EURO + USD Business Bank Account

allcurrency

Hi All, I have searched through various posts on this forum but haven't found a solution or exact match of our needs.

We are a business that typically gets paid in GBP, USD and EURO. We have to pay our suppliers that are typically in the UK or EUROPE.

This is the type of transaction I am looking to solve:

USD / EURO Payment from client.
Currently paid into our GBP account.
We then pay our supplier in EURO.
** This is terrible for the supplier as we act as agents. So the fee is being flushed through GBP unnecessarily. We need to pay the supplier from the original currency to their own and then pull our percentage into GBP.

At the moment we are using TransferWise for payments under £5k GBP and that has saved a lot of money. We also use the Post Office for some international payments.

A USD and EURO foreign account seems the obvious choice and after several months of chasing - NatWest added a USD foreign account to our business a/c. However, the foreign currency accounts seem completely archaic and do not support online banking. We have to call up to check our balance and are not able to integrate into our accounts package etc. We simply do not have enough time in the day for this amount of additional admin.

Can anyone recommend a foreign currency business account or service that suits our needs better without the requirement of a 2 million pound turnover?

I have also wondered about opening bank accounts in foreign countries (US/EU) but the tax implications worry me. I.e the IRS in the states withholding money (although we have the relevant Double Taxation numbers / EIN) or European countries trying to charge us tax. We would always pull any money/profit back to the UK where we pay our taxes. This is purely for currency processing and we are not looking to avoid paying tax.

Many thanks for any of your ideas/suggestions and i'm sorry if I missed a thread that already deals with the same issue.

Sean473

Try HSBC, they have Euro and USD foreign accounts...

eDicky

You may find suitable accounts with banks in Channel Isles / Isle of Man for the three currencies. I used Santander International in Jersey (originally Cater Allen) for many years, with online management of the three accounts a little primitive but functional. Lloyds and HSBC etc probably offer similar, and may be eager for UK business users now that the 'offshore' attractions are fizzling out.

I would avoid USA but branches of international banks in Latvia, Luxembourg, Singapore, Hong Kong may be suitable without tax complications.

I can understand using TransferWise, but the Post Office..? I think some other currency firms have been mentioned as providing a kind of multi-currency account but I don't recall which ones.

Ballard

Do you use NatWest's BankLine service? A previous employer maintained GBP, USD & EUR accounts with NatWest and BankLine allowed us to view transactions on each. We were a bank so we very rarely used it to make international payments but then you appear to have a solution for that anyway.

jonesMUFCforever

I agree with the above - most UK banks who offer currency accounts will offer debit cards as well - would this save you money on payments out?

eDicky

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

most UK banks who offer currency accounts will offer debit cards as well

Unfortunately I don't think any UK bank supplies a card with USD or EUR accounts. In Jersey etc some do, (or did, I had both).

OP, would a card solution be acceptable to your suppliers?

jonesMUFCforever

eDicky wrote: »

Unfortunately I don't think any UK bank supplies a card with USD or EUR accounts. In Jersey etc some do, (or did, I had both).

OP, would a card solution be acceptable to your suppliers?

Yes they do with international accounts (based offshore) - payments could be made to suppliers through visa/mastercard system rather than an international payment.
As the debit card is in foreign currency there is no worries about exchange rates.

eDicky

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

Yes they do with international accounts (based offshore)

That's what I meant by 'Jersey etc', unlike mainland UK banks. The 'offshore' accounts are much more useful internationally, but they still skin you on the rates if you need to convert currency. Let's see if OP can pay suppliers by card, if he comes back.

mudskippa

Hi,

I'm also interested in this topic. I need a bank account that I can hold USD and GBP in.

I make regular transfers via Swift to the US, and get charged £25 by my current bank every time.

I also get paid in US dollars sometimes and often do that via Paypal at the moment. Then of course, whenever I pull the dollars into my bank account, I get charged Paypal's % transfer fee on top of the exchange rate. Or of I get paid by Swift or cheque, the charges still apply.

I do not want some high-fee or high-minimum balance account, just an option which is better value than what I am currently doing.

I'm not interested in debit or credit cards as I am based in the UK and need to use Swift/Bacs.

Any suggestions?

I've tried to find an account comparison chart, but to no avail.

Many thanks for any help.

putout

EDITED. Sorry, I was going to recommend Citibank's foreign currency accounts, but it seems that since I opened accounts with them they've completely refocused to private banking in the UK. So I guess they are not as easy to open an account with / have business offerings like they used to.

Ballard

If you open a foreign currency account with a U.K. bank I think that you'll still incur Swift charges. The thing that you'd gain would be that there'd be no fx but this would at least partly be offset by likely fees.