Not had the best experience with Bankera to be honest @arnie7 - they kept rejecting my documents even though they looked legible and asked questions about whether I use Crypto! I gave up and asked them to close the profile and they haven’t done that a few days later…
I think mentioning crypto was your downfall. I didn’t and haven’t had any issues thus far. Almost instant transfers in and out.
Only downside is that they charge €1 per withdrawal after the first three in a month. Way better than the charges UK cards are getting hit with but not as good as the free Fineco withdrawals. If only Fineco were faster but I guess the perfect EU card isn’t with us yet.
Maybe, if it is would be a tad odd given they describe themselves as crypto friendly.
That said they didn’t like the images either. My passport has had a few issues in the past due to the expiry month being later than the corresponding issuance month and me not looking much like the photo anymore…
They closed the account anyway, no confirmation email as promised - just got an email saying account blocked when I went to login to check. The chat agents are defo using AI or phrase express - very odd to interact with. Not the best experience overall for me.
Fineco receives funds from Revolut immediately in EUR via instant sepa so not too bad.
Yes, the receiving of money is now great in Fineco. It’s transactions not appearing in real time in the feed that I miss. Not a disaster as I generally use it via Curve and the available balance seems to update right away but I’m too used to things appearing right away on the feed.
Under the card sections you can see the payments when they’re pending/in real time
More perfect than I thought then!
On other fronts, Junior #2 fancies the idea of cheapo YouTube, Netflix, etc. Any suggestions for a cheap VPN and country to start with?
Take a Proton VPN monthly sub - either keep it for a month or cancel it once you’ve signed up to what you want. When it gets refunded to credit you can get that refunded to your card. Suggesting them as the VPN has always worked with geoblocking.
Ukrainian or Phillipino YT premium I’ve been told don’t ask for a billing address so shouldn’t trip up the card payments for not being local - I went for the former and it took my card for the setup and is working. Can’t say if it works on renewal of the trial yet (first time card is properly billed in hryvnia) - but I’ve read it does…
I didn’t mention crypto at all and they flat out refused to open an account. Then they asked me to reapply, then changed this to 2 questions, one of which was asking if I was going to use crypto to fund the account! I am not sure carrying on further is advisable.
1 Like
Bankera? I found the experience odd, reminded me of how you described BlackCatCard.
Sadly they have my data for 2 years lol
You guys must have triggered some money laundering flag or something. I wonder if it’s around the 'how will you find the account ’ question? I generally put salary but it sounds like you maybe put savings or investments and hence the follow up questions about funding it with crypto.
I know from opening a Credit Agricole account and trying to open a French HSBC one that this tends not to be as trivial a question in Europe as we would consider it in the UK.
1 Like
Perhaps yeah, better to flag it now and find out how they deal with it! Thanks for the original suggestion but my account is now closed. As I have Fineco, I’m not too concerned 
I specifically didn’t mention crypto, yet they still asked if I would be using the card for this, or am I funding the account from crypto? We’ve been going round in circles, I’ve now completed the same questionnaire 3 times and it’s rejected it 3 times, asking the same questions. The [email protected] email just generates a standard response. I don’t think a human being has actually seen or reviewed the application.
Have you tried chatting to them? It’s AI for sure.
I have. And it’s AI. It did actually solve the issue. I removed all reference to savings and investments and it went straight through. The pictures of the agents are stock photos.
1 Like
Nice work - personally I’m glad to have stopped there and left them.
So source of funds = salary is the way to go then.
On a related note, if you are ever applying for a mortgage in France, they ask your bank why you opened the account that your deposit is coming from, so be careful what you say when if/when they ask that. UK banks didn’t ask in the past which confused the French no end.
I guess ‘for shits and giggles’ won’t allowable
Do they even do that now? I have told them where an initial funding source is and maybe some other stuff but it’s never been an important thing iirc
Now that I think of it, they just ask for source of funds usually but even that’s relatively recent. I guess if you say ‘salary’ then they’d say your reason for opening was to receive salary. That said, if you open additional accounts like on Chase then even the source of funds question isn’t asked.
I had the Woolwich Open Plan account at the time with a bunch of subaccounts which led to them tagging me as a money launderer as they couldn’t understand why anyone other than a money launderer would have more than one account! And, yes, they wanted the bank to tell them why I’d opened each account and just couldn’t grasp that I’d just clicked a button to open each one.
Fineco asks if you’re planning on using it for banking or tArading but then it’s a European bank.
To continue the discussion about Fineco alternatives.
Cynergy finally allowed me through KYC and let me login to my online profile - the one issue being that there is no account showing there at all 
I called them, they said they could see it but I certainly can’t. It’s now logged with the IT team - what a start!