Geordieborn

We have a friend about to buy here in Italy and they are looking for ways to have cash available whilst they get sorted with residency and getting a bank account here. My initial thoughts are:- Get a temporary none resident account where you can pay in to it via direct transfer from the UK;Use a UK based card to get cash out of an ATM here;Look to see if there is a currency card like the UK Fairfx and/or Caxton;The latter is the option I said I would try to find out about. So does anyone have experience of using such an Italian card whereby you can top-up from a UK account (say using CurrencyFair to convert to €), withdraw cash with it and do not need residency to get one? Or is one of the other options better, less hassle and less costly? Or is there another option?Looking at the Poste their Postepay Evolution card here may fit the bill, but I’m not too sure I’m reading it correctly or if you need to be resident to get one (of course I’ll keep looking at it).

modicasa

Id say just open a nonresident bank account which can be switched to resident when it comes through. As non resident they can have a bancomat and chequebook, but not all the facilities of online banking. Credit card would have to wait till they have residence - at least with unicredit. However, they (or you) will need an Italian cell phone number to activate the online banking.

Geordieborn

Thanks Modicasa, after looking further I came up with this list of non resident accounts and I at least know of ING, I'll pass the list on to them and let them decide.

Plan B

Just as Modicasa said, Unicredit had a non-resident account opened for us within minutes and subsequently switched us into a resident account later.
As you have already mentioned, FairFX can provide a Euro debit card which can be topped up from a GBP account. You would probably need to be still resident in the UK still for this.
Or how about a newer alternative such as Monzo or Revolut?

Geordieborn

Thank you planB I'd never heard of either, but found an old comparison of the two here... a bit more reading for her.
Just for anyone folowing this later. Since looked at this and neither really compares with the likes of Caxton on their limits for cash per day/month and year which are 1000s more.