I need to pay for my wedding abroad next week - my initial plan was just to bank transfer a Euro balance to the wedding planner which I have been holding in Transferwise since the exchange rate was a bit better.
Now I need to pay a balance in cash and I’m stumped as to the best way to do this. If I withdraw using Transferwise I’ll pay 2% on anything over £200, same with Revolut if I transferred into a Euro balance on that card (although it is an extra £200 fee free).
The Starling Euro account doesn’t have a card yet so that’s no use for ATM withdrawals.
Does a card exist that would allow me to hold a Euro balance (i.e. transfer EUR to EUR) and also have better withdrawal limits?
Why can’t you just withdraw in Euros from Starlings GBP account? The fee from Euro to GBP conversion in Starling a pain? It’s still free until 1st September and only 0.4% after.
You could also go for a Euro account with a European bank. The Dutch fintech bank Bunq offer a Euro travel card on its free tier but it’s 99¢ per withdrawal and a full current account on its paid tier (€7.99 per month) with free withdrawals (up to €500 per day).
I have a way to open a free Irish Euro bank account that I did with KBC Ireland but that would take longer to open up before next week.
I’ll look into that. The problem being that I’ve already done the conversion from GBP to EUR with Transferwise so I’ve already taken the fee hit (and earlier in the year when the FX was better).
Your wedding planner wants you to pay £3000 in cash!? Can you not just explain to them that you don’t have a euro account therefore it’s going to cost you £60 in fees to withdraw that. And try and insist you pay by transfer.
Perhaps you could even offer them £3,030 if they accepted a transfer.
Take out the Premium plan, which will include its euro account and will cost £14.95 for a month for unlimited ATM withdrawals. The website says you can change the plan down to a lower tier when you want.
Personally I would use up the free 200 on your Revolut and TransferWise , then just pay the ~£50 in fees,
The faff of opening a European bank account is not what I would want before my wedding, plus transfering 3k to a new account and maxing out the daily withdrawal limit for a few days would look suspicious to me and you run the risk of the account getting frozen imo.
Probably to evade taxes. I’ve worked with many people that deal in cash only for transactions of that size. I’m relatively sure it’s to allow them to underreport their earnings easier. I never had issues in transactions when I’ve had to do this.
@OP: I’d use the maximum limits on Monzo and Revolut and then withdraw from whichever has the lower fee for withdrawals. Check with your traditional bank: one of my traditional bank accounts have unlimited intl. ATM withdrawals with no markup.
If you have Starling, try their Starling GBP account. You have your balance in EUR, converting it back to GBP would have a TransferWise fee of something like 0.35% I think. Then Starling to withdraw internationally for the MC exchange rate. Do the sending to your GBP account as you want to withdraw from ATM so you’re not exposed to exchange rate volatility.
