Hello, So, i am from Canada, but I am going to the UK for a year in the fall for school. To pay for schooling/residence I need a UK bank account, and it needs to be before school starts. Monzo is the clear choice for me as I’ll be transferring money. The issue is I currently do not have a UK number, so i cannot get past that point of the account creation process. Then on the flip side, I need to get a UK phone number as well, and would gladly do that, but I need a UK bank to be able to sign up for a phone. So, I am kind of stuck here, I need a UK# to get a bank account and a bank account to get a UK#. Of course if I didn’t need to give payment detials before hand I’d just do this all when I arrive, but i dont have that luxury. Is there anyway around needing a UK phone number to create an account?
I’d be quite happy to post you a www.smarty.co.uk or www.giffgaff.com SIM. Unsure whether you’d be able to activate it abroad though - although the GiffGaff forums seem to show a lot of people doing this sorta thing. You’d obviously need an existing, unlocked phone though.
I’m probably not the best qualified to help you though, but hopefully someone (when they wake up later) will be able to!
You will also need a UK address too for a Monzo account when signing up, even if it’s just a trusted friend or relatives.
This isn’t necessarily the case. In Canada you could open an account with HSBC for instance and they can arrange for you to open one in the UK before you arrive.
yea true, have an address because of my residence and want to go with Three because of their features and international stuff!
Thanks though!
will look into that, thanks
Hmm? That doesn’t compute. Monzo isn’t good at receiving international transfers.
You’re probably also going to need a TransferWise account to sit in the middle of this all so that you can receive your Canadian Dollars.
You can get a multitude of prepaid SIMs without a bank account…
Giffgaff.com will post a sim abroad just put in your foreign address , you can then activate and top it up with a foreign card also.
Edit- it looks like it won’t let you order to abroad from their site but I can send a referral sim abroad when I’m logged in , so if you’re comfortable with that I can do it, or maybe tweet them and they should be able to send one abroad for you.
its working for me for them to send me a SIM! thanks!
Oh that’s great,
I’ve just had a look and if I use a vpn to another country then it lets me order an international sim, I guess it wouldn’t let before because I was in the UK.