does n26 still operate in the uk I thought they had withdrawn from the UK?

Otherwise revolut should be enough.

I can load it up slowly over time as I'm only here intermittently atm.

Will mostly be for sending money to partner, insurance and whatever taxes etc are needed for driving out here in future
 
Get a monzo and a joint account, then you can send money from your account to joint account easily and spend it like any card.
 
Simon said:
Get a monzo and a joint account, then you can send money from your account to joint account easily and spend it like any card.
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Have monzo sorted alltge problems they were having?


I remember looking last year and they were being investigated by the fca and shutting down peoples accounts at random

Edit

Is it possible to pay cash into monzo or are they purely app based/cash withdrawl and not deposit

Paypoint and a fee
 
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Not aware of any problems, Monzo is also a bank account but not sure how to pay physical cash into it.
 
Tefal said:
Have monzo sorted alltge problems they were having?


I remember looking last year and they were being investigated by the fca and shutting down peoples accounts at random

Edit

Is it possible to pay cash into monzo or are they purely app based/cash withdrawl and not deposit

Paypoint and a fee
Click to expand...
Still ongoing problems, long time monzo user and I’ve just transferred to Starling for those reasons.
 
I used to have a Citibank Account that gave me 1x Card and then 3x seperate Current Accounts for GBP, USD & EUR.
I could transfer money without fees (at market rate) and then just change the linkage of the debit card to whichever account I was using; it was great when travelling in Europe.
 
Jimbeam3678 said:
Still ongoing problems, long time monzo user and I’ve just transferred to Starling for those reasons.
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How are you finding Starling?

It seems santandare might be an option and they have branches local to both of us but its an in person set up based on personal corcumstances.

We often end up fairly rural places where cards or signal aren't always available so cash in and out is definitely a big plus for me.

These challenger banks seem good for card but fall down on the cash side.
 
I've used my Starling account exclusively abroad since 2017. It's been working fine. I also have the Euro account but it's not as good as the main account.

Anyway to answer your previous question. Nope N26 are out of the UK.

I reckon Revolut is a good bet on the digital side. If you open it with an Italian or non-UK address you get an EU IBAN and the account is backed by the EDS so good for €100,000 protection. If you open it in the UK, you'll get a UK IBAN and it's only an e-money account, so your deposits are ring fenced rather than having government protection.

The good thing about Revolut is that it uses SEPA instant for both sending and receiving. A bit like Faster Payments in the UK. I'm not aware of any other digital bank that does that. Including N26. You'll also get transaction statements. Useless in the UK, but on the continent often they like you to send through confirmation that the money has been sent, and the status of the transaction e.g. settled, or pending.

The draw back is the fee for exchanging more than €1000 a month on the free account is 0.5% so that's more expensive than Starling. Otherwise you're getting one of the best rates around.

If you need to physically pay in cash or take cash out at a branch, then non of the digital banks are worthwhile. That means you are stuck with traditional branch based banks and accounts. Which in a lot of the EU means monthly fees for the account or debit card. Even banks like BBVA that have a free online account have charges for using their branches. Santander has OpenBank, but I believe it is in Spain only.

I don't enough about the Italian banks to comment on their offerings.
 
Starling or Revolut (if they've sorted their issues out)

You'll always have conversion fees though I'm afraid.
 
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