Wedding in Ireland - euro bank account

djPM

Hi - I am getting married in Ireland July 2020 and starting to get concerned of Brexit and the state the EUR:GBP may be in as it could end up costing A LOT of money if it goes bad!

Someone recommended opening a Euro bank account and then could use TransferWise or similar to transfer some money now etc. So if it does go bad it's not on the full amount.

Is there any Euro bank accounts anyone would recommend? Or any others things I could do to try to start protecting our money!?

Thank you

colsten

It's obviously all speculation as nobody has a crystal ball. The Pound could continue to lose value (over 20% since the EU Referendum), stay at the same value as now, or gain. You'd be a very rich person if you knew. Having said this, I tend to agree that it is likely to fall further if Brexit goes ahead.

You can, technically, use Transferwise (their Borderless account), and they will give you a decent exchange rate and very low fees. But you have no FSCS protection, so if I were you, I would not keep any money in there for any length of time. [STRIKE]Also, AFAIK, the debit card works against your GBP account only - so spending your Euros will be limited to what you can pay by bank transfer.[/STRIKE] The debit card uses the currency you pay in if you have enough funds in that currency.

A Euro account at Starling Bank would be my preference, as that gives you similar exchange deals, and full FSCS protection. However, the Starling debit card currently only works with GBP, although they promised a Euro debit card "soon".

So, with Starling, you'd probably really need a 'proper' Euro account, with a Euro debit card. You could try KBC for that (though not for their exchange rates).

xylophone

https://transferwise.com/us/blog/opening-a-bank-account-in-ireland

djPM

Thank you for your reply. Super helpful and yes I wish I had a crystal ball!

Just looking at Starling Bank and it talks about 0.4% fee - but if i were to open and always use TransferWise to transfer between my 'normal' GBP bank and this account - would that be fee free?

londoninvestor

djPM wrote: »

Thank you for your reply. Super helpful and yes I wish I had a crystal ball!

Just looking at Starling Bank and it talks about 0.4% fee - but if i were to open and always use TransferWise to transfer between my 'normal' GBP bank and this account - would that be fee free?

https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/pricing

0.37% for conversion from GBP to EUR, and 0.41% for the other direction. Plus a small fee for bank transfer IIRC.

So not much in it.

It could well be worth having both Transferwise and Starling - but the benefit of Transferwise there is the debit card, rather than any significant exchange rate saving. You could use Starling for conversion and holding most of your balance, and just transfer the minimum amount of euros you need to Transferwise when you want to do a debit card transaction.