I use Me_Direct (https://www.medirect.com.mt/). No complaints so far
Interesting that they allow Swiss and UK residents to open an account. Why can't other pan-European banks do the same?
MT
"Unfortunately" (!) my card company has just decided to refund me as a gesture of goodwill, rather than pursue a chargeback.
Just applied for one - we'll see if they accept. Had to do the whole thing in Spanish as I tried unsuccessfully to change the language to English.
The fees (or lack of them) look quite generous on Santander.
What fees are you likely to pay with MeDirect?
Thanks for the report.
I cannot understand how this is legal on a SEPA (but non EU) issued debit card for a Euro account.
I have explained this before. It is nothing to do with SEPA and a "SEPA issued debit card" is not a thing.
Sometimes you can pay by debit card and then provide the credit card for guarantee purposes, but staff may be unfamiliar with how to process that.
Do let us know how you get on.
I think from my experience, you are safe in Denmark shopping at the likes of Lidl? Doesn't help much if what you want is some hot food sadly!
If the fees are equalised, it'll be interesting to see what happens with those co-branded Currensea and other debit cards which award more generous point rates on non-GBP or non-European (insert woolly definition here) transactions.
Curve on a paid plan gives 1% cashback on transactions outside the Mastercard Europe Zone, which is a bit wider than Europe itself https://help.curve.com/en_gb/1-interregional-cashback-HkKqqk_YA
Not at the moment, though I can see some Brexiteers desperate for us to do the same. The same people who want a "British only" queue at immigration
There's a "logic" behind this, because the car hire firms often place a huge "shadow"/reserved charge (often running to 4 figures) over the balance, which wipes some people's available cash out
It really is. Ultimately neither the vendor nor the consumer wants to be dealing with the unnecessary cost of secure cash collection into the 2030s, save a few particular cases where getting rid of it entirely would be an unreasonable hardship. Already in Belgium for example SNCB have a limited number of cash terminals and they usually have a secure hopper. Accordingly everyone really should be encouraged as far as possible to use ultra low cost means of payment, and this very low level of extra cost absorbed in all headline prices and paid by everyone.
On this page I can't seem to find any mention of higher interchange fees for EEA merchants accepting non-EEA cards. The "EEA inbound interregional cross-border interchange fees" pdf just lists the same 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit that is listed in the "Mastercard Intra-EEA Interchange Fees" list and all the domestic fees lists I checked. Is there anywhere the higher fees are actually listed?
Legally they may in the same way that they can surcharge the processing cost of UK commercial cards, or for that matter cash if they want to. It doesn't seem to have happened because it is messy to do as it has to be disclosed up front before payment.
