Banking noob nervous about switching to Monzo

Exactly the same for me, I’ve no intention of shutting HSBC because I don’t need to and like having another back up option. Monzo meets all of my day to day needs though and I’m really happy with it :slightly_smiling_face: there will also be more functionality to come. You also don’t need to have your credit card with the same company so even if you decide to shut your HSBC at some point you can keep using that credit card. I’ve got HSBC and Monzo accounts and credit cards with two different companies. Hope that helps :smiling_face:

I think the best way to reply to the whole message is to reply to this. Yes, I think it’s best to use a credit card in many cases as they have more legal protections and banks also generally are better to credit card holders about chargeback handling (though, frankly, I wouldn’t use an HSBC credit card over a Monzo debit card).

I’m also not a huge fan of closing old accounts, so unless HSBC would charge you, there’s no reason not to keep it open. I’ve mostly switched to Monzo and am loving it… but I’m not very bankmonogamous.

1 Like

IIRC they will just downgrade you to their bog standard ‘bank account’ tier. It’s main feature is higher fees on everything

1 Like

Hi! What are you getting up to in Spain? Monzo can’t currently receive a salary in euro’s, so when you move out there, you’d likely be best applying for an N26 account: its Monzo’s European cousin: https://next.n26.com/en-es/bank-account

1 Like

Funny you say that, I’m going to Spain in 6 months time to live and work there for a while! So I guess it is quite important I know them then? If it’s complicated it’s ok I google them (lol, like the noob I am)

1 Like

Living there for maybe a year, earning my living teaching English. That’s as much as I can tell you at the moment! But thanks for the link!

1 Like

Ha! Hmm ok, I guess you do fall into the ‘other’ bucket. You would need an IBAN in order to receive your pay into your Monzo account via a SEPA credit transfer while abroad. Here’s an explanation from Barclays -

but as Anthony hints, that’s probably still not the solution you’ll want to use because you’ll get hit by the conversion fee that the bank will charge your employer in order to convert the Euros that they want to pay you into GBP, before they pay money into your GBP Monzo account.

I’d recommend opening a Euro bank account (Revolut’s might be a good option too) & then using a service like TransferWise to send the money to your HSBC bank account in the UK, as Monzo doesn’t yet have the IBAN that you’d need in order to use TransferWise to send the money from your Euro account to your Monzo account.

Having a Euro bank account will make transferring money to anyone in Spain easier too :slight_smile:

The acronym stands for “Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication” SWIFT is an organization that handles secure transactions and communications between banks worldwide.

SEPA stands for Single Euro Payments Area. The idea of SEPA is to make it easier to transfer money and electronic payments between the countries within the SEPA zone.

2 Likes

If you’re earning in euros and spending in euros, it doesn’t make much sense to transfer your income to pounds and then spend it in euros, as you’ll lose out twice on the currency exchange (even if it’s a good rate). So your ideal setup might be to have Monzo account and a euro account (e.g. N26 as mentioned above or a local Spanish bank). Your pay goes into the euro account and you spend from this account/get cash out in Spain. Any money you want to transfer back to the UK, use TransferWise which will allow you to debit euros from your Spanish/N26 account, convert them to pounds at reasonable rates, and deposit pounds directly into your Monzo account (using its account number and sort code).

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.