US Dollar Account with Debit Card for UK Resident

Petals

I work for a US company and receive share options which, when sold, are paid to me in US Dollars. I generally pay fees and suffer from the offered exchange rate in order to transfer the funds to my UK GBP account.

In August we're travelling around California for 3 weeks, before which I should be receiving another share allocation, so I've been trying to find a US$ account with a debit card that I can pay my share income into and then spend / withdraw from while we're in the US, otherwise I have to go through the steps of USD -> GBP -> USD and lose out significantly on the double exchange rates and fees.

All the UK-based US$ accounts I've found either require a large balance and/or a significant monthly fee or only offer a cheque book or the facility to transfer funds to a UK account, so I was wondering whether anyone on here is aware of an organisation offering this type of account?

Thanks, in anticipation!

dj1471

Have a look at Revolut, they provide a free USD current account and a visa card for spending.

sausage_time

Check the brokerage that your employer uses for your stock transactions. I have worked for US companies that use E*Trade and Schwab, and both have offered Visa Debit cards to access the cash balance. Schwab reimburses US ATM fees (which is nice) and both cards offer 1% FX fees (so using a UK ATM can be a good way of transferring smaller amounts back here). There's something really nice about spending US$ in the US. Enjoy California!

eDicky

Apart from the 'offshore' accounts that provide a USD debit card but require a large balance, there's unlikely to be such a card available. HSBC Singapore or Hong Kong may accept you if you say you intend to upgrade later.

Revolut is a very useful multi-currency tool, but you will not have actual account details in your own name to receive USD from a third party, so unlikely to be acceptable.

Your USD payments can be received into an account with Fineco Bank UK and converted at a rate very close to the interbank, or TransferWise Borderless Account and converted at interbank rate for 0.5% fee, then the pounds sent to a fee-free card for overseas use such as Starling Bank, Loot.io or Revolut, or use a 'travel' credit card in the normal way.

benjus

Would the new TransferWise Borderless Debit Card work?

I know this is only on limited release at the moment and I'm not yet entirely sure how it works, but it looks like it's designed to avoid any currency conversion if you spend in a currency that you already hold in your Borderless account.

System

sausage_time wrote: »

There's something really nice about spending US$ in the US. Enjoy California!

What currency do you usually spend in the US? Trump Pesos?

sausage_time

SPalin wrote: »

What currency do you usually spend in the US? Trump Pesos?

I mean spending US$ on a US$ Visa Card in the US. No bothersome FX rates to worry about.

Petals

benjus wrote: »

Would the new TransferWise Borderless Debit Card work?

I know this is only on limited release at the moment and I'm not yet entirely sure how it works, but it looks like it's designed to avoid any currency conversion if you spend in a currency that you already hold in your Borderless account.

A big thank you to everyone for all the suggestions. :beer: Having checked all the options out, the best one appeared to be the TransferWise debit card so I set up an account accordingly and received the card in the post.

However, I've now run into an issue trying to transfer funds from my UK HSBC USD account into the TransferWise USD account as it asks for my Routing Number but HSBC have told me that these are only associated with US accounts (as opposed to UK based USD accounts).

Is anyone aware of any way to find a value for a UK account that will serve as a routing number? The alternative is to do a wire transfer but this will apparently convert the USD to GBP before converting it back to USD (according to HSBC again), which is exactly the problem I was trying to avoid in the first place! :wall:

Thanks, in anticipation...

eDicky

So the HSBC UK USD account is even more useless than I thought.

I don't know what account details TransferWise provide for receiving USD. You should try to insist that HSBC send the funds as USD, it should be possible.

I use Revolut, dollars are received to the IBAN / BIC of their USD account at Lloyds UK.

JGUK

The TransferWise USD part of the account is held with a US bank . . .

AUD is with an Australian bank, EUR is with a European bank and so on.

You can't do an international payment from HSBC to TW?