Hi
I make regular foreign exchange transfers into my Credit Agricole account. For each transfer into my account I am being charged 18 Euro by the bank and the fee is labelled “commission rapatriement” on my statement. I use a foreign exchange company for the transfer and the transfer is being made in Euro. The money is coming from Australia which is not in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). Does any know of a bank that does not charge this fee or least doesn’t charge as much?
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Try Revolut.
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To be clear is it CA who are charging you for accepting the money?
It’s a non SEPA payment, so 0.1%. See page 14
We make payments in euro to our CA account from Wise (having exchanged the money there) and are not charged.
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Agreed. Very easy/ straightforward. I’m with C/A as well.
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When we had our gites and took bookings from places like South Africa and Australia, we had to ask them to add 18 euros to each transfer to cover the CA charges. Looks like the fee has now risen to €22,45
Short reply, change banks, CA did the same to us years ago but a much higher percentage than that so we changed to Banque Postale. That was from England though, I have never transferred money from Australia but CA did charge us 30% to accept a German Euro cheque. No transfer charges with BP.
Currency Fair transfers are not charged by our CA branch. Nor were any previous currency exchange companies.
Yes that’s the other thing, not all CAs are the same. Pretty sure you are not in the Charente-Perigord version? 
Take a look at Wise and see if they can do it.
Crédit Agricole even charged me at least that amount - I’ll check but up to 30% of its value - on a virement from Germany. This was a vendor who had asked for a RIB to refund a credit card transaction (no idea why their switch of method on the refund).
I am pretty sure that very high charge by Credit Agricole to receive virement from Germany is illegal. As that would mean they would be applying different fees to transactions from another European country, than they apply for same transaction from France. As our first excellent Credit Agricole banker told us “ségregation” (=discrimination) in offering or charges amongst European countries is illegal.
Watch out it’s quite likely that in addition to their excessive fees Credit Agricole is also weighting the foreign exchange rate on your transaction. So you’ll probably be being given at least 3% less than interbank (true) rate - and it used to be even more, skimmed off your money by CA. Wise doesn’t do that although they do charge a very small fee that they will transparently inform you of before you give the transaction your go-ahead.
I am getting pretty tired of my Credit Agricole Caisse’s excessive charging as it is combined with other problems with them.
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we used to receive £’s into our CA and and said bank made a charge to turn 'em into euros and also “for the pleasure of accepting the transfer”… aargh
when I queried this, face to face… I mentioned that these were pension payments… coming directly from the Company … and they cancelled all charges from then on…
of course, time has moved on and perhaps the private pension folk send euros nowadays… certainly DWP does…
but it’s got to be worth talking things through…
I think… if you use Wise you won’t be charged by CA because they in effect do the transfer from AUD to Eur and your Wise Euro account which is in the SEPA area. So Wise to CA is a SEPA transfer.
I just checked and my Wise euro A/C is in Belgium,
Wise and Revolut both have Australian "accounts - but there have been similar accounts in Oz for years. But I have Australian accounts with both wise and Revolut
Hi John, the Company I am currently using Sendfx is based in Australia. Even though I am sending out Euro as they are coming from a non SEPA zone I am incurring the Credit Agricole fee as you say. I will look at using Wise and see whether I still get charged this fee. It is difficult to know in advance exactly what exchange rate fee you end up paying but the Wise website shows an indicative fee of 0.47% and Sendfx I understand charge 0.40% (off the mid-market rate). I can make a proper comparison when I am registered with both. Thanks for your help
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I was planning on giving Wise a go (apparently they are better for transfers above $1000)
Thanks
Thanks David I will look into getting an account with the Banque Postale
I use Wise at least twice a month to transfer money to my Credit Agricole bank account ( Centre Est) with no charge and usually instant transaction.
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Me too.
Look at Fin.do