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Comment by zahllos | Hacker News Reader

I don't think Amazon UK ever stopped accepting VISA entirely. They threatened to, and then I think they blinked at the last minute. It was also only specifically VISA Credit, not Debit cards, which continued to work.

I'll be honest, it was a struggle to get a EUR account in the UK before Brexit. I'm not aware of any high street banks that offered it easily, although I have been told it is possible. Most said something along the lines of "you want the international version of our bank" which roughly means either Isle of Man, Channel Islands or Gibraltar established outfit with similar branding. In contrast, I have a EUR account in Switzerland and can easily get a USD or GBP one. Most

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> I don't think Amazon UK ever stopped accepting VISA entirely. They threatened to, and then I think they blinked at the last minute.

On the former, you are correct, my bad wording. On the latter, I would suggest they probably reached a last-minute deal with VISA rather than blinking of their own accord.

> I'm not aware of any high street banks that offered it easily

Barclays and (IIRC) HSBC. Barclays still do[1], the only pre-requisite being you hold a GBP account with them too.

There's also Starling these days, of course.

Citibank was a great place to get one too, but then they introduced account minimums to keep the unwashed masses out.

[1] https://www.barclays.co.uk/current-accounts/euro-account/

> I would suggest they probably reached a last-minute deal with VISA rather than blinking of their own accord.

Yeah. I honestly wonder how that worked out. I suspect Amazon account for a not-insubstantial amount of payments so you have to wonder how that standoff was resolved.

> Barclays and (IIRC) HSBC

Interesting. Yes, most of the international accounts have some kind of minimum something, which is annoying. Euro and USD accounts are then possible. Other currencies they want you to hold a lot more money to get them.

I can see why transferwise have a market.

Switzerland's historical approach to banking is closer to Guernsey's, and a local resident of Guernsey could open a USD/EUR account at their local branch.

But for what it's worth, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest offer these accounts, and more banks offer them to businesses.

https://wise.com/gb/blog/multi-currency-accounts-you-can-ope...

I opened an account with HSBC France from my HSBC branch in the UK before Brexit. HSBC France has now been sold to another company so I don't know how this will affect the working of the accounts in future.

> I don't know how this will affect the working of the accounts in future

Was the account opened against a UK or French address ?

If it was opened against a French address, then chances are things will continue as they are.

It if was opened against a UK address, then sooner or later you'll probably be invited to do something about closing it.

IIRC (but don't quote me !) the domicile of the account matters more than the resident status of the holder, since the latter is normally more of concern to the tax authorities than the banks.

The French account is registered to a UK address.

I was thinking more about whether the two accounts would be linked as closely in future. Right now, if I login to one account I can see the account balance of the other as well, transfers are just done in the same way as between two accounts in the same country.

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