Best fintech account with IBAN for receiving GBP payments?

Title says it all. I will soon need to accept GBP payments from Airbnb who are asking for an IBAN, so presumably they would be using SWIFT to deposit the money.

Does anyone know of any good solutions to this?

Thanks! :heart:

Will you be receive SEPA or SWIFT payments? That will influence my recommendations.

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I have honestly no idea, it’s not like Airbnb gives any technical details about that - for all I know they could be using the IBAN just to infer the sort code & account number to do an UK FPS payment. I just asked them and will update if I get a solid reply (not counting on it - I’m sure whoever is gonna reply doesn’t even have a clue as to what’s SWIFT is).

To err on the side of caution, tell me your recommendations for both?

Edit: never mind, got an update from them, apparently if you set it up via web (instead of using the app) they give you the option to add an UK account and do FPS (using a horrible legacy webpage), but I guess we can leave this thread open for others?

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Your best bet (if you still needed it) would be Starling, as they give you a SWIFT-ready GBP IBAN. An alternative would be Monese or Revolut, but they don’t give you a unique IBAN for SWIFT payments. Instead, you would have to have to name them the beneficiary and provide a payment reference do that they can attribute any transfers to your account.

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Starling definitely seems like a good option; do they do SWIFT only or SEPA as well? Ideally I’d love them to do both, that way they’d have an UK current account with full international capability and no confusion (the Airbnb advisor still didn’t tell me whether they used SWIFT or SEPA, probably because it wasn’t mentioned in their canned responses).

They will be doing SEPA fairly soon-ish, especially given that they plan to launch Euro accounts later this year.

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Currently they do SWIFT and ‘via local partners’ which in many cases can result in it going via SCT (I have not come across any going via SCTinst yet) though it is not transparent enough for me so I continue to use Monese and SHB for my transfers.

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Just for the benefit of anyone else reading this thread - this relates to outgoing international transfers with Starling, who give you the option to send payments via SWIFT or a local partner (as @anon44204028 stated above).

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What does it mean via local partner?
They use another another bank in that country as a middleman?

That is why I say it is not transparent as they don’t clarify who or what are involved and how many links in the transmission chain

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At the moment, their local partner is CurrencyCloud (who work in a similar fashion as TransferWise), according to posts by some of their employees on their community. This may expand in the future.

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Transferwise, Revolut, and Monese offer this.

Except that TransferWise’s GBP account only comes with a sort code and account number, not with an IBAN (only their Euro accounts come with an IBAN).

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Ah, I was thinking of those which offer Euro as well as GBP.

Barclays provide IBAN/BIC details.

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I did notice that Monzo are working on this right now. I saw an update on Google Play referencing a partnership with Transferwise.

Apparently the support is baked into the Payments section for some users. SmartSelect_20180627-224448_Google%20Play%20Store

Worth a look anyway. That did say support is either ready now or on its way…

It’s only for sending payments though, which I could already do as I’ve got a Transferwise account.

I was asking about an account that could receive GBP payments via SEPA/SWIFT (which surprisingly, Transferwise can’t).

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Oh sorry my bad didn’t realise it was one way!