To change subject a bit. Having leapt into the electronic era and now having a goggle wallet with my multi-currency wise card in it now occurs to me whether there are limits on contactless payments like with my bank card? Eeek?
Previously I’ve always had my physical Wise card and used that for anything over €50. But I doubt we will get Sunday lunch for 4 in Switzerland for €50 tomorrow!! Do I need to plan an alternative payment - which would be a big nuisance as I have 250 swiss francs on my wise card.
(I’ve unfrozen card and left it at €1000 daily limit)
Chris have you asked your UK bank if they can set up a USD account for you? It would have its own account number which might or might not be related to your main account number and definitely transferable-to as a destination in the UK banking syatem.
Metro Bank offered to do something like this for me for a particular problem i had about 5 years ago and I’m pretty sure HSBC even has a specific multicurrency account still today. Depends which bank of course but I was quite surprised how easy it sounded if a bank was willing to do it.
I think that’s the difference - if you have a USD or Euro denominated card with a conventional bank then you can withdraw from PayPal to those. With my Wise debit card, although it can be used in UKP, USD or Euros, defaults to UK Pounds when I try to withdraw from PayPal into it. In other words, PayPal are “wise” to the fact that Wise is a multicurrency fintech, and a direct competitor - so they block it!
1 Like
I “bank” with Nationwide Building Society who definitely don’t offer US dollar accounts!
I did a quick Google search the other day and the mainstream UK banks are delighted to open US dollar accounts for their customers - as long as said customer earns over £50,000 a year and/or is willing to put at least £25,000 on deposit with them!
Starling does it - I’ve just checked via Google. My business account has been with them for a while now and they add a EUR or USD one if wanted.
Starling nothing but good experiences so far, app excellent, acct openable easily online. EDIT and not known for ripoff FX rates when you move between your accounts, either.
It would be really nasty of Paypal if they’re set up to block Starling as a proper UK bank (which Wise technically isn’t) and it would be a kosher account reference under UK bank codes for Starling.
At Paypal’s 4.5% or so FX loading them doing the FX is worth doing this much to avoid 
1 Like
Many thanks @KarenLot - I will investigate Starling. I don’t really want YABA (Yet Another Bank Account) 
but it sounds like it may be worth it to avoid the PayPal nonsense!
I spoke too soon - unfortunately Starling only do a Euro secondary account with (free) personal banking, not USD - and with the business account they charge £5 a month for having a USD account, so that wipes out any benefit I might have had from using them to receive PayPal money unfortunately, since at the moment I’m only getting a few hundred dollars a year in royalty payments.
ETA: I just checked the other stock photo agencies that I have contributor accounts with (Shutterstock and Alamy), and Shutterstock are the same as Adobe, they only pay out to PayPal, Payoneer or Skrill - but Alamy rather surprisingly will pay out to a bank account of your choice in UKP, USD or Euros! So I have amended my account details on there accordingly.
I’ve never sold much on Alamy up to now, Adobe’s always been the best one, but I think I shall have to upload some more pictures to Alamy and try and get some more income from them in future!
You can always pay for a Google account (cheap) and then they ‘shouldn’t’ data mine.
I thought that Grease was the word?
3 Likes
Now funny you should say that. Almost thirty years ago I won the John Travolta dancing competition in a night club that we used to frequent. To be fair we’d been out for a very pleasant meal with copious wine beforehand. That and the fact that there were no other entrants in the competition probably contributed to my, despite not being able to dance, triumph.
So last night there I was, with my wife and a pal, in a resto in Nice. Unusually there was a DJ and singer and that was all very pleasant. After the meal we were relaxing with a brandy or two when a large group, celebrating one of its members birthday, took to the dance floor. So far so good… but then the DJ put on Staying Alive. I was transported back to 1994, and before I knew it I was up on my pins, strutting my stuff, pointing fingers skywards and giving everyone the laugh of the evening.
There’s life in the old dog yet.
7 Likes
