Bank charges

Amiens

First direct has recently imposed a charge of £5 for accepting a payment into my account in GBP (not euros) from a Belgium bank.
Do you know of a valid reason for charging to receive money in £££££s? Might this be a precursor to introducing a charge for every GBP payments into my account?

[Deleted User]

Amiens said:

Do you know of a valid reason for charging to receive money in £££££s? Might this be a precursor to introducing a charge for every GBP payments into my account?

Simply that it's part of their fee charging structure. There doesn't need to be any further reason.

They won't be charging you for every payment into your account. They'd be more likely to simply close your account if they wanted you to leave that badly.

eskbanker

https://www1.firstdirect.com/travel-and-international/international-payments/#receiving-money states that the charge is only applicable to sterling payments from banks outside the UK, with no suggestion that this is the thin end of the wedge with domestic transfers to follow.

wmb194

Amiens said:

First direct has recently imposed a charge of £5 for accepting a payment into my account in GBP (not euros) from a Belgium bank.
Do you know of a valid reason for charging to receive money in £££££s? Might this be a precursor to introducing a charge for every GBP payments into my account?

We've seen this issue with sterling withdrawals from Fineco, which offers accounts in the UK but is technically Italian and withdrawals were arriving via either Swift or Sepa, I forget which one. One solution was to use a Nationwide current account as it doesn't charge for international deposits.

https://www.nationwide.co.uk/help/payments/swift-sepa-international-payments/

Amiens

Deleted_User said:

Amiens said:

Do you know of a valid reason for charging to receive money in £££££s? Might this be a precursor to introducing a charge for every GBP payments into my account?

Simply that it's part of their fee charging structure. There doesn't need to be any further reason.

They won't be charging you for every payment into your account. They'd be more likely to simply close your account if they wanted you to leave that badly.

Thanks zx81. Seems perverse to me that if the same bank paid me in euros FD wouldn't charge me anything.

[Deleted User]

They would, but you wouldn't easily see it, as they use their exchange rate.

y3sitsm3

j.p said:

Brexit dividend!

Zero to do with Brexit.  Banks were charging for international transfers (from Europe) when we were in the EU and we didn't leave SEPA anyway.