Added the card to Curve without any hassle. Google Pay, however, says that the card number does not exist. I shall check it actually functions in the not too distant. Funded it with an IBAN transfer from Revolut (€10) and it was instantaneously received.
riceuten does these things so you don’t have to
As our intrepid Fineco front-runner, (and with me still hobbled without the physical card), can you shed any light on:
The method of setting up a payee from the account.
Having lightly funded the account, I used a portion of the balance to convert to euros - so I have two balances - GBP & Euros.
How will I spend the euros (few though they are)?
It’s a pity there’s no real user guide. Lots of marketing but no “how-to” section.
Beyond the IBAN what’s the selling point of this then? 
Is it an actual bank account? Are you credit checked?
Good question. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re not……
Free SEPA transfers
Funds beyond the reach of any (UK) bank account freeze.
I’ve found a few businesses in the EU will not accept GBP denominated cards from UK banks, which is all strictly dodgy, but they’ve accepted Bunq (Dutch) and would presumably also accept Fineco.
No credit check, it seems,
You need to finish up setting the account to set up a payee. It’s pretty straightforward like a UK bank for GBP transfers, but for Euros, it looks like it uses a similar system to Revolut. I will have to test it out. Strangely enough, the day AFTER I got my card, I received a letter with a “Security code” which I believe you can use in lieu of the middle eight digits of the card.
Until you get the card, the only way to use it would be to transfer money to a trader via SEPA. And unless you get the security code or card, that’s not going to happen.
There are help pages, helpfully all in Italian.
Thought so. Thanks. 
They’re not, governments can have accounts freezed worldwide by talking to their counterparts in foreign countries. Very dangerous suggestion to think you can get out of reach by a state. Especially one with the historical ties granted by the British Empire and economic/diplomatic ties of the United Kingdom.
Try getting a third-party debt order enforced in Italy.
I imagine it’s not as secure as keeping my funds in Turkey and letting you lot have fun with the interlinked EU institutions that play ball with foreign governments at the expense of citizens
Hello @riceuten @Graham and everyone else!
I’ve been on holiday so haven’t kept up with the thread, but going through it quickly now and catching up (I haven’t read it all yet) does seem to point to serious problems at Fineco. I’ll eat my words! Sorry for assuming that the problems were your fault.
Initially I did come out in support of Fineco because, quite honestly, your experience did seem to fly in the face of mine at the setup stage (so I wrote off your problems a bit as a result). Now I realise that it’s clearly systemic, as the same happened to @Graham.
They’ve made some changes to their processes since I first opened my account, as my opening process was very different, and I think that’s what has caused the issues with card ordering and so on. I first signed-up through their website (you couldn’t apply through the app initially) before the app had introduced the Mobile Code function, and I remember card ordering being part of the application. If they’ve changed the sign-up process, and not changed the card ordering flow, that may account for why the system “expects” you to already have a card number when ordering your first card? They must assume that you are re-ordering a card, rather than initial ordering.
The app and Mobile Code also seems to have added complication and caused system glitches that I didn’t experience. The website has always been complicated though, as a result of trying to shoehorn a bank account into a full-featured trading platform.
Once the painful setup is over, the account does seem to function (at least for me) so it is still a viable option if you absolutely need an IT IBAN or a separate Euro debit card, but beyond that limited use I would recommend Starling.
I agree that adding a note of caution on the account opening, as something that takes time and is problematic, is called for. Everybody should clearly be warned that it isn’t possible to order a card without manual intervention too.
Still, Fineco offer something unique in the market if you do need the IT IBAN so, for those people, it may (with caveats) be worth opening the account. It’s not a classic fintech account though, and it is clunky to operate.
Most helpful insights. 
As I outlined above, the system sends you a code to input to override this, but it arrived the day after my card 
as it came with normal post, as opposed to a courier.
" historical ties granted by the British Empire"
The ones that ensured that the UK didn’t go to war with Italy in 1939…?
Oh.
Oo-er. It takes real skill to get from understanding Fineco’s on-boarding practices to associating opening an account with the Italian war effort.
I’m impressed 
Was Italy ever a British colony?
Okay… so the card arrived today in a massive DHL envelope that a courier had to hand to me because it wouldn’t fit through the letter box!
I was disappointed to find that they’ve cut off half of my middle name, meaning the name on the card is ‘LASTNAME FIRSTNAME MIDDL’ VISA logo 
There are also a fair few white scratches on it, which are very noticeable against the all black design.
Oh well, at least I wouldn’t notice any of that in Apple Pay, I thought! Well, tapping on the Add to Apple Pay button in the app opened Wallet but then only offered to add my old HSBC and Starling cards - no Fineco one in sight. So I tried to manually add it - the middle name caused some confusion here, since I didn’t know whether to put my full name in LN FN MN format, or to cut off the middle name at the end (since this is what is physically printed on the card and also how it shows in the Card Details section of the app), or maybe even FN MN LN. Regardless, every combination resulted in this:
I could contact them again to try and sort this out, but seeing as they still haven’t replied to my first message that was sent almost a week ago, I think I might just request for my account to be closed. I’ve had an in-person look at the card which, as a bit of a card geek, I appreciate(!), but I think to try and remedy this new problem and maintain the account would be more hassle than it’s truly worth in my case (I personally don’t actually need a non-UK IBAN).
Btw @riceuten my PIN arrived by text message instantly as soon as I activated the card in app, so you seem to have been unfortunate in that instance
Yikes! One of my Barclays debit cards prints my name in the same weird way, except it’s first name, middle name, first four letters of my surname!
Yes, they should start sending those override codes via text message instead!
Sounds like they reached the character limit.
At a guess, the right way to type your name in would be Firstname Middlename Lastname in full.
Perhaps try that?
I have a similar thing with my Curve card, where my middle name didn’t fit on so they dropped it, but Apple Pay and card billing fields seem to require the full name to be put in, in order for the transaction to go through.
