Greece here, transactions cost 3 EUR. I think they're possibly free if you use the same bank, but the apps are cumbersome to use and the potential for fees is a deterrent, so nobody uses them for transactions of less than hundreds of EUR.
You mean that a transfer from your Greek bank account to another Greek bank account would cost you 3 EUR?
What happens if you get a bank account in another EU / SEPA country (e.g. via n26) and use it instead of a Greek bank account? Would there be any downside? Would a Greek company paying you a salary refuse to transfer the money there rather than a Greek bank account?
> You mean that a transfer from your Greek bank account to another Greek bank account would cost you 3 EUR?
Yep! Sad.
> What happens if you get a bank account in another EU / SEPA country (e.g. via n26) and use it instead of a Greek bank account? Would there be any downside? Would a Greek company paying you a salary refuse to transfer the money there rather than a Greek bank account?
No, transferring money to N26/Revolut is free (well, minus whatever fee the Greek bank will charge, which I think will be 3 EUR), but receiving money from N26 gets a 3 EUR fee again...
If the payee has a Greek bank account I suppose? But then it means that if both payer and payee have a n26 bank account and use it in Greece, they don't have to pay this fee anymore, right? So why would they use Greek banks?
I just don't see how this 3 EUR fee still exists given the current competition.
> If the payee has a Greek bank account I suppose? But then it means that if both payer and payee have a n26 bank account and use it in Greece, they don't have to pay this fee anymore, right? So why would they use Greek banks?
Indeed! I think Greek banks are just running on inertia now, they'll soon have to abolish these fees. One thing keeping people from switching was ATM usage (N26 only lets you withdraw for free up to some amount). This was especially since until a few years ago we were pretty much cash-only, but now that we're basically card-only, there's much less incentive to use an ATM.
Ok I see. Yes you're right, needing cash also helps incumbents, ATM operators can also charge whatever they want when you withdraw. Let's hope these fees disappear soon.
As far as I know, the only actual legal requirement is that SEPA transfers to other countries can't be more expensive than in-country bank transfers. It just happens that a lot of European countries don't generally have charges for bank transfers.
Yeah I knew it's not a legal requirement but still I thought it would lead to zero fees everywhere, because now when you need to do a lot of transfers, it makes sense to create an account in a foreign SEPA bank and then even the transfers to greek accounts would be free. Granted I don't know how much are bank transfers used in Greece (given the fee probably not to their full potential).
You do, but I've found that some countries don't really want you, and they'll slam you with onerous KYC requirements to drive you to leave. I currently need to fill out 30 pages of documentation and have "a Skype call" with my bank "for verification".
