Starling Bank Euro Account

Thank you Juan, worth a try!

Dennis

Hello All

Success, Agamed have taken payment for our Water from our Euro Starling account, brilliant.

Teresa

Woo Hoo!  Just the electric to go then. Fingers crossed 🤞

Almost all DD's transfered to Starling.

The Internet company sent me a SEPA (Single European Payments) form so I modifie dit and served in ipn Iberola and my water co. No problems yet..

I have oreviiously used Transferwise but now Starling, the transfer from the Sterling to Euro is immediate and very slightly more than Transfer wise , much less hassle. 

MikeandHelen, did you do Iberdrola and Water company online?

Thanks in advance

Iberdrola were a problem on two counts, the web page would not take the Starling IBAN number, when I emailed them they said Starling was not a SEPA bank, and Starling told me to send them a link to the Starling web page that says they are. Eventually I emailed via the web site and then submitted the SEPA form directly.

Hidrogea was also tricky, their website didn't work properly so I messaged them and they refered me to my local office in SanJavier so i went the SEPA form to them by email: Oficina Sanjavier  

If you do a google search for the form you will find them easily.

Hope this helps,

Mike.

Very helpful. Thanks for that.

I was using (or attempting to use) Starling last year, it was a nightmare. Endesa app would not accept the GB IBAN change, for billing, so had to contact them. No Direct debit was taken for months, Endesa blaming Starling for not accepting the payment, Starling saying they had had No communication of any type. I had to resort to paying by  credit card every month. My resolution was to open a N26 Bank account. The IBAN these Germans hand out is Spanish. I changed the Direct Debit within the app, no contact with a human, and the bills have been paid ever since. The Fuengirola Ayuntamiento was a smaller battle, the problem was that their system did not recognise N26 (they thought I had made the bank up!) Apparently I was the first N26 bill payer. Downside N26 (and I think Starling) are not collaborating entities with Agencia Tributaria, so I can no longer pay tax bills online. 

I still use the excellent Starling, and use it to fund N26.

I am now enjoying fee free Banking. 👍

Sounds a bit of a pain, the reason we asked our Spanish solicitor to sort for us, they (should) know what all these various companies require and obviously know the language and interpretations. She has assured me that all parties have accepted new bank details, water was our main concern and that has been successful. Think electric due tomorrow and our Urb fees 1/7 so watch this space.

Just to confirm I have successfully transferred my Iberdrola billing to my Transferwise EURO account (starts with a Belgian SEPA#).  All done online. Next is water bill and community fees.....bye,bye Spanish bank account and maintenance fees!

That is very good to hear, onwards and upwards 

Reading this with interest and opened a Starling account, mainly because the current account earns minimal interest!

I currently use Sabadell for banking and the quarterly fees keep going up, so this could be a good solution for us. Our electric is Energia (used to be Endesa), water is Codeur, mortgage is with Pepper (ex G.E). Has anyone successfully transferred direct debits to these companies from a Euro account? We have had basura with Junta de Andalucia for many years and IBI with the local town council for only this year. I have worries about trying to change these address details.

Cheers

Mark

It seems to be a European requirement now that entities accept any European SEPA account. Transferwise provide a letter for you to supply if an entity refuses. With Iberdrola now, they even provide you a drop down box to supply the country of domicile of the SEPA account. I will be attemtping others this month.

Juan

Yes I got sucked in with Sabadell free banking and then when they thought they had enough mugs started charging €30 a quarter. Nothing new with them tactics it’s the industry norm. Who’s to say Starling Bank won’t do the same?

The other problem is the fear of changing banks, when it sometimes goes wrong in Spain it’s major grief sorting it out and in many cases nobody wants to know. I would sooner pay the €30 a quarter and have electric and water. At least if I have a problem with Sabadell I can go to my local branch, usually with my flask and sandwiches.

Risk vs. Reward.

After Teresamc successful post I took the plunge and opened a Starling euro account.  So far so good, community fees, water, town hall and electric all contacted via email to ask how to change DD.

Community & Town Hall sent a form to complete and also required a banking certificate which apparently is different to a statement as it shows your account details and name & address.  Contacted Starling who said all of the information is available on a downloaded statement, I only had €100 euro in the account that I had transferred across so there wasn't a long list of transactions, so I printed off and scanned a copy of the statement and sent that where required.  All accepted the statement and confirmed new DD's set up.

I found with Endesa that if you try to change bank details in the app it doesn't recognise the Starling IBAN, however if you log into the main Endesa site it does, so Starling added and associated with the electricity account.  Before Endesa have attempted to take a payment I have changed suppliers to Bulb (Spain) and their sign up page accepted the Starling IBAN straight away.

Getting through to Sabadell to close the account was a bit of a hassle, on hold because all agents were busy but then the call would time out and cut off so I would have to start again, tried several times over a week and eventually got through on Friday.  Asked for either my passport or NIE number, neither were recognised by their system and they cannot find you without this information, they cannot search on your account number or name, eventually realised I had renewed my passport since opening the account so dug out the old one and quoted that number and it was recognised.  As I spoke to the agent they sent a couple of digital signature requests to the Sabadell app to confirm closure and the account was closed a couple of hours after that.

Fingers crosses everything now works as expected, if it doesn't I have the email confirmations from the various entities to quote back at them.

Thanks Terrsamc for giving me the confidence to do this.  Oh and by the way, I don't speak Spanish so everything was done in English or with the help of Google translate.

My monthly Transfer into my Sabadell Accunt from my Starling Account attracted an 18 Euro charge from Sabadell.

In reply to porblem with Direct Debits from my Starling UK based, SEPA compliant Euro Account, after a couple of weeks of asking:

"Thanks for getting in touch. I work in the payments team at Starling

Since January 1st and the UK’s departure from the EU, we have become aware that UK customers with UK based EUR accounts may be experiencing problems setting up and/or paying direct debits to EU service providers.

Even though the UK is no longer part of the EU, it is still part of the Single European Payments Area (SEPA) and is considered a ‘third country’. As a result of this, there are changes to data requirements for payments to and from the UK. EU banks are legally required to provide the address of the paying customer to UK banks when requesting payment on behalf of a service provider from their UK bank account.

If a service provider refuses to accept your bank details when you sign a direct debit agreement because the IBAN contains the country code ‘GB’, they could be committing IBAN discrimination, which is against the law. (Article 9 of the SEPA Regulation).

**What can you do if your direct debits are failing or you can not set up / amend a direct debit**

1. Make sure your service provider has the correct address for you on file and let them know that your Starling account supports SEPA Direct Debits and this should be sent to their bank for onward processing

2. If they still refuse your bank details they are in breach of Article 9 of SEPA Regulation, and we suggest you follow up with a formal written complaint.

3. If you do not receive a satisfactory response to your complaint, you can report the alleged breach to the relevant competent authority.

We’re sorry for this inconvenience but unfortunately we are currently dependent on the service providers accepting the IBAN as required by SEPA Regulation. We are continuing to look into how we can improve your experience and we will keep you updated on any changes.

Well thank you very much Starling , you are really on the ball and looking after your customers.

How about you acting on behalf of your customers? And how many time did I point out to you that they were working last year?  And that the reason was not insufficient funds.

Hi MikeandHelen

I think you'll find that the problem with SEPA Direct Debits (SDDs) from your Starling Euro account has arisen because the requesting organisations (creditors) have failed to implement an important change that was announced by the European Payments Council (EPC) back in July of last year (search for ‘Brexit from 1 January 2021 onwards: get ready for the end of the transition period’ on the EPC website).

Unless the requestor includes your full UK address in the direct debit initiation message that it sends to its bank in Spain, the SDD request will be rejected. You can check this by asking the requestor to tell you the reason code that it received from its bank for the payment failure. If the code is RR02, that means that the debtor's (ie your) address information was incomplete.

Unfortunately, Spanish banks do not seem to have passed details of this change to their customers, so most organisations (utility companies, town halls, etc) are unaware of it. In many cases, their payment systems do not have the facility to capture your UK address. In addition, some banks are telling their customers that the cause of the failures lies with Starling, which is not true.

It's a bit of a mess, frankly. Even if the requestors are willing to modify their payment systems to accommodate this change, it will inevitably take them some time to do so. In the meantime, you may have to try to find other ways to settle your bills in Spain.

free_bee

Free_bee  Thanks for the reply.

It is as you explain it.

I have made a formal complaint to Starling for telling me untruths and not telling their custimers what is going on. I also pointed out that this is 'Iban Discrimination' which is something that they should pursue - there is an industry group with the website www acceptmyiban org which includes TransferWise, Revolut, Raisin and N26.  

My monthly mortgage payment from my Starling EURO UK SEPA account was charged 18Euro's - so next time i'm paying via TransferWise.

The good news is that I have won the battle with my insurance, Liberty Segurios has sucessfully collected my insurance payments from my Starling account so it can be done.

So only a few other bills to sort out!

The Revolul Account looks good for travel insurance and car hire insurance - but it doesn't cover scratches?

But it isn't Starling that are practising the IBAN discrimination, and it is the requesting authority's bank which is not notifying its customers how to collect GB IBAN funds. I'm not sure how a complaint to Starling can solve the issue as they are not doing anything wrong? Did you get the email from Starling this week?

"A few of our euro account customers have recently run into a couple of issues with euro payments.

Although the UK isn’t part of the EU anymore, it’s still part of the Single European Payments Area (SEPA), which means you can still make SEPA payments from your euro account. However, some banks and providers are now treating British bank accounts differently, resulting in a few potential issues:

When you make a transfer, your payee’s bank might take a fee

We’ll never charge you to make or receive euro payments from your euro account. But some banks in the SEPA zone might charge when receiving a payment from the UK. Sadly these types of fees are beyond our control, as they’re likely to be in the terms and conditions your payee agreed to with their bank.
 
Some companies may say they can’t set up a direct debit with your Starling details

As always, you can use your Starling euro account details to set up direct debits in the EU – but since Brexit, some EU companies have been claiming they can’t be used for this purpose. That’s not true, so if this happens to you, here’s what to do:

1. First, make sure that the service provider – for example, a utility company – has the right UK address on file; the one that’s registered to your Starling account. Let them know that your Starling account supports SEPA direct debits and that they now need to send your address to their bank in order for the direct debit to work.
2. If the provider still refuses, and says it’s because the IBAN contains the country code GB, they’re committing IBAN discrimination, which is against the law. You should raise a complaint with the provider and read up on your rights in our blog post.
3. If you don’t get a satisfactory response to your complaint, you can report the alleged breach to the relevant competent authority.

We’ll keep you updated if anything else changes.

Team Starling"

The blog post mentioned is linked here.

edit to add: Although I see the email is almost identical to the answer you posted previously.

Open a N26 account, (German Bank but office in Madrid) will give you a Spanish IBAN. Use it for bill payments, direct debits etc, and fund it from your Starling account. No fees. ✔️

I do it, and it works. Spanish address required.