Citibank Euro Current and Deposit accounts

runciblespoon

I need an account where I can make small-ish payments in Euro reasonably easily. I have a Barclays Euro account but I've never used it because it's useless - moving money out of the UK takes £20-£30 a time, and it doesn't provide an ATM card (after all, most of the time I want Euro cash I'll be in a Eurozone country). I have a Euro chequebook but I can't think of anyone who might take UK cheques in Euro. And credit interest is 0% so it doesn't encourage me to keep money in there. It's slightly less useful than keeping it under the mattress

I noticed Citibank's Euro accounts a while ago, but there were always fees or tied to an account you had to keep lots of Sterling in. But I notice they don't say that on the website any more, but they don't say it's fee-free either (apart from fee-free from Citi ATMs, which is useful).

Anyone have any experience of either the Current or Deposit accounts? What actually is the difference? From the website all I can work out is that there's no credit interest on the current account but I can 'receive and make payments in Euro'. Does that mean I can't do SWIFT or SEPA payments to other people from the deposit account? Are there still monthly fees or have these been lifted? I just tried to ring Citi but they don't talk to new customers on weekends :rolleyes:

A big advantage of Citi over Barclays is they do SEPA payments, which are free. Credit interest in the deposit account is 2% which isn't great, but at least it's not zero.

Anyone know whether transfers from Citi to the Isle of Man/Guernsey/Jersey cost or are free (either as UK transfers or SEPA)?

peter999

Look at post #228 which describes using a Citibank account to swap between currencies.

Large International Money Transfers Discussion area
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=12436689#post12436689

peter999

runciblespoon

Thanks. Wouldn't have expected a thread like that in the 'Anything else Moneysaving' category

runciblespoon

I notice that Citi have now changed their website to say there are no charges on these accounts.