Starling Euro fee free current account

d123

londoninvestor wrote: »

Do you happen to know if it's fee-free for all euro ATM withdrawals? (unlike the £200ish monthly limit for Revolut, Transferwise etc).

Starling is fee free for foreign use (with an ATM limit of £300, max 6 withdrawals per day).

londoninvestor

d123 wrote: »

Starling is fee free for foreign use (with an ATM limit of £300, max 6 withdrawals per day).

Right - and that's better than most UK current accounts. But it's not quite what I'm looking for - it converts your EUR withdrawal to GBP and debits your GBP current account. I'm looking to be able to withdraw EUR directly from a EUR balance.

But it sounds like Starling should have that later this year, which is good.

Migster

eDicky wrote: »

DCC will still be be offered if the terminal or ATM detects it as a UK issued card.

This isn't correct. DCC is not determined by the country of issue, but by the base currency of the card.

If Starling issue a separate debit card for this new EUR account, they can set the card currency to EUR and DCC would be avoided. The problem they'll have is if they allow the same debit card to be used on both their GBP and EUR accounts, as the card can only have one base currency, which would presumably be GBP, so in this scenario DCC would still be offered.

eDicky

Migster wrote: »

This isn't correct. DCC is not determined by the country of issue, but by the base currency of the card.

You could be right, but I don't think so - do you have some way to be sure?

I think it's less likely that an ATM recognises a card's base currency than it being a simple recognition of the first six digits of the card number identifying the issuer and country. And how would you explain DCC being offered to the various UK-issued prepaid 'travel' cards which have a base currency of euros etc?

18cc

Not sure if this helps or confuses!

https://support.payeezy.com/hc/en-us/articles/205757587-Dynamic-Currency-Conversion-DCC-Dynamic-Pricing-DP-and-Global-ePricing-GEP-Features-Guide?mobile_site=true

18cc

I believe it works by the terminal reading the first 6 digits of the card number to determine the card issuing country. if DCC is involved then the home currency of that country is used as the base ie GBP.

you might get the very weird result using the Sterling Euro debit card abroad that the purchase amount is displayed in GBP using DCC and if you accept it then the amount is presented to the Starling EUR account as a GBP purchase and a second conversion done!

Migster

eDicky wrote: »

You could be right, but I don't think so - do you have some way to be sure?

I think it's less likely that an ATM recognises a card's base currency than it being a simple recognition of the first six digits of the card number identifying the issuer and country. And how would you explain DCC being offered to the various UK-issued prepaid 'travel' cards which have a base currency of euros etc?

The ATM will have a local BIN file that it uses to look up the first six digits of the card number. This will indeed give the ATM the issuer and country, but other data elements are also available and one of these is the currency of the card.

The problem with the modern prepaid travel cards is that they now tend to be multi-currency and will have the base currency set to GBP, regardless of what currency you then load. So if you buy one and load EUR, the base currency is still GBP, so a foreign ATM will still offer DCC.

This has proven to be a big problem on prepaid travel cads, as customers are paying an exchange rate margin to load EUR in the first place and then having it converted back to GBP via DCC. As I understand it, Mastercard have recently changed their rules relating to these prepaid travel cards, so as of April this year DCC will no longer be allowed on them.