Can you open a euro bank account anywhere?

[leothetiler]

To make life easier when travelling abroad it would be great if I could have a euro current account with a bank card, so when I travel I would not have to think about getting money, my question is, has anyone done this or got any advice?

I am just looking for an account where I could pay a set amount of money in monthly, and then when it came to holidays, or paying for villas etc life would be so much easier.

As it is a euro account would it have to be opened somewhere in eurozone as opposed to the UK to avoid charges?

Any advice would be great!

[TooLateForAName]

citibank used to do them.

I'm sure others do as well.

[DS3R]

I had USD and Euro accounts with Citibank, UK bank so simple application process I opened them over the net (+ had internet banking for ease of access).

Provided there are minimum sums in the accounts they were charge free (was £2k across all Citi accounts, may have changed), you had to be careful which cash points you used as the ones they had deals with (they tell you exactly whom) cost you nothing to use, others would charge.

The one thing you can't get away from is that at some point you have to convert £ to Euros (or USD) and you'll get whatever the prevailing exchange rate is at the time.

[anonymous-user]

leothetiler said:

To make life easier when travelling abroad it would be great if I could have a euro current account with a bank card, so when I travel I would not have to think about getting money, my question is, has anyone done this or got any advice?

I am just looking for an account where I could pay a set amount of money in monthly, and then when it came to holidays, or paying for villas etc life would be so much easier.

As it is a euro account would it have to be opened somewhere in eurozone as opposed to the UK to avoid charges?

Any advice would be great!

I can get local currency from most ATMs abroad with the card on a UK current account - the money that comes out of the machine is the local stuff of course. Similarly, I can log on to a currency exchange firm and instruct it to pay overseas recipients in their local currency and have them tell me how many GBP to pay to them through UK BACS. In each case, the transaction is converted to GBP at the rate prevailing at the time. I would think multiple currency accounts and paying monies over monthly is only necessary / beneficial if one travels abroad for the majority of the time or has income in a different currency.