Being paid from abroad

uktraveller1975

I am self employed. I regularly work abroad (mainly in the EU) as well as in the UK.

I invoice companies abroad for the work and this money gets paid into my current account.

I bank with Nat West. I shudder to think how much they have taken off me in fees over the years for processing foreign payments.

Is there a better way to arrange being paid from abroad? Which bank has the lowest fees?

My business does not have a large turnover, I am not VAT registered.

Archi_Bald

You could

1. open a Euro account (the DKB one seems popular)
   
   
2. get paid into your Euro account
   
   
3. make your own transfers with a specialist currency transfer service such as Transferwise. You can usually get your money into your UK bank account on the same day with them if you use "Sofort" to load the money from DKB into Transferwise.

Should save you a fair penny. But use a currency transfer service such as fxcompared to check who gives you the best rates - it varies.

Only potential downside I can see is that you might have to declare the money in your german account (if you get any interest - - not v. likely), in addition to what you already declare.

Archi_Bald

I wouldn't take the recommendations of kris1985. In the 8 posts they made, they recommended:
First Rate FX: 6 times
HI FX: 5 times
Moneycorp: 4 times


Not one single time did they suggest you should be shopping around for the best rate (e.g. using fxcompared.com), and not one single time did they mention services that typically are a lot more economical than their 3 favourites.

Reported.

EDIT: kris1985 has just made post number 9. So it is now FR 7, HI FX 6 and MC 5 recommendations from them. So obvious.

uktraveller1975

Thanks Archi Bald. That's really helpful.

Unfortunately, the DKB people seem to be no longer accepting applications from non German speaking countries. Is there another that you could recommend?

agrinnall

I believe people in the past have suggested opening a Euro account with an Irish bank, perhaps for the ease of communication and comprehension. No idea about the likelihood of success or the fees compared to other options though.