Current Account France/Belgium/UK €>£

francophone

Hiya
After living in France for the past five months, I will be moving to Belgium to intern for two months in the summer, before returning to the UK where I am based.
At the moment I have a current account in France and another in the UK. Unfortunately I will be unable to continue accessing my French account while in Belgium, as I am required to close the account in person before I leave and I don't plan on returning to France afterwards specifically to close the account.

I want to avoid having to cash all the money in the account or paying high transfer fees as I go from € to £ and back to € via my UK account.

Is there a good value transfer or travel money service that you can recommend, or a € cash card?

Any help much appreciated!

jonesMUFCforever

Does the French bank offer online banking and do you have to pay a fee for the account?
If you can transact online and there is no fees for having the acount - move the funds back to UK when you leave Belgium (using it in the meantime).

grumbler

What amount are we talking about?
Can it be some e-wallet account in €, e.g. Paypal, Skrill, Neteller?

francophone

It will be approximately €1500.
Both Skrill and Neteller seem to have quite high ATM charges.
What are the consequences of not closing a bank account, presumably none after all the money has been withdrawn..?
Thanks for your tips!

Graham1

As cross border bank to bank € transfers have to cost no more than domestic transfers, by EU rules, will the French bank not accept an instruction by letter to make a transfer and close the account ? This would probably be the least cost method.

Archi_Bald

francophone wrote: »

At the moment I have a current account in France and another in the UK. Unfortunately I will be unable to continue accessing my French account while in Belgium, as I am required to close the account in person before I leave

How will they know you left? Freedom on movement and all that in the EU.....

If you have to have an address in France, could you ask a friend whether you can use theirs? Or could you move your account to Britline?

As to cheap transfers: use https://www.fxcompared.com/ to find the best transfer service.

Archi_Bald

francophone wrote: »

What are the consequences of not closing a bank account

What do the T&Cs of your account say about that?

grumbler

Graham1 wrote: »

As cross border bank to bank € transfers have to cost no more than domestic transfers, by EU rules,

Yes, but it has to be a transfer to € account that you'll struggle to open for free in UK.
And the transfer from UK doesn't have to be free and won't.


I still fancy the idea of a Paypal account in € as a temporary place for the money if it's impossible to arrange a direct transfer from the French account to a Belgian one.

That said, the requirement to close the account before leaving France does seem very odd.