Being charged by Santander for Starling card foreign currency payments?

m1ckr1ck

I just made a payment to a company in Dublin using my Starling card. When I was given the total payable, I transferred the money from my Santander account to my Starling card and paid the amount in Euro. But when I had a look at my Santander account a few minutes later, I had a charge of £1.25 for foreign currency fees. Looking through my past transactions, a fee has been taken from my account each time I have made a foreign currency payment with my (pre-loaded) Starling card. Surely this can't be right?

Highland76

m1ckr1ck wrote: »

I transferred the money from my Santander account to my Starling card and paid the amount in Euro.

Did you ask Santander to send Euros to your Euro Starling bank account? They certainly won't charge for GBP>GBP transfers. Also there's no such thing as a "pre-loaded Starling card", the Starling card is a debit card and therefore any transactions made on it are debited from your Starling Bank account.

18cc

What you should do is send the money in GBP from your your Santander account to your starling account

that way Santander will not charge you any fees in the same way as they wouldn't charge any fees for sending for example to Lloyds or Barclays

penners324

Why are you sending foreign currency payments between UK banks?
They should be in GBP.

m1ckr1ck

18cc wrote: »

What you should do is send the money in GBP from your your Santander account to your starling account

that way Santander will not charge you any fees in the same way as they wouldn't charge any fees for sending for example to Lloyds or Barclays

Yeah thats what I've been doing. I don't know why this has been happening.

dreaming

Is the receiving account (i.e. Starling account) denominated in GBP or EUR? Just wondered as you then went on to pay EUR.

Marchitiello

m1ckr1ck wrote: »

I just made a payment to a company in Dublin using my Starling card. When I was given the total payable, I transferred the money from my Santander account to my Starling card and paid the amount in Euro. But when I had a look at my Santander account a few minutes later, I had a charge of £1.25 for foreign currency fees. Looking through my past transactions, a fee has been taken from my account each time I have made a foreign currency payment with my (pre-loaded) Starling card. Surely this can't be right?

Did you use the UK sort code and Account number or the IBAN? Albeit both would be GB accounts so cannot see what happens there. Best thing would be to call Santander and ask why were you charged for GBP sent to another GBP UK account ...

wiseonesomeofthetime

dreaming wrote: »

Is the receiving account (i.e. Starling account) denominated in GBP or EUR? Just wondered as you then went on to pay EUR.

I suspect this is the answer as Starling do now provide EUR as well as GBP accounts, and even they charge for movement of money between accounts and currencies.

Marchitiello

wiseonesomeofthetime wrote: »

I suspect this is the answer as Starling do now provide EUR as well as GBP accounts, and even they charge for movement of money between accounts and currencies.

But Starling Euro IBAN is still GB coded (thus UK based one) albeit this may highlight that Santander see the use of an IBAN for a payee to be an International Payment ...
Also, albeit I have only opened the Euro account alongside by GBP one, my understanding was that the EURO account was only meant for bank transfers not to be used with a debit card ( or at least not yet as the app said they are working on it...)