Foreign Perspectives

As part of the business of being customer friendly we’ve local rate or tollfree numbers for a few countries which can sometimes result in very confusing phone calls from the sheer number of different phone numbers that we have.

For instance, now and again we get a little run of phone calls for some garden centre in America because we’ve a tollfree number that’s similar to theirs. So, any time that they run a promotion we’re sure to know about it just as soon as it hits the streets.

We’ve also quite a nice local rate number for the UK which gets a fair number of duff calls too now and again. For reasons which escape me, these particular callers take a bit of convincing that really we’re not who they want to speak to.

And then there’s the French who seem to assume that all phone numbers are also the fax number and vice versa so we get quite a raft of faxes on our normal phone number and a surprising number of people calling on the fax number. What they seem completely unable to grasp is that in fact our real fax number is actually a UK number that forwards the “faxes” to our e-mail.

I could understand if people forgot a few things if they were in for a week or more. After all, you settle into a place when you stay that long so you’ve the cases unpacked and the drawers and wardrobes full of stuff.

But, usually, it’s not the long stayers who forget things: it’s almost always those who’ve only stayed for a night. Why they bother unpacking for an overnight stay confuses me but they do leave behind a surprisingly large amount of stuff.

Just in the last week, we’ve had glasses, clothes and even a computer. What was most confusing was the time when one family left behind what seemed almost a suitcase full of clothes. How on earth could they not miss that?

If you are intending to buy a property in France at some point, it’s pretty much essential to open a French bank account before you get to the point of purchase.

For non-residents, the internet banking companies are not an option. Indeed, they are, on the whole, not an option unless you have been resident in France for a year or two as they ask for proof of French income. An exception to this is Ing although that’s purely a savings account and also requires you to already have a French account.

If you bank with HSBC, the easiest option for you is to open an account with HSBC in France. Those with Premier accounts can ask their relationship manager to do this but otherwise it’s best just to pop into an HSBC branch whilst you are in France (they’re not currently set up to open non-resident accounts outside the Premier arrangement). Although with Premier accounts in two countries you get free transfers between them, HSBC France is one of the highest charging banks in France so this may not be the best option for you.

Before starting the opening process, you should have a look at the French banking practices section of our Living in France guide.

Both Barclays and LloydsTSB offer a French service. However, their branches are clustered around Paris and the Cote d’Azur and not particularly cheap.

A number of French banks offer English speaking services and, on the whole, these are much cheaper than those on offer from the British banks (the American banks in France only cater for high net-worth individuals and not suitable for most people).

Of these, the most popular is Britline which is a English speaking phone & internet banking branch of Credit Agricole based in Normandy. The service from them is excellent but the services of most other branches of Credit Agricole is between dire and truly dreadful; you can however use the Britline across France so usually don’t need to bother with the local branches. Credit Agricole is a regional bank so, unless you live in Normandy, your local Credit Agricole is a different bank from Britline which limits the facilities available in branches if you’re using Britline as your bank but in practice this merely means that you can’t use the automated deposit machines.

More generally useable is Banque Populaire which has a number of English speaking branches in various regions around France although the most targetted at the English speaking community is that in the Cote d’Azur. This is also a regional bank so you can expect some limitations to the services on offer through your local Banque Populaire. The biggest plus of this is that the service in the branches is, on the whole, much better than Credit Agricole and the charges are significantly less too.

The two national banks, BNP Paribas and Societé Générale, also have a number of English speaking branches but they don’t promote these actively. An account opened with any of these can be used anywhere in France with the same level of services as they are not regional banks. The other plus point is that they are much larger banks and therefore offer a much wider range of services.

To open accounts in any of the above, use the contact details here and they’ll send you the necessary forms (you can’t open any non-resident accounts online in France). In terms of documentation, all that is normally required is a photocopy of your passport and an original electricity bill. If you are opening the account some time in advance of needing to use it, don’t bother getting a debit card as these cost from EUR 20 to EUR 200 per year. It’s quite easy to stick to using cheques in France as everyone takes them with proof of ID (passport or driving license). Finally, don’t be caught out by inactivity fees which are around EUR 50 per year if you don’t use the account.

If you are moving to France, do not wait until you are in France before you try opening an account here as you won’t be able to provide the proof of address required for several months. If the account is opened before you move, you can simply change the address which in turn will provide you the required proof of French address required to get a French mobile phone. Opening an account whilst you are living in France is, for the most part, a nightmare best avoided involving making appointments with your conseilleur and getting signed up for expensive and useless additional services which are next to impossible to cancel afterwards.

Before opening your account, you should read the French banking practices section of our Living in France guide.

This is part of our series on international banking which covers how to open and use accounts in various jurisdictions around the world including America, Switzerland and various offshore banking centers such as the Channel Islands, Isle of Mann and Bermuda.

Prepaid cards seem to be breeding like rabbits around the world and every single one is different from the others in terms of charges, features and general useability.

Rather than trawl through all the cards that would pay me to recommend them to you as the majority of card comparison sites do, I’m just going to go through those that are “best” here and tell you why that they’re the best so that you’ll be able to choose which is best for your circumstances.

At the moment there are basically three types of card available:

1. Maestro cards;
2. Visa Electron cards; and
3. Mastercard debit cards.

All of the Maestro cards seem to charge you for the card and a number of them charge you an annual fee too for a card which is very limited in functionality. Therefore, it isn’t worth considering these any further.

At the moment there seem to be only two Visa Electron cards available aimed at the holiday market which is a shame as it’s a very useable card. The Post Office card is free to get, £5 to renew and costs £1.50 per UK withdrawal, £2 overseas; if you get the Euro or Dollar cards their “0% commission” works out at around 3.5% otherwise it’s 2.75% when you use, say, the dollar card in Europe. There’s a 1.5% charge to add money to the sterling card. The LloydsTSB costs £7.50, £5 to renew and costs £1.50 per withdrawal with a 2.75% currency exchange fee when used abroad; on the Euro or Dollar cards their “0% commission” should work out at a similar charge to the Post Office card (they don’t offer a sterling card). That £7.50 initial charge (waived if you have a LloydsTSB Silver account) and much wider availability means that the Post Office card will be best for most people.

The range of Mastercard debit cards is vast. The majority of these cards have a monthly or annual fee which makes those ones very expensive which is a shame as this is the most useful of the three types of prepaid card currently available. However, the FairFX card is free if you load £500 or more onto either their Euro or dollar cards or alternately via this link for £10 upwards (it’s £9.95 for a three year card otherwise) and costs £1/€1.50/$2 to withdraw cash (there’s no transaction charge for purchases). The card is renewed free if you top it up at least twice over the three year validity of the card, otherwise it’s £6/€9/$12. The ICE card is free to issue from £100/€100/$100, £1.75/€3/$3 to withdraw cash and charges 4% for all currency conversions. It’s renewed free if your balance on the card is at least £50 when renewal time comes up otherwise it’s £3/€5/$5. They charge £1.75 per purchase transaction when you use the sterling card in the UK but the euro/dollar cards are free to use for purchases everywhere and the sterling card is free to use everywhere except the UK for purchases. Purely on the published charges this makes the FairFX card the one to go for but it’s even better than that as they only charge about 1% for currency exchange.

So, which of all of these cards should you get?

1. The very clear winner is the FairFX card which is free to issue via this link, £1 per cash withdrawal and about 1% to convert the money to euros/dollars. If you load your card at least twice every three years (the topup when you get the card to begin with counts), renewals are free otherwise they’ll charge you £6. Topups are via debit card or bank transfer; in theory you can topup via credit card but FairFX charge you 1.5% to do this and you could get hit by cash advance fees from your bank too if you do this.
2. In second place comes the ICE card which is free to issue and renewed free if you have at least £50 on the card at renewal time, £1.75 per cash withdrawal and 4% to convert the money to euros/dollars. You can top-up online by credit/debit card or in their branches with cash, cheque or credit/debit card.
3. In third place comes the Post Office card because it’s free to issue, £5 every two years to renew, £2 per cash withdrawal and about 3.5% to convert the money to euros/dollars. You can top-up the card with cash or credit/debit card in a Post Office branch or by phone or online with a credit/debit card. The big plus point of this one is that you can get it immediately from a Post Office branch so if you’re looking for a last minute card before you head off on holiday, this is the one to go for although do bear in mind that the card needs to be activated before use ie you can’t get one in the Post Office in the aiport, get on the plane and use it immediately in the resort.

What would I get myself? The FairFX card in that the charges are so low. This is a truly exellent card and if you remember to topup twice every three years it’ll not cost you anything to operate. I’d also consider the Post Office card in that it’s useful to have both Visa and Mastercards as not everywhere takes both and you could come unstuck if you only took one.

For true emergency use the Post Office card comes into its own as you could get someone to get one for you in the Post Office and post/courrier it to you whilst you were on holiday.

You should consider these cards only as backup to your normal credit/debit cards. For use abroad, the best bet remains the Nationwide Building Society‘s Flexaccount (Visa debit or Cirrus) which has no charges at all for withdrawing cash or converting from sterling to any currency. Alternatives to this are Abbey’s Zero Card (Visa or Mastercard) which appears to be even better than the Nationwide offer. Other credit cards with no foreign exchange fee include Thomas Cook (Mastercard), the Post Office (Mastercard) which charge nothing where-ever you are and Saga which charges nothing in Europe and 1% outside. Finally there’s the Egg Money card (Mastercard) which charges 2.75% for currency conversion but has no transaction charges for cash withdrawals and pays a quite respectable rate of interest when the account is in credit; it’s an excellent choice if you like to budget your holiday spending as you can use it like a savings account.

Now that Barclays have scapped the excellent Woolwich Cardsaver account, are there any alternatives that give a similar level of usefulness from a savings account?

Sadly, none offer the combination of reasonable interest with international debit card access but there are a number of accounts around at the moment which offer most of the attributes of this sadly missed account.

If you don’t fail the credit check, the Egg Money card is excellent. This gives you a Mastercard debit card with no cash withdrawal charges at home and abroad (foreign exchange of 2.75% applies), good interest when in credit, an excellent rate if you’re overdrawn with it and internet access. Where it falls down is that it isn’t a true bank account so you need to quote the reference number on your card when making payments and you don’t seem to be able to get cheques written from the account if you needed to withdraw more than the £500 daily limit (although you could buy things with it). Also, since it is a credit card (albeit intended for savings), they run a credit check on you which may not suit everyone and there would normally be a charge for paying cash into the account as they don’t have any branches. Interest is about 0.75% more than Cardsaver and you even get a cash rebate on things bought using the card.

Similar to this is Cahoot which is a full bank account which offers an even greater range of facilities than the Egg Money account. Downside on this one is that there is a 1.5% withdrawal charge when used overseas (plus exchange rate charge). There’s a credit check on this one too and again no branches although you can pay money in via Post Office branches. Interest is about 0.5% more than Cardsaver.

Intelligent Finance is a more complex version of Cahoot but without the access to Post Office branches. Interest is about the same as Cardsaver if you go for their cheque account, about 2% more if you go for their savings account. Deposits are only by cheque in the post or electronically from another account.

The Easy Access Savings Account from Ulster Bank and First Reserve from Natwest offer pretty much all the facilities of Cardsaver (it’s a Solo debit card instead of Visa Electron) but with a much lower interest rate. However, as the equivalent account issued by Royal Bank of Scotland (who own Ulster Bank and Natwest) only has a cash card (Cirrus, so useable internationally) I wouldn’t depend on the debit card facility remaining. As it’s a savings account, there’s no credit check. Interest is about 1 to 1.5% below the Cardsaver rates.

Beyond the above, you’re limited to cash card based accounts, and for internationally useable ones there seems to be only one option: the Instant Access/Instant Savings Tracker accounts from Royal Bank of Scotland (Cirrus system, interest about 0.25% less than Cardsaver depending on your balance).

The best account for you depends on your needs. Cahoot is best overall in giving good interest and access to Post Office branches for deposits and withdrawals plus it’s a full current account. If you want to avoid the credit check the accounts from Ulster Bank and Natwest are the only ones with debit card access although if you want international access and can do without the debit facility, the Royal Bank’s Instant Savings Tracker account pays more.

If you drop the requirement for international access, your best bet is probably Smile‘s savings account at 4.5% (if you have their current account too) or indeed their current account on its own at around 3% (ie Cardsaver level) which is accessible through their branches and the Post Office too.