Spanish Bank Charges

Hi

I hope I am in the right place with this, but please excuse me if I get it wrong, this is my first attempt at using Eye On Spain.

Can anyone out there tell me if all banks in Spain put highly expensive charges on all their accounts? We presently have a property near Xativa in Valencia and we do our banking with BANKINTER, who have recently sent me a lovely little letter telling me that there charges for the year have gone up to €48 per year.

As you can imagine coming from a culture were the banks give us interest for keeping our money in an account, these charges tend to rub one up the wrong way, are there any better ways to bank in Spain?

Please help if you can.

Bilboles

Not all banks charge.  Barclays don't charge for example.  Have a look at this blog post for more details.

Cajamar also do a fee free account.  Check this blog post out.

Hi Bilboles

My bank charge me 30e a year maintenance and 16 euro's for each cash card total 46 euro's , I am told this is normal as I am a non resident not sure how this compares.

Mine "la Caixa" charges on our joint acct. 6e for each card per year & pays int. less tax each month. On our ind. accts.the same 6e /card +1e amonth charge. I was told when I opened the acct. that Spanish charges are the highest in Europe.

But looking on the bright side...

In the UK if you do not have an arranged overdraft facility and you have say a direct debit due payment of say £100 with only 20 available in the account, most if not all Brit banks will send you a letter, charging you a minimum of £25 thereby forcing you into an unauthorised overdraft and charging horrendous rates for exploiting this unauthorised overdraft...

If you have another D/D payment  of say £15 due on the same day, despite the fact that you had £20 at the time the bank will not pay this either because they have forced you into an overdraft by sending you the first letter.

Then of course they will send you another letter, charging you another £25 advising that they have been unable to pay the D/D because of lack of funds. So the bank has just made £50 out of you. And all of a sudden you are paying bank charges at an enhanced rate because you had the nerve to go overdrawn...

It used to happen to me quite a lot when I was paid 4 weekly; sometimes incoming salary would appear in the account after 2pm in the afternoon, after the bank had forced a minimum £50 overdraft in the morning...

NWB and TSB are and were notorious for this.

So maybe 50 euros a year in Spain aint so bad...

fb

Must've missed that post about Barclays as we have a Spain Solutions account with them and have to pay 10€ quarter maintenance (should be 20€ but my Wife is staff in the UK). Will have to look at changing the account when we go out next week.

Mark

----just to say Bankinter are a bit expensive but most of all are  reliable --- Barclays I thought charged you for an account if it was not a business account . Ease of access is another factor to consider when non resident  and only over for short visits  jw

JHW,

The Barclays account (Opportunity account) we have is not a business account.  We pay no charges with them.

Hi,

Yes we changed to Barclays and do not get charged at all.  In fact we even got 3euros interest last year.  Not much I know but better then them deducting it.

Hi

I used to bank with bankinter and i had loads of charges made on

my account, even when putting money IN the account.

I changed over to BANCO HALIFAX approx 2 years ago

and I have NEVER paid any charges apart from the

3 euro charge per year for an elctron card. The only

drawback is you need to keep 600 euros in your acoount

to avoid any charges.

Hi - I am with Bancaja and don't pay any charges.  I have a debit card and don't pay anything for that either.  You can check your account by Internet and most of the web pages can be accessed in English. 

Bank charges for transactions here are very different from the UK, so it is always wise to check if you are doing something major.  As an estate agent, I always advise my clients not to send more than 50,000€ in one go, as all Spanish banks will charge to receive amounts over this. 

You'd think they would be glad to have all your money in their accounts, wouldn't you?

we are with Bancaja and also don't pay charges........ we are also with Barclays international and don't pay charges on that account either......... well at least for the timebeing.

Many Thanks to all of you for your help, It now looks like there are some choices out there, and it also seems that Bankinter need to get there act together, there are three familys in our village banking with them, but I think they all will be looking for new accounts very soon.

As far as I understand it the Barclays Opportunity account with free banking seems to be for residents only, can anyone confirm this?

I also had a Barclays Solutions account and when enquiring about free banking was told that it was for new customers only, I kid you not, so I closed my account.

Hi hugh_man,

I thought it was for residents only but they are letting my parents (non-residents) open an account.  You can always give them a try.

I think non resident can open the opportunity account  as they will let me if I`ve at least 3 direct debits.

We are non resident's and we were able to open that account.  They seemed to be doing a big promotion at the time.

Yes we have 3 direct debit's coming out and that was why we got 3euro's interest.

Hope it continues.

Interesting! I actually moved away from Barclays a year or so ago because I was fed up with being charged for everything. Maybe that was before this Opportunity Account was on offer. I opened an account with LloydsTSB which is free. I also find the staff very helpful - responding promptly to e-mails etc. and with an easy to use internet banking service. The only problem is there are not very many branches

It would appear to me and from others I have talked to, that all bank charges are negotiable and if you talk to them directly after seeing charges on your account they will remove them, but it must be done within the calendar year they showed up on your account.   This seems a little strange I know, but seems to be the way it works.  I don't believe you need to pay for Cash (ATM) cards - plenty of banks give them free of charge, nor should you pay for pension transfers.  Look for an account type within a bank that doesn't charge maintenance fees - you might overcome this by keeping a certain amount of balance.  If you don't speak Spanish, then it's best to find a bank that has a senior person who is English speaking so you can sit down and have things explained to you. and better understand what expense you might be incurring.   

Pat and Roy

Yes we have 3 direct debit's coming out and that was why we got 3euro's interest.

Hope it continues.

This is actually the 3% cashback that you get on certain direct debits (water, electricty, phone etc.).  The bigger the bills the more cashback you get each month.