Barriej

According to this You as the account holder must specify the currencies you can accept or you cannot receive them.
Maybe thats what was wrong.

https://wise.com/help/articles/28981...-receive-money

Ive not used my account for anything except moving money from the Uk to Spain.
Im happy with my bank account as I fulfil the requirements to keep it free.

I also remember the old days in the Uk when you paid for your bank account, the only way to get free banking would entail getting no interest on your money (its a business after all, might be a monopoly but you pays your money as they say).

frigilianafreddy

If you are non resident, which non charging bank and account is that

Barriej

We opened the accounts with Santander in 2019 when we purchased the flat and the nice lady in the bank told me to just make one transfer of €650 in the first month and then to just keep moving back and forth between the accounts (we both have accounts). No charges at all as long as you use the card a couple of times a month and have a DD or two.

Account wise normal Santander one. Now we are resident they 'pay' us €100 each a year for fulfilling the T&C's (taxable obviously).

snikpoh

Wefferent is an online bank account entirely FREE - even to non-residents

frigilianafreddy

onmyway2022

@ Lospacoshombre sorry new forum member as of just now so cannot send private message yet.


New to Wise. We have have with Water and Electricity utilities in Balerarics which we currently pay on a bill by bill basis ( there are good reasons )

The utility companies use an Caixa payment system that works with a UK high street Visa debit card. so...

would the wise debit card work if this way eg I have no idea how 'accepted' the card is ( is it in fact a Visa/mastercard under the covers anyway? )

You mentioned setting up some DD to pay your utilities. Again doesc Wise provide you all required for a utility company to send such payment requests? Is any special feature of wise required?

Another cheeky question as no answer found yet at wise. Does the Wise business account allow you to control that all any transactions to send money required autorisation by ALL name account users ( which is what we want - yes trust issues in group ;- ) )


TIA

UKMS

A Wise debit card (either master or visa ) is accepted in the same way as any other EU debit card.

You can use Wise (or other online bank such as Revolut) to set up the DD on your utilities, it doesn’t have to be a Spanish account. Ive just returned from the ENDESA Office and have used my Revolut account for my electricity DD, Revolut uses a Lithuanian EU IBAN, which was accepted.

Im pretty certain that Wise does not have a function to have an ALL authorisation, but could be wrong.

onmyway2022

UKMS Thank you for taking the time. Good input. I've signed up for Revolut. Re the Endesa DD using Revolut IBAN - has the first payment succeeded? Sorry just some early day nerves re these new modern online banks :-)

So my simplified understanding is these Wise / Revolut account's original business core was to allow foreign currency transfers at lower costs than 'traditional' banks and they then extened their services over time eg debit cards / DD services?

Loafing Along

Exactly , nothing easier than paying abroad with a Wise debit card , you just load it with Sterling ( assuming that is your principle currency ) and off you go. Very good exchange rate and very small fee on each transaction all clearly shown almost instantly on the App.

UKMS

My first months payment hasn’t gone out yet but the lady in the ENDESA office assured me everything would be ok as their billing system would have rejected it straight away. I’ll update as soon as it does.

Regarding your understanding of Wise/Revolut, you are spot on with Wise hence the name change from TransferWise. Revolut has a similar background although has evolved with more services and some might say some controversy. For me at the moment Revolut gets the nod because it serves my needs better at the moment although I still happily use Wise.

onmyway2022

Just an update for any other 'nervous' newcomers. I have been using the Revolut Debit card in Spain for last 2 weeks . Will compare exchange rates with a UK card I used for comparison when I get back home. Amazing how fast the revolut confirms payments and you can see the exchange rates
I used a physical card with a GBP sterling Revolut account.

Did not have time before leaving for Spain but would a physical debit card linked to a Revolut Eur account be even better? I guess I have to depost Eur to this account at a low rate for this to make sense. Apologies I know going off thread