US Dollar Savings Account

BVI_EXPAT

Greetings to the forum. I have a Barclays USD account to receive monthly USD payments from abroad. I'm looking for a USD savings account here in the UK that pays good interest. Does anyone have any experience with this or have any recommendations ?

wmb194

BVI_EXPAT said:

Greetings to the forum. I have a Barclays USD account to receive monthly USD payments from abroad. I'm looking for a USD savings account here in the UK that pays good interest. Does anyone have any experience with this or have any recommendations ?

in my experience you'll have a hard time finding any but Flagstone did offer some as an intermediary for Investec but now I check no euro or USD accounts are currently being displayed. If you're in the BVI you'll have a hard time opening anything anyway. Another option might be to look at banks and Skipton International in the Channel Islands.

Another option might be Wise and its 'interest' option that will invest your deposits in a short term Blackrock money market fund but obviously this is a bit different from a straightforward bank deposit and Wise isn't a bank.

https://www.skiptoninternational.com/offshore-savings-accounts/us-dollar/

BVI_EXPAT

Thanks wmb194. I'm permanently resident in the UK now.

george4064

Why don’t you convert the USD to GBP and then save the cash in a standard U.K. GBP savings account?

cwep2

Revolut pay interest - depends on tier, with Metal I get 3.54% - this is FSCS protected and held with Investec.
Wise pay interest - 4.99% invested with Blackrock so I think fairly safe as well. This is invested in a treasury fund, not sure if tax return stuff will be same as interest.
Interactive Brokers pay interest - this is really a trading account but they pay fed funds rate minus a fixed spread, currently 4.83%, may be only on amounts >$10k.

Note that with IB you can invest in treasury funds directly as well (like the Wise one) with lower fees and slightly higher returns. You can also buy treasuries directly if you like.

Wise is probably your best bet.
Note that transfers from your Barclays account to Wise will often incur wire transfer fees of $15-50 and it is often pot luck how much you get charged, probably best to get money sent directly to Wise account in future if you decide to save there. You can get a debit card for spending your USD directly, or convert to GBP or EUR or whatever for spending at home or on holiday.