EuroTrash

I do
I use my TW account for receiving payments, and whenever a client pays an invoice I get an email saying that XXXX has made a payment of YYY€ into my account.
It's one of the things I like about it. My high street bank never did that, I had to keep checking to see who'd paid me on time and who hadn't.
EDIT Or are we not talking about the same thing. I was talking about Transferwise Borderless, maybe I've lost the thread.

G-J-B

Personally I wasn't using borderless (it's a bit like a Paypal account?), just transferring with a personal account I set up last week. Now it's set up I did another transfer this morning and it was almost instantaneous - I guess because it is already set up with my bank account now. On the personal TW account it does show when the payment is received, and in my case it is transferred to the recipient account within 5 seconds - I receive notification to say when it's done.

Helen1964

Methinks Eurotrash is talking about the Transferwise Borderlesss Account and Malcolm is just talking about using Transferswise to do transfers.

Helen1964

Calling out to Eurotrash (or anyone else who has a Transferwise Borderless account).
I assume this counts as a foreign bank account, to be declared in the French tax return?
Thanks in advance.

EuroTrash

You assume correctly.
I had lots of fun with that this year. Prior to 2019 I'd had a personal £ borderless account and a personal € borderless account, which I'd been declaring to be on the safe side, not being 100% sure whether I had to or no. Since being back in the UK I'd set up new business accounts for £, € and $. And I also discovered that the fisc's criteria had changed the previous year to include dormant accounts, of which I had 3. I promptly cancelled them but of course I still had to declare them as accounts held during the year. The idea of adding 6 foreign accounts all in one go, making 11 in total, seemed a bit alarming, so I contacted Transferwise customer service to check whether each Borderless account did in fact have to be declared separately, and the said Yes it does.
They also provided an example of how to fill the form in, which made me realise I'd been entering the wrong details in the wrong places on my previous declarations, so I redid those as well.
Having done all that I sent the tax office a grovelly email explaining that I'd been a year late picking up on the requirement to declare dormant accounts, and I also realised that I hadn't been filling the forms in correctly in previous years, but I'd tried to put it all right and was there anything else I needed to do. And got a very nice email back saying that my explanation was sufficient. Ouf.

Helen1964

Many thanks Eurostrash.
I’ll contact their customer service to see if they can send me an example of how to complete the form.

scrubbedexpat056

Further to my supposedly good news from the Nationwide, which I put in an earlier comment, I pushed them for a bit more clarification and got this:'The good news is that we are a UK based Building Society so it shouldn't impact us like multi national banks.

We have not yet heard what Brexit will mean for us as a Building Society.

We will contact you in due course if things will change and how this will effect you.'

If they're UK based surely that means they'll need financial passports of a sort to serve EU based customers? Now I'm worried I'm back to square one and need to plan for not having an account after 31st December. I've been following the discussions concerning Travelwise and am slightly confused. Could one of you who has an account with them tell me if it would be suitable for me to simply have my UK tenants' rent paid into it and then organise my own international transfer as I have been doing using a debit card?

Helen1964

Jeez, I wish they'd stop saying "effect" when they mean "affect".

You can certainly open a Transferwise borderless account and use it to have your UK tenants' rent paid in. I'm with the Nationwide and that's what I plan to do if they close my account.
I'll probably also try to open a sterling account with the Soc Gen here in France. For holding larger amounts of sterling (which I would transfer from the Transferwise Borderless account when the balance exceeds a certain amount).

EuroTrash

I don't see why not.
You can set up a sterling account which will be with the Transferwise (not Travelwise!) bank in London.
Give those account details to your tenants, they send the money and you'll get an email from Transferwise each time a payment is received.
I'm not sure if you can make a transfer direct from your Transferwise sterling account into your French bank account. Maybe you can. If not, or alternatively, you can set up a Transferwise Euro account (Transferwise bank in Belgium) to convert your currency (no charge for converting currency that way, and you get a decent rate). Then when you have the money in your Transferwise euro account, you can transfer it all straight into your French high street bank if you like, (nominaal fee). Or you can leave some of it in your Transferwise euro account and spend it straight from there (you can get a bank card and use it for online or instore purchases, or you can make direct eurozone payments or cash machine withdrawals). Or even leave some of it in sterling should you want to make purchases or pay bills in sterling.
Hope that makes sense.
I think you'll find it very simple, and most likely cheaper than tranferring money from a Nationwide account to a French account.

scrubbedexpat056

Thanks Helen1964 and EuroTrash. I already use the Britline International Transfer company to send sterling to my Britline account by simply using my Nationwide debit card and essentially 'paying' the amount I want to send. No fees and the rates are the same as the other internet transfer companies. All I need is a sterling paying in and holding facility with a debit card in the UK. I'll look at a Transferwise account nearer the time if I get spooked.

EuroTrash

We'll probably all have to look again at the transfer rates and fees we're getting after 31 December. I suspect a lot of institutions will have to adjust them when / if the UK is no longer included in SEPA.

Tweedpipe

I was speaking to a colleague today who had received a letter from Barclays informing that their UK account will be closed. They accordingly wrote to their bank and gave instructions to where the balance of the account should be sent. This was done by registered mail, in fact they said by Chronopost which was rather expensive. A short time later they noticed their account was still open and the balance had not been sent to the other account as requested.
Today they received a letter from their bank confirming that the account is still open and there being no need to close it!
Bande de guignols ou quoi?

mrken30

Maybe they decided to move retail customers to Ireland?

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/...exit-1.3594630

cyrian

I thought that Barclays Ireland was for corporate and wealth clients.
My understanding was that they had no retail banks in Ireland and that they had closed retail operations in the EU.
Barclays Bank Ireland has branches in several EU countries but not for retail.

KJMW

Being a Lloyds client and having a bank account in the U.K. I am of course interested in this topic. I searched back over the posts ( quickly I might add!)) but could not find any post stating why accounts are being closed by banks. Yes, I know agreements between the E.U. and UK. etc etc but I'm talking about specifics. Are banks only taking this action against seemingly random customers because the accounts they have in some way deal with Europe. My current account in the UK simply receives a pension, pays a few standing orders and I use it to buy things on line. As of yet I haven't received any indication that my account may be closed and I think the reason is I don't use it to deal in anyway with Europe.

I do have a French bank account which also receives a pension and I have moved money to my account in the U.K. and vice versa without a problem. Incidentally that has been going on for over twenty years! I can only assume that accounts are being closed because the individuals are using them to transact some sort of business in Europe and that ordinary account holders such as I have described of myself will not be affected (I hope!)