I tried Revolut in UK, but there was a glitch and I could never get the app authorised during account set up. Ended up with Starling, who are great, but maybe not operating in Europe yet.
I don’t know about France, but Revolut didn’t have FSCS protection in the UK. Funds were ring-fenced in another bank, which didn’t seem quite so secure.
haha No, this is France. On recent checks CA was about a day behind in updating for authorisations and transactions. The weird thing is it’s not across the board, just not consistent at all. And this in their app.
Btw the CA app was fine to set up a new payee a few months back - although a couple of transactions with the beneficiary never actually worked and I had to use Wise instead. It’s a frequently used merchant so CA is now losing the revenue on my many transactions with them.
Just now going to add another beneficiary… Oops the app now says I can’t see beneficiaries in the app and must contact my branch. So the functionality to add my own beneficiaries was there, and has been removed. In CA’s never-ceasing efforts to empower customers and improve service, I suppose. Or just pissibly, to preserve the revenue stream they used to have of charging 10 euros to set up a new beneficiary.
…but still in the stone age of requiring a 48 hour lull between setting up a beneficiary & being able to pay them, unless they’ve recently changed that…?
‘O’ is next to ‘I’ on a QWERT k/bd but that typo may not have been a typo at all 
Cr Mute take minimum 24 hrs to post a transaction to the bal - sometime 48 hrs. Very annoying. That’s why I keep a daily bank rec myself.
This is where the lack of a rolling balance is reaalllyy annoying. You can’t go back to the last place the bank bal and bank rec bal were in agreement and then work fwd to find the error.
Exactly what I said to the fragrant Ms Martine Maincent! An IT amendment they could give to a school leaver. As I have said before, she was visibly stunned to hear that it was an issue worth leaving over.
I generally do, Badge, but banking is one area, like medical, where a misunderstanding could have serious consequences. I go through it first, assess my confidence in the meaning, then check if I was right. That way I build up my banking lingo, as you suggest.
So far, so good, face to face. On the phone I am not at all confident, though I have had calls where my interloc’er has slowed right down, made sure I understood the last sentence before moving on to the next. Chapeau to that sort of C/S.
Hi, Your attitude is one that i have adopted for many years but…
I am off to see the family in Australia soon and worked out that the best way for me is to get Wise debit card and to deposit dollars in a Wise currancy account.
The Wise part was easy, the CA not so. Wise 's bank account is in Belgium. CA will not send
money to Belgium unless they give you permission. How much did i try to send 20€.
It gets worse but i won’t bother you with that.
May I suggest, as you have a Wise account that you try something different. I hold two currency accounts with Wise - £ and €. This means that I can move € from my C/A account into my wise € account using no more than my debit card. I then get Wise to transfer the euros wherever I need them. At no point has C/A got involved in the process other than the normal online checking of the use of my debit card. Easy-peasy . 
My problem was trying to close both our Banque Postale and CA accounts when we came back to UK.
I had gone into my CA branch and a very nice, very helpful lady said it would be done there and then.
A couple of months went by and they were still taking money out each month. I had lots of on line communications with them after we came back to UK but they didn’t stop taking the money till it had virtually all gone and even then I ha no notifications, I only knew they had closed it (keeping the balance!) because I could no longer log in!
Banque Postale I kept going a little longer because I knew I would be returning in a few months but I had to jump through so many hoops with letters with exact wording, previous and current addresses, registered post etc etc and again I only knew it was closed because I could no longer get into it on line. Luckily only a few eros left in it this time.
I think this is a difficult area I have been with CA for over 22 years an account in Brittany Finistere which have been absolutely brilliant yet when I moved to CA Central France the service in my local branch was terrible, unprofessional , not helpful at all and totally facist. I opened a revolut account and have had no problems with it especially since they now have access to a french Iban number makes things easier I love the way it gives an instant update when you buy something you know exactly where you are financially. Since moving back to Brittany and transferring my CA account I use both revelout and CA in conjunction with each other and have no problems with either
I agree with every thing you say. French culture does not allow for customer service. If UK retail banks and food retailers had ever been allowed to compete in France I feel that the French management would have been swept aside.
But this is France and the advantages outweigh the problems and I feel privileged to live here.
Thank you all for your advice. For what its worth my French friends agree with what I am saying. After another bout, this time with the Bank Postal who demand that I attend a nearby town to authorise a foreign transfer,
. I wonder if all my problems arise from the Bank of France? Anybody know?
If Wise can answer my questions it looks like they can do my banking for me in future.
One thing that might be less good with an online bank is if you need a chèque de banque, to pay for a car for instance. I just went into CA and got one for 17k straight away. An online bank would have to send it by registered post and if it went astray …
Do they issue them?
With an online bank, you would be able to pay the dealer electronically 
That’s interesting, do you think it would be easier to make a large payment to a new payee from an online bank, than it would from a bricks and mortar bank via their online banking system? Why would that be, do they use different checks/fewer checks?
Yes I did that for about € 9,000, but I had to wait for several days before I could collect it from the bank. The seller of the car, who I think was a dealer, seemed to expect such a delay so had no problems with it. 
I did a virement to the notaire 24hrs before signing the final act to pay for my new house without any problems plus a decent deposit at the compromis stage 4 weeks before. All we had to do was speak to the bank in person, answer a couple of personal questions they had the answers for on file and the transfer was done in an hour. I did not sleep the night before because I was worried something would stop the transfer and the house would be lost but it went very smoothly.
We have a bricks and mortar French bank account with online account management and we just do online direct payments for larger amounts. We can set up beneficiaries in seconds at no extra cost, and the payment always goes through quickly. You just have to be absolutely sure when you enter the IBAN and beneficiary info that it’s correct. Theoretically, if the name and IBAN don’t match it should fail, but there are stories of lax checking in some banks.
This is what scares me and for that reason when it is a new payee and a large amount I always go into my branch and ask them to do it. But also I had a notion that there is a delay between setting up a new payee yourself and being able to make a payment to them.
Over time, we have made a number of payments to new payees online without any delays or issues but I do take the point that it necessary to ensure you have all the correct details about the account you intend to pay funds to at a distance.
Yes but I am paranoid, and it’s theoretically possible that the car dealer could go bust between receiving the virement and handing over the car. It’s a lot of money after all. I prefer to hand over the cheque directly in exchange for the car keys (or whatever you use nowadays).