Paying for € Purchases

petem

petem

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 May 2001
Messages
19,108
Location
Cotswolds / Altea
www.fairlineownersclub.com
I have to make occasional € payments to German a supplier and suspect my bank's charges are higher than they need be. In addition, my supplier never gets the full amount which causes problems. amounts aren't huge ~£500 time.

Is there a more efficient / cheaper way to make € payments? Unfortunately they don't accept PayPal and paying over the phone by Debit Card is painful due to language differences.

Pete
 
Are you making EUR payments from a GBP account? If so open a EUR account and buy some EUR when the rate is advantageous and use that for your payments to Germany. Then talk to your bank, tell them that you will be making regular EUR payments from that account and see if they will give you a better charge fee structure. You will probably find that next day transfers are more expensive so avoid those

If your existing bank is not helpful check out some other banks for their transfer charge fee structure. Also check whether they will pay you interest if you always keep a positive balance in your EUR account
 
A Euro account is one way.

Using an FX company is another. I sell high value cars, up to £2-3m each, and sometimes have to buy them in different currencies, we use https://www.baydonhill.com/ who are very good, sometimes the difference between using our own bank and using them equates to many thousands of pounds.
 
HiFX is a simple platform www.hifx.co.uk, slick easy and you can even do it from your phone. Generally better rates than the banks but for larger amounts I was able to get a much better rate through Monex .
 
burgundyben said:
Open a euro account with online access. There are some with no fees.
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+1.

P, just for your reference, my bank grants me the following, anywhere within the "Single Euro Payment Area" (aka SEPA), which includes all Euro Countries and also others, like the UK:
- beneficiary value date: next working day for any wire transfer confirmed through their online website within 15:00 CET;
- amount received by the beneficiary bank: 100%. Some banks could still apply a "receiving fee", but that's not your problem - rather something the beneficiary must discuss with his bank.
- fees: none.

Bottom line, if you wish to send me an advance deposit of some millions Eur, I'm more than happy to provide you a payment service FoC to any Eur account, wherever you wish within SEPA Countries.
Glad to extend the offer also to anyone else who might be interested! :cool:
 
@mlines, yep but at what spread?

@Pete, fwiw I would caution credit risk of fx brokers. I'm not saying it's bad but you should check or at least think. The money is generally in client accounts but as you know that requires them to put it there on the euros end of the deal. On the sterling end of the deal you remit to their sterling client account but you need to wade thru t and c to find what permissions they have to remove it. Clearly it must get removed else how is the sterling paid for.

I prefer to keep a euro account in London and France at banks, both online. I buy euros in London at thin spreads and hold them in London, then make a bulk transfers to France account after which I'm in mapism's sepa area system online.

Lots of ways to skin this cat though
 
jfm said:
then make a bulk transfers to France account after which I'm in mapism's sepa area system online.
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Not that it makes a big difference, but doesn't already a UK account designated in Eur fall within SEPA area/regulations?
 
The only UK bank to offer a euro account with a debit card is Lloyds Isle of Man.
buy euro's from hifx. auto transfer to Lloyds worked for us.
another option is Caxtons euro card.
 
beebok said:
The only UK bank to offer a euro account with a debit card is Lloyds Isle of Man.
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Seriously?
I can handle USD, GBP and CHF accounts with my IT bank at no cost - and I suspect that they would include also the TOP (Kingdom of Tonga currency) if there were a demand for that... :rolleyes:
It sounds unreal that in a Country aiming to be the World finance capital you can't open any foreign currency account! :confused:
 
The op states £500 purchases, maybe the question should be how many, if purchases are for a small amount the money you are going to save is negligible and hardly warrants setting up euro accounts. May have misread but it looked like convenience combined with a better rate than the high street bank was the goal, in which case a commercial FX account with one of the big names would provide the solution. Point taken re client accounts but these are £500 transactions.
 
Open a CITIBANK € account in the UK. All online, £5 a month running fee but free transfers to EU and a debit card for your French shopping.
But Euros when you want/need/at a good rate.
 
ian38_39 said:
The op states £500 purchases, maybe the question should be how many, if purchases are for a small amount the money you are going to save is negligible and hardly warrants setting up euro accounts. May have misread but it looked like convenience combined with a better rate than the high street bank was the goal, in which case a commercial FX account with one of the big names would provide the solution. Point taken re client accounts but these are £500 transactions.
Click to expand...

Ian, that's right its occasional transfers and I just want a better rate than the bank are charging. In time, I might open a € bank account. There's certainly some good suggestions in here how I can achieve that.

Pete
 
when opening a euro account, you might make buisiness from euroland customers a bit more easy and attrack a few more clients from there
and keep that money to pay your euro suppliers, no transaction / currency loss for both party's ...
and send only ones in a while, a bigger sum in one or the other direction
or make "buisiness related" expenses in euroland
 
Just a quick update....

Made a transfer last night using HIFX - rate was 1.3334 with a £9 charge.

BBC website this morning quoted a rate of 1.34400 (tourist rate 1.3183).

So pretty pleased with the result. Thanks all for your input.

Pete
 
CurrencyFair is even better than Transferwise, you can get a better rate and pay a supplier's bank account direct from your account there for a 3€ charge. You can even better the inter bank rate by asking for a better rate and hopefully someone exchanging the other way will take it.
 
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