Foreign currency accounts in Poland

If you would have read the thread youd know that Citibank has an account that doesnt charge for international transfers.
Otherwise a SEPA for sending EUR within the EU will set you back 5-20PLN flat depending on the bank.
For PLN the service you are using would have to have an account in Poland, otherwise its an international transfer which can be quite expensive.

berni23

My only concern is if there are any fees with an International wire if XE transfer PLN to a PLN account.
And yes, I did read the thread through but still did obtain all the info I was looking for. I want to find a bank that does't charge for a wire denominated in PLN going to a PLN account.

Your help is appreciated.

Rlscott

Citibank doesnt charge for international wires to any of their foreign currency or PLN accounts.
You just have to have 5000PLN incoming every month, or 15k lying around(in any currency) at any time.
Its called CitiGold and if you dont fulfill the requirements they charge a monthly fee of 10PLN.

Dzieki berni

Rlscott

ha the FSA dont give a flying fcuk they have bigger fish to fry and they cant even do that right - Barclays Libor scandal anybody!!!! properly regulated doesnt exist.

I wouldnt go any where near a FX company, i was using one for years and they went into administration with 8000 Euros of my money, so far ive had £300 back., and this was 4 fcuking years ago. Far to often these kind of companies are ran by flyboys living in London, who only give a crap about getting a Ferrari and a show off apartment.

Limited Liability means exactly that, these FX companies have a legal right to go bankrupt and take your money with them. Seeing as these parasite companies sometimes have millions on account at one point or another - they do exactly that....... and who can blame them? that's the world we live in. Lying and cheating to get ahead of the game is rewarded with financial gain in our society.

Interesting perspective WB. It's not just FX companies that are limited liability, it's every limited company, which is most corporate entities. For fear of starting a pointless and near endless debate on the merits or capitalism / communism / anarchism, why don't you start a separate new thread on that very subject, as you're taking this thread off at a tangent. You could also start a new thread on the merits of bartering versus using money.

really, i didnt know that.


Thats a bit of an exaggeration -i posted twice, one connected to the thread and the other a rant. Why don't you try keep your comments in perspective next time.

I'll post where i like how i like, if you don't like it report to the mods.


Thanks for the advice again, wow youre such a smart person.

Just received the Sterling from the PLN 10000 using transfer.

After all fees and commissions I'll receive exactly £2000. The shopping centre kantors right now would give me £2008, but after paying for an international transfer, transfer wise.com was better, which is very surprising - I thought I would never be able to beat those kantors. You avoid your banks' (Polish and English) international transfer fees because you make and receive only domestic transfers.

The only unexpected thing was that after I transferred the 10k to their bank in Poland, there was an almost 2 day delay before they acknowledged receipt of the deposit in their account and during that time the exchange rate you get varies with the middle market rate - you get the rate fixed a few minutes after they acknowledge receipt of the deposit. In my case this almost 2 day delay worked to my advantage since the zloty appreciated against Sterling during that time, and I made an extra £16, but it can work the other way of course.

Highly recommended, but the service may not be available in all countries. It also avoids the time consuming and stressful "kantor run" of taking PLN out of your bank, going to the kantor, exchanging the money at the kantor, going back to the bank, depositing the GBP into the bank, and making an international transfer.

Can anyone tell me if paying money into a Polish foreign currency account ( Alior konto walutowe ) from an English bank account will incur charges?
There will be no currency exchange involved and I have been told that this is possible if the English bank has an International bank account number ( IBAN )? Do all UK banks have this, and is it a totally free way to transfer money?

I'm asking on behalf of a friend, and know nothing about transferring money abroad I'm afraid.

As far as I know , all banks have an IBAN number.
however , I doubt it will be totally free, you know what banks are like.

There's a cost for the transfer. It used to be something like £30 for a quick transfer or a less for a (very) slow one though nowadays it is sometimes a little less, depending on the bank and if there's no intermediary bank. It's possible that with a minor bank like Alior or if the UK bank is a small one like Yorkshire Bank they will not be 'correspondent banks' (and therefore send it via a bigger bank and in that case it will be the full £30.

It's usually deducted from the amount sent (i.e. receiver pays) however it's possible to pay it at your bank (i.e. sender pays) by arrangement. If you do it via a bank's website it's (in my case anyway) 'sender pays'.

The U.K. bank's website should have info about international transfers, costs, timescales, etc.

I don't think it will be either as it sounds too good to be true tbh.
A friend's nephew has come over here to work and opened the account in Poland before he came.
He thought it would be possible to get his wages paid into it avoiding the hassle of opening a bank account in the UK.
His new boss has gone on holiday for 2 weeks so he can't ask him till he gets back.


Looks like he will have to open a UK account then.
I thought it would be unlikely that it would be free, but I've heard conflicting advice about this because it doesn't involve an exchange in currency.

Thanks for the advice.

i ve been changing currencies for years here, it was a nightmare but its changed...wahey!!
now the bank does a variable negotiated exchange rate which is normally slightly better than the kantors. if you go into the bank you can get this set up on your internet banking. just be very careful if moving between currency accounts on business accounts, they sometimes use the old system.

so just open a sterling account in polish bank and transfer direct and then change when the money has landed. i use wbk

Worth checking on the website though (and checking that Alior is correspondent with the U.K. bank). If so, it could be as low as £10 or thereabouts.

Paypal to paypal is cheaper it seems, however if you're not ebay buyer it's not much useful in Poland to have it - although you still may withdraw the money from your paypal (Polish) account to a connected Polish bank account with a small fee.

His account accepts all different currencies so no exchange involved. He can then take it out when he's back in PL and get a better exchange rate from a Kantor.


I guess it's down to his boss ( and the banks ) at the end of the day. If he decides to open a UK account, he can transfer his wages through a service that some of the Polish shops here offer for less than £10, but obviously the transfer will be affected by the currency exchange rate on the day.


Not sure if he has this, PayU is more common I think in Poland, but thanks anyway.

i get better exchange rate in the bank than the kantor now. it used to drive me mad drawing out euros,going to the kantor and then taking my pln back to the bank. common sense has prevailed. but if you send euros to a pln account they still take your trousers down.

In that case it would probably be much better to do it via Transfer Wise or World First (I use the latter). They give you a better rate than those shops. Also, the transfer is usually instant and (assuming neither of the banks involved are obscure ones - this could be a potential issue with Alior) free of charge.

It does sound like a bit of a palaver, but I guess he was just thinking that transferring it on a given day, especially with exchange rates being so crap at the moment, meant that he would lose out.

I've only been to Poland for holidays but I always change money in a kantor because the rates are better ( often quite a lot better ) than in UK.

Ok, thanks for that Jon, I'll look into it for him.