We use Transferwise to transfer the amount in euros at the real exchange rate and don’t have any charges at this end.
I was one of Transferwise‘s first customers (many years ago) and use them consistently; I have found them excellent. Credit Agricole is a different matter; I am fed up with paying their monthly charge for a MasterCard and am thinking about closing my accounts there. I have for some years had accounts with AXA Banque and again have found them excellent. If you spend at least €900 each trimèstre (which is not difficult if you use the account for household expenses and food shopping, as I do) they reimburse their Visa card fee - which is therefore “free“.
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Is there any real benefits to keeping a French bank account going any more.
Being a bit of a “belt and braces” person, I think it’s a good idea to have two accounts of some sort on the go in case something goes wrong with one of them. I did the same in the UK.
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Not regarding a french bank account per se, but it is always wise to run both a Visa and MasterCard account so that if one network was to go down you wouldn’t be in a situation where you were unable to do any banking at all because all your options were on the same network. It was only a few years ago that Visa last had a significant global outage for around 12 hours, and especially if you’re without the ability to go into a branch and get cash over the counter because you don’t have a french bank, it’s a no brainier to keep at least one from each. You could perhaps mitigate this by having a debit card from one and a credit card from the other if you didn’t want to run two current accounts, but it’s always wise, and weirdly not something people often even consider, not to have all your eggs in one basket so to speak.
My CA in our village is amazing, I get on really, really well with the manager (to the point where we tu’touyer and do bises). I know that she’ll do everything she can to help me if / when we want to borrow some money to get a gite done (she’s already said so). And the odd time we’ve had odd things happen and charges she’s got rid of them for us.
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I didn’t think Revolut even had their own licence but are “piggy backed” ?
Hence no 100,000 Euro deposit protection.
I’ll move small amounts with Revolut but I don’t leave it in there!
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Nor do we. We use Revolut as a “staging post” and move more than we need for every day needs to our French bank and from there to Livret A savings (zero tax).
I’ve read about Livret A. A handy reminder, thanks.
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It has a limit on it though so if you want to put loads of money in it (more than just over 20,000 I think), you’ll need something else as well. Banks do an LDD, which I’ve put a lot into as well (although I would like to point out here that for me, this apparent wealth is temporary between the UK house sale and sorting out the house here 
)
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22950€ currently but that does not include interest payments to the account which can increase the value held.
Also le plafond du Livret A est fixé à 22 950 € (pour un particulier). Le plafond du LEP (Livret d’Épargne Populaire ne dépasse pas 7 700 € and don’t forget that is one account each.
And Le plafond du “Livret LDD” était donc de 6 000 €, hors intérêts capitalisés. Il a doublé depuis sa transformation en LDDS en 2017. À titre de comparaison, le plafond du Livret A est fixé à 22 950 € (pour un particulier). Le plafond du LEP (Livret d’Épargne Populaire ne dépasse pas 7 700 €.
So, Livret A, LEP and LDD combined to give a significant tax free savings vehicle.
That’s interesting Graham, thank you, and explains a number of things about some conflictimg messages I’d had, which said that I could continue to put money into, e.g., an LDD even if it breached the threshold, but the excess wouldn’t be tax-free. That doesn’t appear to be true, although I am discussing these sorts of things with the bank next week.
I’d never heard of an LEP 
so I’ll pursue that one too, Thank you!
The LEP is one to watch as regards it’s tax free status. Each year you have to show the provider your zero tax return (which they stamp) to maintain the account but the others can continue with interest added without affecting their tax free status. Once the limit is reached (including interest), you cannot add funds to the account but the interest can continue to be added.
So in your experience, Graham, if you wanted to put funds somewhere on a temporary basis, where would you put them?
My problem is that there don’t seem to be any accounts of the type I’m used to in the UK where they may have a dreadful rate of interest and be taxed but you can stick as much as you like into them. Here, there are the options you’ve described plus assurance vie which is such a long-term solution I might not live to see it, but what else is there? Anything?
Depends on how much you want to invest… 
2 x Livret A = 45,000 €
2 x LDD = 24,000 €
2 x LEP = 15,400 €
Total = 84,400 €
I use the Livret A as the first line for liquidity and the LEP as a last resort. There is no issue I have found with access to these funds quickly.
There is nothing (or well, used to be prior Brexit perhaps) to stop you placing funds in Premium bonds but these are not tax free in France. For more specific investment advice, you should seek appropriate professional help. I’m only saying how we address this issue (being poor pensioners) 
Up to that point I thought may be ‘he’ had the hots … maybe ‘she’ does! 
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Thankyou ! I had never heard of them before reading your post. It would have saved me nearly 1000 euros compared to using CA. So easy to use. I shall be using them next time !
I just have a basic CA account. I have a cheque book and a card to withdraw cash only at my local branch. That costs 2,10 Euros in total. Then I have the Mastercard Gold from cartezero.fr which is free if you pay off the balance in full every month. The only catch is if you use a cash machine. Then they charge you interest from day one.
I’m a bit wary of Revolut after reading the horror stories on this webpage (Scroll to the bottom)