Online-only banks

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martyn94
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Online-only banks

Post by martyn94 »

When I first got a house here, I opened an account here with BNP - the only bank with a branch in my local small town. They have been adequate over the years, though expensive by UK standards, and incredibly keen on paperwork, in the French manner. Their online offering was pretty sad until the last year or so: better recently, but still sad enough.

I identified years ago that the online-only offerings - Boursorama, Fortuneo, ING etc - might meet my needs better and more cheaply, but my tentative attempts to get one always stumbled on their requirement to prove full French-resident paperwork. I can now meet that, I hope, so any "retour d'expérience" from anyone here who uses them?

A subsidiary point for me, but not a trivial one. Transactions on French CB etc cards almost never ask your bank, when you do a transaction, whether your bank balance can support the charge ("authorisation automatique"): they just check it against pre-set limits supplied by the bank: so much per day, per week, per month. If the BNP is anything to go by, the limits are very conservative, and I have lost patience with the task of persuading their local staff to change something they have no influence over. I am not on the whole a big spender, but I do occasionally try to spend amounts that my bank won't tolerate (eg a return ticket to Australia for a bit short of €2000): it is staggeringly annoying, and tedious, and time-consuming, to try to spend money that the bank already has, in your name, but they will not let you use.

So any experience about how you get a decent spending limit (or "authorisation automatique") and from whom, on what terms, especially gratefully received.
Merisin
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Post by Merisin »

To authorise big payments our bank sometimes calls our home phone and an automated voice gives us a code which we have to enter to do the business, Works fine but means you can't make a big purchase if you're not home.

Mary
Allan
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Post by Allan »

I bank with Barclays France and find them terrific. The branch is in Monpellier so for me it is pretty much the same as an on-line only bank.

I pay no fees and very rarely have problems with spending limits. Their staff are all bi-lingual and extremely helpful.

Their on-line payment system is limited to €4,000 but if I have larger payments to make then I just send them an email and they phone me back to confirm.

I cannot recommend them highly enough and would happily effect an introduction.
interiors66
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Post by interiors66 »

Merisin wrote:To authorise big payments our bank sometimes calls our home phone and an automated voice gives us a code which we have to enter to do the business, Works fine but means you can't make a big purchase if you're not home.

Mary
I have a similar system which I was able to change to my mobile phone via SMS
martyn94
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Post by martyn94 »

Thanks for all this. But my immediate problem with card payments is not the identity checks for online transactions (though they are a pain too, if you have no mobile coverage for an SMS), but the absolute limits applied to transactions even if you have enough balance to cover them, and even if they know that you are who you say you are.

That said, I was more interested in experience with the non-traditional banks: in principle cheaper both for banking (eg no annual fees for your CB) but also for allied things like assurance-vie, PEAs etc. I am not rich, or a share-trader, but I have some savings to stash away, and want something which is as cheap as possible (compound interest is a wonderful thing, and the very high charges on most French financial products pretty well cripples it), and the minimum possible effort.

I mentioned the payment-refusal issue on cards because these banks seem to have higher pre-set limits (for a given bank balance/monthly inflow/level of savings) than the traditional ones. But is this true in practice?
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