Best bank account

Wise very good for transfers, N26 very good for on line payments & a their card, very low charges. https://n26.com/en-es They are a German Euro based Bank with office in Madrid. 100% digital and secure. Every N26 bank account is guaranteed by the Compensation Scheme up to €100,000.

There has been a recent rapid movement away from traditional Spanish ‘high street’ banks in favour of neobanks (online/virtual/digital) - mostly because of arbitrary fee charging and fee increases without notice. Indeed, I’m currently in the process of breaking my 6 year tie with Sabadell who now charge me 40€ per quarter (as a non-resident)

However, if you intend to deposit regular income into a Sabadell a/c (salary/pension etc) then they will offer free banking and you should look into it. Their website/online banking service is Brit friendly and I can confirm that the Customer Services helpline is staffed by excellent English speakers and all my experiences with them have been good

Wise is problematical because it is Belgian based and has a Belgian BE IBAN and some Spanish merchants still have systems which can only process ES IBANs. Like my local Broadband service provider for example. 

However, Wise would be an ideal vehicle for buying EUR with your GBP property sale proceeds. I used them when I sold a Florida property a few years ago and the process was seamless

I’m an Isle of Man resident and not willing to forfeit an advantageous tax status - but if I were to become a Spanish resident and had decided on a neobank I’d likely go for N26’s personal Premium a/c @ 9,90 € per month provides an excellent package of benefits (including travel insurance) for which you would pay a UK High Street bank a premium of £150-£160 pa

We're with Sabadell & currently paying the (non resident) 40€ quarter charge. Been with them 3 years now, & charges apart, have been very good. Going to stick with them fttb until the performance of cheaper online banks becomes clearer to us.

We used CurrenciesDirect to transfer house purchase & living cost funds, process was painless, & exchange rate was good.

Thank you for your responses 

We are currently non residents 

We just paid a deposit on a house and we have to complete by 30/9. I just have to make sure that we don’t have delays in payments  so the fund are expected to be in the Uk account on the 24/9 so we have only 6 days maximum to transfer the money   That is the most critical point at the moment   

Have you looked at Wise, the transfers are almost instantaneous & very low fees. . https://wise.com/gb/send-money/

We used Cambridge Global Payments for the transfer of sterling to euros. They are excellent and their rates are very competitive.

Hi 

Does the n26 account allow you to pay for Spanish utilities that can only accept ES IBAN if your non resident

Kind regards 

Thank you for your response 

I will contact them for details 

The N26 account no problem paying utilities.