Starling Bank still unable to receive forex payments (non EUR)

Highland76

Considering Starling are trying to compete against mainstream banks, anyone else find it strange that Starling Bank still don't allow incoming foreign payments in to the GBP personal account in currencies other than EUR? They allow you to send forex currencies, that's not an issue at all. I think it must be the only bank out there to whom inward forex payments is an alien concept...

eDicky

Perhaps they prefer to avoid passing on the cost of receiving and converting foreign currency payments to their account holders, when it's simple enough for anyone to use a transfer service which will pay into your Starling account already converted to GBP at minimal cost.

Other banks who are able to receive foreign currency don't have Starling's principle of a lack of fees in general, and are not shy about making a profit from those who don't know better than to send such funds directly.

Highland76

But Starling already charge 0.4% to send foreign currencies so why can’t they charge similar to receive foreign currencies?

colsten

what currency do you want to receive, and how is it sent? What's the size of the transfer(s) (order of magnitude), and how frequently do you want to receive it?

Highland76

I’ll be sending USD and QAR from Qatar back to Blighty in the future on a regular basis (starting a new job there), would have been nice to send the funds directly to my Starling account. However I guess I’ll need to send the funds to my Fineco account (usd account) , convert to GBP and then send to my Starling or Nationwide accounts as none of these banks charge to receive GBP SWIFT payments. 

colsten

AFAIK, Transferwise Starling do offer USD accounts - though they may come with a £5/mth charge.

Why can your sending bank / service not send GBP or EUR? What sending bank / service are you using?


EDIT: Sorry, I was meant to say Starling are offering USD accounts. Transferwise do offer currency transfers, to and from, all sorts of currencies, including QAR.

Highland76

Cheers Colsten. Qatari banks - like most UK banks - offer horrendous rates to convert QAR to other currencies (except USD) so getting the sending bank to convert the funds to GBP or EUR is out of the question.  Like some other GCC currencies though, QAR is fixed to the USD (something like 1 USD - 3.65 QAR) so banks there more or less offer this rate when converting to/from USD. I would have considered Transferwise, but unlike Fineco bank, they charge fees to convert between USD and GBP and the forex rates offered by Transferwise are more or less the same as Fineco.

Highland76

I think another option might be to open a HSBC Advance account in Qatar and use the 'Global View' facility to make transfers from QAR to GBP to my UK HSBC account. I used to do this back in 2011 when I was living & working in UAE and i remember the HSBC forex rates were pretty good for Advance customers.

ischris85

colsten said:

AFAIK, Transferwise do offer USD accounts - though they may come with a £5/mth charge.

Why can your sending bank / service not send GBP or EUR? What sending bank / service are you using?

I opened a transferwise account recently and wasn't charged for a USD account. I just needed to deposit £20 to obtain my bank details.

colsten

Highland76 said:

 I would have considered Transferwise, but unlike Fineco bank, they charge fees to convert between USD and GBP and the forex rates offered by Transferwise are more or less the same as Fineco.

So for your QAR to GBP, use Fineco or Transferwise.

For USD to GBP, use Starling, if it's worth paying a fiver a month for it.Otherwise as above, use Fineco or Transferwise.

I haven't investigated it in detail, but Fineco may have the edge over Transferwise, as they are a bank and subject to the €100,000 deposit protection which Transferwise doesn't have. I am not sure though it would really give you any protection for monies in transfer, only once the money landed. If you are using them only as transient vehicles, rather than as deposit accounts, your risk will be relatively small.Hope that makes sense.

Ballard

I would hazard a guess that Starling don’t want the expense of maintaining nostro accounts in the various currencies. They’d be able to arrange outgoing currency payments by requesting that their GBP or USD agent makes them in their behalf but that wouldn’t allow for receipt.