euros account

spontaneous

I'm a UK citizen and resident earning £20,000 a year. I earn about 3,000 euros a year from occasional freelance work I do in the eurozone and spend about 3,000 euros a year on holidays in the eurozone. Bank charges mean that I lose a lot when euro payments go in and out of my UK sterling bank account. I would like to open a separate euro bank account into which I can receive euro payments and have a debit card I can also use in ATMs. A quick search online indicates that my earnings would have to be a lot higher in order to qualify for such an account. Is there any account that does what I need?

grumbler

Barclays offer some € account, and I don't see anything about the qualifying income: http://www.barclays.co.uk/Otheraccounts/Currencyaccounts/euroAccountndashTheidealeurobankaccount/P1242557963870

There seems to be no monthly fee, but incoming transfers £100+ cost £6: euro account rates and charge

benjus

grumbler wrote: »

There seems to be no monthly fee

£7 / quarter if you don't maintain a balance of the equivalent of 2000 USD.

benjus

I use http://britline.com/ - costs about €0.70 per month to run as a basic chequebook-only account (no debit or cash card) and no minimum balance. The most basic debit card costs about €20/year extra IIRC. There used to be some free-to-run German accounts that you could open with a UK address, but this doesn't seem to be the case any longer. Might be worth investigating Irish banks.

grumbler

benjus wrote: »

£7 / quarter if you don't maintain a balance of the equivalent of 2000 USD.

"All currencies excluding Euro’s"

Even Barclays can't employ a literate person to write or proof-read their documents...

benjus

grumbler wrote: »

"All currencies excluding Euro’s"

Even Barclays can't employ a literate person to write or proof-read their documents...

Sorry, you're right.

eDicky

santanderpb.je/banking/accounts

A Visa euro debit card is provided with the euro account, but a minimum balance (I think €7000) is required to avoid monthly fees. The card has no fees for withdrawals or transactions (in euros) but can attract credit card fees from merchants.

spontaneous

Thanks all of you - I will investigate. It seems that I would need to deposit at least £50K to get this Santander offshore Gold account.

spontaneous

Good news - the Barclays option seems perfect - I just need to open a Sterling current account as well and there are no minimum requirements.

eDicky

spontaneous wrote: »

It seems that I would need to deposit at least £50K to get this Santander offshore Gold account.

Really? I never had that much in mine (now closed) Do Barclays give you a € debit card? If not, look at Revolut.

jrusso

Hiya,

I'm in a similar position. I do freelance translation for clients in the Euro zone and was majorly losing out by getting payments sent to my UK account. Especially as the exchange rate is very poor at the moment.

I used to have a Euro account with Citi until the upped fees. The € accounts from Barclays and now HSBC are fine but they charge if you need to make a payment €. You can get round this with transfer wise et al...

However I eventually gave up looking for a functional account in the UK. So last time I was in Germany I opened account with ComDirect. https://www.comdirect.de So far they've been excellent. You can download the forms online and when you're in Germany take them to a post office. They then open the account. I was missing some documents and it was fine they just asked me to email them.

The account has no fees, you can make SEPA payments around the EU for free. It comes with a VPay Giro card and a Visa card if you want it and last month they gave me a €50 bonus. When in Germany you have access to Commerzbank branches and ATMs.

Hope that's helpful.