Making a payment to a foreign bank - advice please

Good points. Thanks.

Edit:
Just checked (why didn’t I previously?). It’s got great reviews all round. :relieved:

Just a slight word of warning on this: although sending an international payment through Monzo is easy (due to their integration with Wise), they don’t officially support receiving them.

There is some discussion over on the Monzo community where people have risked it and found that the payment does, eventually, seem to make it through the SWIFT network in the end, but they aren’t supporting it and are not direct participants of either SWIFT or SEPA.

Yes, I remember that. You can generate an IBAN number for IBAN transfers to Monzo and it usually works, but there’s no guarantee.

I forgot Monese as well, which worked for me. They have a UK AND an Estonian (EE) IBAN

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I’ve used Monese before too and had no issues.

Starling, HSBC’s Euro currency account, KBC Bank Ireland, Wise, Fineco, Monese and Revolut have all worked fine for me in the past.

Wise have a BE (Belgian) IBAN, Fineco use IT (Italian) and Monese also have an EU IBAN, as you say.

Sometimes banks don’t “like” GB IBANS even though they shouldn’t treat them any differently!

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Wise also have IBANs for their Turkish, Romanian and Hungarian accounts !

But if I was having difficulties with GB IBANs, I would ask for the deposit to be returned to my Wise Euro account, which has a Belgian IBAN, as pointed out by Seb.

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My Monese Euro account iban is GB not Estonian?

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I think it may depend on when you opened your account and whether or not you have an EU residency form of ID, as it does with Revolut.

I’ve just looked and realised mine is also GB!

Fineco is a good option, as that is always IT, as is Wise because that is always BE. Fineco is probably the best “no fees” option with an EU IBAN.

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I’ve found the Starling euro account to work fine. I’ll be using that for general spending in France, come December.

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A good choice!

My comments regarding Fineco were really just about the (unlikely) situation where somebody is having difficulty sending money to a GB (non-Eurozone) IBAN and you want to receive their Euro transfer into a Euro account without one. For that scenario, Fineco gets around it - but 99% of the time it won’t matter and Starling’s account will work fine.

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Thanks Seb :blush: