Can I, as a U.S. citizen, get a bank account in a Scottish or English bank?
We’re going to be spending three weeks in the U.K. this summer. In our preliminary research, we’re finding a lot of places that have nasty surcharges for accepting credit cards (one hotel said that it’s a 4% surcharge plus £5), and if you use American money the exchange rate is unfavorable (even more unfavorable than usual, that is). We’ll be mostly in small towns where there are no big banks. I’m also having some genealogical research done by places that don’t accept credit cards or U.S. checks.
Since we don’t want to carry enough cash on us to go through a 3-week trip, my wife suggested I set up an account at a Scottish or English bank. Then we can use local cheques or ATM cards without hassle or surcharge.
I don’t know. However, you might consider travelers’ checks in pounds. You can buy them through American Express or perhaps AAA (if you’re a member) or a large bank in a major city. Of course, there’s the usual fee for buying them, and the places you’re staying may still charge a fee or not accept them at all. But you should be able to cash them at a UK bank with no problem.
The results of my attempt at this would suggest that it is very difficult, if not impossible to set up such an account from a distance. My family lived in England from 1973-80. My mom kept the bank account open until 2005, but after they moved away, it was only a savings account with cash card. No cheques or credit card. In 1999, while I was in England, I tried to add a checking account (I was joint account holder with my mother).
After an hour filling out paperwork with a person, including her taking photocopies of my passport, I was told the only necessary thing left was to get a letter of recommendation from my banker in the US. When I got back home, I had someone send off a letter. No response from the bank in England. Two e-mails and a letter later I finally gave up.
Hopefully others will have different experience, but from what I went through, English bureaucracy won’t allow it to happen.
They way I handled it on my past two trips was to use my American bank ATM card and pay cash. (I placed a lot of cash into the account before the trip.) There is a service fee, but the bank’s rate of exchange was usually good enough that it was still the best way to go.
The advice about Traveller’s checks in Pounds is good to check out. My first wife worked for American Express and we were able to get them without the fee. See how it works for you. Warning - there are places that won’t take them, but you can cash them at smaller banks with ease.
Anti money laundering regulations do make it rather difficult to set up banks in other countries.
The UK is pretty strict on this and you need to prove you are a real person, which includes several months worth of utility bills.
Now the same restrictions apply for the Isle of Man and Jersey banks but it may be easier as they are used to setting up accounts for people in distant obscure lands, the may even know where Montana is. You can open up a UK pound or US dollar account and they will give you an ATM card.
Now some have minimum deposits depending where you are (HSBC require 120,000 if you are in a South american country) but is typically lower for the US, if they have a limit at all. Look at **HSBC, Nat West and lloyds **offshore websites. Again expect to go through a certain amount of proof of identity etc
If you have an ATM card with visa plus, cirrus or the like on you should be able to take £UK cash straight out of a UK ATM. My US credit union only charged a doller or so fee (the same as thanking out in another bank in the US and even then they refund some of the charges) and the exchange rate was pretty much normal and better than airport exchange counters.
Nobody will take them. The OP will have to exchange them in banks (and in some countries at least, I don’t know about the UK, not all banks will even do that). And the exchange will be made at a terible rate. Traveller’s checks in Europe nowadays can only be useful for one thing : as a back-up if for some unfortunate reason (theft, card “eaten” by an ATM, bank blocking your account…) you end up not having any access to your money.
The OP would be better off just withdrawing money from ATMs.
Is this for real? I can’t imagine a hotel anywhere charging surcharges for using a credit card. Is it a standard US based Visa or Mastercard?
I know my US bank is charging me a 3% fee for my international transactions (I am currently traveling in Sweden) but I couldn’t imagine my hotel or any other local retailers charging me a higher rate because I was using a US based card.
I was wondering that, too. If it was American Express, I would be less surprised - it’s far less widely accepted, and plenty of places use swinging surcharges to deter its use. My local pub will charge you £10 for an Amex transaction.
As I said, we’re spending most of our time in small towns. They don’t have hotels. These are B&Bs and such.
The whole “just go to a bank” thing won’t work well for the same reason–no banks in the small towns and I want to spend any more time in cities than I have to. I don’t mind hitting ATMs, because they’re ubiquitous, but there is a fee every time we do it with our current ATM cards.
Visa and Mastercard charge the retailer a percentage of the transaction to cover the infrastructure and operating costs. In can be a few percentage points. Larger establishments suck it up, smaller retailers will not and pass the visa processing fee straight onto you. In some cases the posted rate will be for a credit card transaction and you can get a discount for paying cash.
I haven’t looked much at the site, but it seems as though Citizen’s Bank here in the US is affiliated with The Royal Bank of Scotland. Perhaps they have some sort of method for you to draw on CB accounts in the UK?
You can get accounts in foreign countries; I have several in the UK. Two things to note:
It’s a painful process. For a three-week trip, it is so not worth it.
You may get UK tax withheld (at 20% IIRC), because they will screw up and withhold it even if they’re not supposed to because you’re non-resident. And depending upon your circumstances and the amount of money involved, you may need to file with H.M. Revenue Service anyhow. While that’s fairly simple, it’s going to be more time and effort on your part.
If you have more than $10,000US overseas in an account, you must fill out form TD-F-90-22.1 each year like clockwork, or else you face “in certain circumstances a fine of not more than $500,000 and imprisonment of not more than five years, are provided for failure to file a report, supply information, and for filing a false or fraudulent report.”
You must declare all interest gained in the UK on your US taxes. If you choose to pay the UK tax, or end up paying it, then you need to fill out the additional Schedule to calculate credit for foreign taxes. Those are not trivial forms to fill out, IMO, having done them.
I’ve visited England twice in the last 3 years. I relied on ATMs using a debit card for cash, and on credit cards for larger transactions. Credit cards are perhaps not used qute as much in the UK as they are in the US, but they are used. And the UK banks don’t seem to charge a fee for using ATMs, though you will pay a small fee for the currency conversion. I’ve visited about half-a-dozen countries in the last 15 or so years, and never used a traveller’s cheque.
Correct. Free-standing ATMs not owned by banks, as found in small shops, petrol stations etc. will make their own charge, but this has to be spelled out either physically on the ATM or in the on-screen process.
ATMs are absolutely everywhere, including small towns. The majority accept Plus and Star. If you happen to find yourself in a tiny village, there will be a town close by. It’s a small island!
Do you have a debit card? There will be no surcharge for using a debit card. Any Switch or Visa based debit card should work just fine. Given the incidence of fraud, it may be worth setting up a seperate account with a limited amount of money. Do make sure you have a U.K.-valid 4-digit PIN.
The only places I had trouble using a debit card was in France and Italy because the have the number pad upside down and don’t put the letters on them. Took me six tries to figure my pins number pattern (I remember the word not the number). In the UK, no problem because they use our standard input pad.
Absolute WAG: what about International Postal Money Orders? These are for buying stuff, paying fees, etc., when you’re doing business by mail (obviously) with someone abroad, but they are cashed at post offices, IIRC, and those really are everywhere. I use PO Money Orders all the time, and while I’ve never tried it in that way, I know payees love the things. And like a Traveler’s Check, you can record the serial numbers and apply for a refund if you lose them. Also like a Traveler’s check, you need to put your name on them to do that.
Don’t know what version of the UK you’re going to, but there are ATMs nearly everywhere in the one I live in! I live in a large village / little town in the countryside and there are two a (free) ATMs, on in each convenience store.
You probably won’t find one in a village, but you’ll hardly need to go to a city to find one. Worst-case scenario: I was in the Lake District recently and had to drive from the hostel I was in at Ullswater, into Keswick, a small town about four miles away, to use the ATM.
I do a lot of international travel, and find that the credit/debit card/ATM combination is fine. There is a small surcharge on cash advances at ATMs, around 1-2% depending on your bank, but straight purchases are not surcharged, and nor do hotels surcharge either.
What everyone else said. The only way it would be worth you setting up a UK bank account, as opposed to just paying some trivial fees to withdraw from ATM’s, is if you value the boatload of your time you will have to spend on administrative nonsense at, like, $0.10/hr or something.