Can anyone advise. I have been sending money from my Uk bank to my French account to pay direct debits for over a year and Credit Agricole have always charged me €3.04. In Jan I sent £50 and they have charged me €3.04 and commission of €17 euros which is ridiculous on £50.
Does anybody know how to get round this? Other than physically popping into the branch (which of course it’s not possible at present) and probably not till the summer with covid.
That’s awful! I use Transferwise and Credit Agricole don’t charge me anything. Maybe the fees are hidden in the exchange rate, but I always seem to get a good rate.
I would recommend either transfer wise or revolut - both very good methods of transferring money, having a debit card or even direct debit payments. Just check their protection policy regarding fund balances as they are not the same as the traditional banks in that respect.
I’ve used Transferwise when we brought property. I will call them but this is commission the French bank have charged, ok €3.04 euros I can handle but a extra €17 is just ridiculous.
Revolut are great for small payments - very flexible. I am possibly moving towards ditching Credit Agricole and then using only Revolut.
Thanks I will, I have used them before when buying our property, I’ve had no problem sending money from my bank to pay for direct debts until this month. Wondering if it’s because we are of the Euro now.
I’ve had no problems till now…I’ve emailed bank but they are just saying it’s charges 
I use TransferWise regularly to send money from my uk to my French bank.
The TransferWise fee is very low (less than £4 for a transfer of £1000). TransferWise converts the money to Euros at a very good rate and the money is usually available in my French account within 10 seconds. (Yes, seconds).
My French bank (CA) makes no charge as it’s simply receiving Euros…
What made you go back to using bank to bank Tracy? Transferwise always make the point of showing how much more my transfer would have cost me if I’d used my bank. 
I wouldn’t even be happy to see €3.04 on my bank statement if I was transferring only £50.
I wonder why it’s changed, it’s still just a non SEPA transfer. Something to do with passporting? Transferwise seems to actually set up a bank account for you in the UK and in the Eurozone (mine’s in Belgium) but Revolut set up two UK accounts, one sterling and one euro.
I’ve found Trandferwise’s rates better then the bricks and mortar banks and the transactions stake seconds, not days.
I’m another happy Revolter, thanks to Graham Lees.
The only time I’ve been charged anything is when I inadvertantly sent GBP directly to my Spanish bank without going thru’ the step of crediting my Rev GBP a/c with GBP, then converting to € and then sending € to the SP bank.
The phone app is a tad non-intuitive - it took me a few goes to be familiar with the sequence but now GBP > GBP a/c > FX > € > € bank is about as quick as I can write this.
If you do an FX at the w/e you don’t get the interbank rate - not much less but worth remembering. As these credits are instantaneous there’s no need not to wait till Monday morning.
I think the Revolut rate is always better as the full interbank rate is used.
I transferred the money for a recent house purchase via Revolut and saved approx £1000.
Yes your right, but I believe there is a minimum amount, I was just transferring between 50-60 £ monthly to cover my direct debit.
You can set up Direct Debits with Revolut in the app quickly and easily in either sterling or Euro as required. It’s also possible to send money to Revolut directly and not necessarily initially through another UK bank. If a DD has to be paid in Euro and there are insufficient Euro in your € wallet but sufficient to cover it in sterling, Revolut will complete the transaction at the exchange rate at the time from your sterling funds (but this means you might lose control of effecting forex transactions at the best rate to suit you) but you can set up an auto exchange for a specific rate which will be completed if the rate achieves that level - a bit like forward purchasing - but not quite 
There would be no cost with Revolut for such levels of transfers in either Sterling or Euro. The basic (free) account allows for transfers up to 1000€ per monthly cycle and no limit for transfers in the base currency (sterling).
You can get an account here
Have you tried this since 1st Jan?
Sorry @Tracy1 tried what?
We both have Revolut accounts. The Euro wallet is now with their Lithuanian entity, so there is no longer any issue re passporting following Brexit.
I’ve done two transfers of GBP > € , to my FR bank and my ES bank, last week. All as usual. No change.
They’re ‘operating’ out of Lithuania until they get their accreditation to operate out of Ireland.
What is it with Scottish Wids? I went for an ad hoc bung - only £200 - from my pension pot 
… 
on Friday morning, 9th. I’ve just received a text [Weds 11:00] telling me it’s been paid and will be in my bank account ‘within 5 days’. 5 days! 
It’s always been like this. You have to go thru’ a 25 minute lecture/cross-examination of one’s financial competence and judgement every time. At the end they tell you the money will reach you ‘within 11 working days’
Transfer of money…
Last set of transfers for us were done on 31st December but as @captainendeavour has said,
he transferred £ to € without difficulty after the 1st Jan. I see no reason why there should be any problem from now on with Revolut, post Brexit for the reasons stated and we have used the Euro cards associated with the Euro wallet for both on-line (disposable card) and grocery purchases (static card) without any issue.