Question for you....

Can a euro denomintaed cheque drawn on a non Portuguese bank be presented for clearing in Portugal ? The laternative is to pay in to a UK bank suffer the 'orrible exchange rate and pay £15 for them to clear it....

Yes, you can present any cheque at a Portuguese bank.

In fact, I have even deposited a UK sterling cheque into my Postuguese bank account, and even though it took 3 weeks to clear, there were no additional charges. Similarly any Euro cheque may take a little longer to clear but there will be no charges and no exchange rate penalty !

Thank you very much Richard

Dear Banker,
Regarding euro denominated cheques, i am affraid to say that it is regarded as any foreign currency, therefore it is treated as such, menaning that each bank will charge you different comissions and waiting period can go as long as 24 days.One of the best one seems to be BCP Millennium, which credits your account ( for free) within 3 working days, which is great.
Hoping this helps you.
Manuel.

I would advise you to cheque the charges with the bank before depositing your cheque as I paid a French cheque in Euros into my Totta account and got charged 80 euros in bank charges and it took 4 weeks to clear. Needless to say I won't do it again.

Yes past experience tells me that the delay in clearing plus the inevitable charges add up to more than the FX loss when paying to a UK bank.The cross border clearing system of cheques in Euroland is still not good.

G

I paid in a cheque drawn on a UK Euro account and it cost me 90 Euro!!

I needed to bring some euros into Portugal last week to pay for various work being done on the apartment, and used Crown Currency Exchange. They gave me an extremely good rate and delivered the cash to my door, special delivery at no extra charge the next day. The rate was 4 cents better than the high street bank and normal exchange places, and 2 cents better than Marks and Spencers (who offer just about the best standard high street rates). This was a difference of £120, just by shopping around for half an hour on the internet. You are allowed to bring in around 10,000 euros maximum or something like that, so I am going to use this method next time as I get better rates of exchange and can just deposit the money directly in my Portuguese account.

Lloyds Tsb charged me £12 for the clearing and took 1.5 big points out of FX rate , which equated to another £13.

G

Do any of the portuguese banks pay interest on current accounts - or is that too much to ask for? i know the rate on some uk banks is very small but every little helps.

Also are there regular monthly charges in addition to transaction charges.

Try Paypal.

Transfer funds from your sterling account to Paypal, then transfer again to your Portuguese bank account.

All online, all instant and no rip off charges.

CA & CM wrote:Try Paypal.

Transfer funds from your sterling account to Paypal, then transfer again to your Portuguese bank account.

All online, all instant and no rip off charges.

How instant? Whenever I transfer money from PP to my current account it takes at least 6 days for it to appear in the account.

Oops, may be I just get lucky. Longest I've had to wait is 2 days. That is "instant" in Portugal!!!

Maybe you're transferring millions and the cyber-elves are slow counters?

I don't have that problem...