Can't Choose - Nationwide Account or CitiBank Euro?

onlypaddy

Hi All - I need some help!

I am moving to Germany temporarily for 8 months in August for my job, and looking at financial side of things at the minute. I am on a UK contract and will continue to be paid in sterling into my A&L Premier account, which I don't want to leave because of the favourable interest rate.

I want to avoid as many charges as possible so am looking to open a new account to transfer my spending money etc into. After advice from this site I have narrowed it down to a Nationwide Current Account which only charges Visa's standard 0.84% on foreign currency card transactions and withdrawals amd no flat fees, or a CitiBank Euro account (which will still be registered in the UK).

As far as I can tell the CitiBank account has no fees - but if I transfer money from A&L into it will I be charged A&L's foreign transfer fee even though the account is registered in the UK?

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

withnell

Open a Citibank access account (GBP) along with the EUR current, then transfer from A&L to Citi Sterling, and then you can do the conversion instantly within the citi online banking site

gowgowuk

I think the Nationwide 0.84% charge is only for non-EU transactions. From their website: "We pass on the charge made by Visa for converting transactions made in foreign currencies outside the Visa Europe region."

simongregson

Nationwide don't charge in Europe, so get a nationwide current account and either get your salary paid there or transfer what you need in Euro into the Nationwide by internet banking.

However, not all shops will accept a visa card in Germany, the likes of Lidl etc. accept german debit cards which operate on a different system. Germany is quite cash orientated anyway!

97trophy

citibank are very good. Go with them

System

Nationwide customer service is in the UK. Citi is in India (I think), and the staff seem to be trained only to read canned scripts from a prompt screen. It took me many attepts to get anyone at Citi to admit that they can do a BACS transfer in euro from a Citi euro account to a UK account (which the receiving bank will then convert to GBP at its rate).

You can do an on-line BACS transfer in GBP from A&L to a Citi euro account. Citi then convert to euro at their rate, which is not too bad. As you probably know, when you withdraw euro in Germany from a Nationwide card, Nationwide convert to GBP at the (fair) VISA wholesale rate, and do not apply any markup.

If you may need to transfer euro from Germany, then you need to know that Nationwide accounts are not currently compatible with cheap quick Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) Credit Transfers. German banks will boggle at understanding Nationwide's instructions for crediting from Euroland by a legacy method.

Citi is in my opinion an amateurish operation in the UK. For example, they are not members of BACS (they clear using LloydsTSB). To construct the IBAN that you need to receive credits from abroad they use a dummy sort-code which won't work for UK domestic transactions. This has the confusing effect that banks can't interconvert Citi BBANs and IBANs - as banks in Euroland expect to be able to do.

Citi management is in my opinion customer-hostile. They attempted to introduce an illegal charge for outgoing SEPA Credit Transfers, backed off when lots of customers complained, but afaik have not corrected the price list on their website.

thecraftyleek

I don't know how useful this advice is, but I have two bank accounts: a Lloyds TSB account and an ordinary current account with Northern Bank (in Northern Ireland).

Most of the four Northern Irish banks (Northern, First Trust, Ulster and Bank Of Ireland) are based in the Republic (under slightly different names, like National Irish) and do 80%-90% of their business in Euros anyway. So their sterling transactions north of the border are minor operations. Whenever I go to to the Eurozone, I simply take money out with my sterling Northern Bank sterling debit card and get 'the rate of the day.' No charges.

Compare this with rip-off Lloyds TSB who happily charge me 1pound every time I take cash out of the wall in France, Ireland or Germany. When I asked Lloyds TSB about opeing a Euro account they told me I would have to pay standard monthly charges. Why can't they just give people Euro accounts for free? They have operations outside the UK.

You don't have to live in Northern Ireland to have a Northern Bank account as its all Sterling.

Hope it all hopes.

benjus

I would go with Nationwide. Completely free to use within Europe. I don't know how the charges would work with transferring GBP to a Citi EUR account, but I would be surprised if you could do it at the wholesale exchange rate, which is exactly what you can do with Nationwide.

From experience, the Visa EUR rate, which is the rate you will get with a Nationwide card, is pretty much identical to the exchange rates published on sites such as www.xe.com/ucc - so you will not find a better rate.