2009/3/31 Lars Noodin <larsnoo...@openoffice.org>: > > 2) Bank transfer reputation - the banks have a reputation for being > difficult about European inter-state transfers. That includes tacking > on charges and fees even when their own rules state otherwise. Delays > and lost payments are not rare enough. > > It seems like online services such as Moneybookers might be an > alternative, though I would have to investigate rates and reputation > further before saying for sure.
Read up on IBAN/BIC payments and/or on SEPA payments. If you're using standard IBAN/BIC payments (which your Euroland bank has to offer) or SEPA payments (which AFAIK are being phased in, though my knowledge of them isn't as good yet); again, if you're using either of these to transfer money from one Euroland country to another Euroland country and your bank charges you extra for that, then your bank is probably doing something very ILLEGAL, and you absolutely should report them either to the ECB or to national authorities. Some banks are sneaky, and use excuses such as a sloppily written form to charge you extra for their "service" of "correcting" your form. Yes, intra-European international payments *used to be* a bit of a pain, but IBAN/BIC has existed for many years now, and European banks are *expressly prohibited* from charging more for a transaction from, say, a German bank account to an Irish bank account than they charge for a transaction from a German bank account to another German one. Contrary to what Stefan wrote, you should have no problems transferring money between bank accounts in different Euroland countries, and if Stefan has problems and/or they are delaying or charging extra despite him using the correct IBAN/BIC or SEPA procedures and numbers/codes, then his banks may be doing something illegal. But maybe a publicly archived mailing list is not the place to talk about this; certainly an OpenBSD list is not the place to talk at length about intra-European banking, but feel free to email me off-list if you have questions, because I have lived in Ireland, the UK and Germany, so maybe I can offer some insight. I can tell you that fairly swift intra-European cross-border transactions with IBAN/BIC definitely do work, and they're as cheap as national transactions (a poor bugger like myself probably couldn't afford them otherwise. ;-) What doesn't yet work with just the current IBAN/BIC system is intra-European cross-border *standing orders and direct debits*. That's what SEPA is supposed to fix, and it definitely will happen within the coming years if not months. Relevancy links: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/crossborder/index_en.htm from there: > Regulation (EC) No 2560/2001 on cross-border payments in euro eliminates the difference of price between cross-border and national payments. (...) The basic principle is that the charges have to be the same whether the payment is national or cross-border. IBAN/BIC, the current intra-European cross-border transaction system: - http://www.ipso.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=102&Itemid=250 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBAN - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9362 SEPA, the new and upcoming intra-European transaction system: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area - http://www.ecb.eu/paym/sepa/html/index.en.html - http://www.sepa.ie/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euroland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECB Ok, sorry now for this digression, but I couldn't resist. Thanks and regards, --ropers
