Hello All, I've owned an apartment in the Ayamonte area for eleven years, for which all the taxes / bills/ direct debits get paid via BBVA in town. It all started alright but life gets more and more difficult. Despite uploading scans of my passport when logged in online they are no longer accepted. The account has been partially frozen. They also now want 3 months payslips every two years apparently. I'm long retired and was previously self employed so that's easy ? I'm usually au-fait with online banking and computer work but their website is not easy to negotiate for non residents. Furthermore, eleven years ago they had many cash desks and several helpful enquiry desks whereby I could "get by" in Spanish to deal with problems and if it got difficult the manager could speak English. There is now only one cash desk and open for just a few hours a day. Machines have taken over day to day banking. As for the enquiries, they set up an appointment system a while back with usually just one member of staff, sometimes two who were often overwhelmed by walk-ins rudely butting in. When I called by back in the summer, the appointment scheme was no longer and whilst the premises are open there is almost no-one working there anymore. There was a queue of frustrated Spanish customers with queries also getting nowhere fast. SO I'M CONSIDERING THE ALTERNATIVES, particularly something with less hassle. I'm currently also paying an account maintenance fee of 160 euros per annum. That works out at 5.33 euros to pay each direct debit. DOES ANYONE HAVE GOOD EXPERIENCES WITH OTHER BANKS IN THE AYAMONTE / LEPE / CARTAYA AREA? Alternatively WISE has a kind of personal account which is NOT actually a bank account but has an European IBAN number and can seem to pay direct debits to any EU country. Does anyone have any experience of this arrangement or any other similar alternative to BBVA. I've really had enough of this poor service. HELP !!!!

I am a great fan of Wise, which I use for currency exchanges and transfers. I don't currently use it for day-to-day direct debit payments, but I know they can do this and of course no bank charges.

I think most if not all, banks these days are the same, and we 'suffer' from the good old days of personal service, which we all used to enjoy. Bank charges can be a fact of life for non-residents with the Spanish 'High St' banks.

Is anybody using Wise for 'normal' banking, and can they add a comment?

It might be worth having a look at opening a N26 account. Depending on the plan it might free you from large bank charges. With a Spanish IBAN, direct debits to utilities and payments to tax authorities appear to be possible. It is a German bank and has bank deposit protection not safe guarding (Wise and Revolut).

Whilst we keep our financial affairs in order the thought of unannounced partial or total freezing of the account is disconcerting.

For currency conversions N26 use Wise which so far has been very reliable.

N26 is a proper bank and if you sign up when you are in Spain (temporarily allow them to see your location to speed things up), use a Spanish address, NIE and phone number, then you will get a Spanish IBAN. A debit card in the mail will follow shortly afterwards.

Direct debits work perfectly fine.

Maybe Wise or Revolut can do a similar job?

Hi
I finally freed myself from the Spanish Banking system, and it felt good to do so, I use wise and I pay direct debits etc from it. At first some Spanish institutions were reluctant to accept a Belgian Iban but now they all accept it. (Apparently it’s illegal to not accept another EU members iban number)

The only downside I have found is there is no way to pay cash into Wise, I know these days this is not that important, but I have a wedge of cash withdrawn from Sabadell when I escaped their clutches that I could do with reintroducing.

best of luck

Al

SINCERE THANKS to those who replied. I'm going over next week to have a sort out. Those that escaped the Spanish banks......... Were you able to transfer your direct debits in one hit to the new bank account like in the UK ? or was it a case of requesting a list of all the DD details from the old bank ? And then manually setting them up on the new account ? Mine were set up 11 years ago and I have no knowledge of the account numbers etc. I've never found a way of viewing the direct debit details online on the BBVA account log-in. meanwhile I'm going to investigate the N26 option I think.

OOOOPS, If anyone else is considering a banking move I have just accessed the N26 BANK and regretably this option is only available to EU citizens. Once we Brexited UK citizens are no longer able to access this option. Ones PERMANENT address must be an EU country. It's extremely difficult to see what we gained from Brexit. Hassle at EU airports, invaded by economic migrants and the EU doesn't want to know, excluded from banking options, the need for an European ESTA. It's all bad news. TBH, I can't think of anything good that came from it. Apparently the NHS was going to get a load of money from it, but instead Rachel Reeves says we are in difficulties now and taxes must rise again !! I should have moved to Spain when I could !!!

Hi
with the way the U.K. is going I often think I should have gone cards in prior to Brexit, but my parents are still alive and need help and my business needs my presence so I opted to remain in the U.K. system, the tax situation looks to be equalising between the two countries.

I do recall N26 does not allow non eu residents, I looked at the bank a few years ago. We opted for Wise which originally was a money exchange company but morphed into a bank. It’s very easy to set up direct debits from it for utilities, community fees etc. I doubt you could migrate from your other bank as you would in the uk and it would take you to sort it out online.

After being with Wise for 5 years I still have not been able to have my IBI and Basura paid by direct debit, but that seems to be a fault of either us for missing something or the town hall being unhelpful, Wise I am sure could do that if we could provide the correct info.

all the best
Al

There is one Spanish bank that is available to non-residents and is free to use (the only one I know of anyway). It is WEFFERENT from CajaMar/Caja Rural

Before people would just put in a local Spanish address where they were staying at at the time, add a NIE, and that was it.

Not sure if UK nationals are still doing the same or whether they are asked to show residency docs for new N26 sign-ups?

EU nationals certainly aren't asked for any local residency documentation. Just a passport scan and you input the NIE manually (no scan of the white paper or green card).

As for brexit, think of it as a national IQ test with a very low pass threshold... and yet just over half of voters still failed miserably. As the Americans say (though they also failed in their own way): "you can't fix stupid." The travelling circus called Reform and their head clown Nigel are proof of that. People got foolishly conned once... and now they're back for more.

I don't have an N26 account but looked up their procedure for opening and it says suitable ID from country of residence passport or ID card. The OP won't have TIE so passport would be UK, their process is download the app and through the app system present your ID so as it's UK passport I guess it would knock it back? If resident in Spain you could have UK passport but also TIE to put through the system. So I doubt just using someone else's address will work to open the account. I opened a Revoulut account with my UK passport for ID I then opened a Euro account on same details ot went ok however after a very short while I got a message from Revolut that for Euro account they wanted Spanish ID such as TIE which I was able to give them, if not they were going to close my Euro account. The problem is post Brexit N26 don't have licences for UK banking etc . It's the same issue many had with UK banks post Brexit such as myself banked with Barclays over 40 years non-issue after I moved to Spain pre Brexit, after Brexit told unless in UK they were closing account as they no longer held correct licences for Spain. As we retain a house in UK asking UK bank manager he said we could use either our old address not suitable as rented out or our daughter's but if found out they would close account. I bit the bullet as didn't want banking issues cropping up I managed to open an HSBC UK account on my Spanish address as they have required licences. These are the issues never raised re Brexit until after it was done.

Maybe of use to you - I recently opened up with iFastGB. Check them out. You can open this as a Non UK resident but still have GBP, USD and EUR. I actually opened it up from South America. submitted my UK passport and local ID here. All approved and can FPS GBP into it. transfer to EUR or USD.
FCSC approved also
Some interest on each currency also and FREE!

I have some money coming into Barclays UK each month as I work remotely as a contractor. Concerned with the new push of these digital IDs, smart connect and NI insurance numbers being sent to HMRC by banks in 2027 (that's what they are saying).
So if my UK accounts are closed I now have a backup international account.

Openbank, the online presence of Santander, is totally free and available both to residents and non residents.

www.openbank.es

I just tried to start opening a Cuenta Open and in the requirements it says you have to be a tax resident, have a TIE, and have a Spanish mobile number to open one.

Really? Did you bother to check reviews on TrustPilot? When they block your account, come back here to tell us all about it.