Best banking package for couples/household

Banks, Insurances & Third Pillar
1

Hi all
what is your preferred banking packege, what works well/ not so well for you?

my baseline is Postfinance Package Smart providing a single account with two owners, where I expect costs for CHF 130 per year for

  • Basic E-Banking with two registered persons, CHF 60/y
  • 2x Visa card, CHF 70/y together (50 base + 20 Partnerkarte)

For us this is purely to manage our payments etc within our common household.

pros:

  • PostFinance Card almost universally accepted in $witzerland
  • cash machine in almost any village within Switzerland (not that we would use cash by default, but good to have)
  • lean E-banking

cons:

  • smells like potential for cost reduction
  • bad for travelling, but Neon/ Revolut/ etc do the job just fine for zero additional cost
  • payments only on the next working day, no instant-recharge of revolut/ neon without additional cost

What solutions do you use? What’s the costs, pros & cons?

[edit: modified the visa prices according to anwers below]

2

You can get a ‘Partnerkarte’ for CHF 20/y, i.e., two credit cards for a total of CHF 70/y. They would presumably share a single credit limit but that’s likely not an issue for your use case.

If this is purely for common household expenses, does it even have to be a credit card? The PostFinance Card (which is now also a Debit Mastercard) may suffice. I don’t see any mention of a ‘Partnerkarte’ option for the PostFinance Card, which seems odd as they advertise the account to be available as ‘Partnerkonto’.

Is the new PostFinance Card supported on Google/Apple Pay? If so, it may be possible to simply add it to both of your phones.

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3

I think 2x visa card cost can be saved completely. The post finance debit card is good enough, at least for me.

4

Btw, may I ask your smart package includes how many accounts? And they are accounts of both names, or accounts of one name, or both?

5

And if you put more than 25,000 CHF worth of assets in e-trading, the smart package 60 CHF per year can be saved. But you have to pay 90 CHF per year for the trading credit. So it only makes sense if you have budget for brokerage account.

6

Yeah, thats what we do (smart package + e-trading, but not our main brokerage account). All in all a fair package in that combinstion in my view.

7
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8

Wow. Anything similar in zurich area? Free package if assets > xxx

9

Raiffeisen, I guess. With their units.

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10

yeah. Yet at Raiffeisen, only accounts are free for members. Card not. T_T
Somehow to my surprise, twint cannot be connect directly to account, only to cards.

11

This our configuration:

Raiffeisen Bank

We take the shareholder package, unfortunately we need to both have at least one checking account each in order to have a joint account (stupid). So basically we have:

  • 2x Checking account with our Emerging Fund.
  • 1x Joint checking account where our salaries are paid and which is used to pay all our expenses (bills, shopping, etc.).
  • 2x Neon account for our foreign expenses and very personal expenses (gifts for instance).

Total: 100 CHF per year (2x Debit Mastercard from our joint account) and 200 CHF each for the one shares from Raiffeisen (1x time for life with 3% of dividend each year).

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12

We also have two checking accounts, one for each, at Raiffeisen, yet I don’t want to pay for the card for 50CHF per year after becoming the member already
it doesn’t make sense to me. haha

13

For our 2x checking account, we don’t have any card (I forgot to precise it). And for the 50 CHF for each card, I can understand you. Their “excuse” is that it works like a “membership” to visit some museum in Switzerland.

In the future we will maybe change, but it will be hard because their E-Banking is smooth, like UBS. My last bank was the BCV and their mobile app and E-Banking are a joke :face_vomiting:

14

Agree. Their E-banking is not bad. We now only use the account to pay ebills. Without a card, it basically has no connection to the real world. I cannot even connect twint to accounts. T_T

15

I think that is still from 25K Assets, which is not too much.

16

Can you not cancel the card ?

We got 2 BCGE account with no maestro nor debit card for 36 chf a year each.
We use bcge TWINT or Wise as personal debit card.
We got a common Cembra Certo1 credit card for no fees.

17

I don’t know if it is possible since the card is used as a membership card to have free access to museum and other discount. Moreover, I’m used to pay with my card than to use Twint. However, I will ask Raiffeisen if it would be possible and try to use Twint during this month.

18

i got confused. “This is” refers to what?

19

Regarding BCV, you can open a relationship while living in another Canton, you’ll just have to go to a Postoffice once to have them check your identity.

All cantonal banks ATM can be used without fees for withdrawal. The assets can be held through their TradeDirect brokerage, which has moderate fees and allows registration of Swiss shares: TradeDirect / Markets and online trading

Edit: I did it the other way around, first the TradeDirect relationship, then the regular banking one, which then just required a phone call but I guess it would work in a similar fashion if doing it the other way around. The process wasn’t 100% painless and their customer support isn’t the smartest in the industry, but it was only a one time hassle.

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20

For me it is free with >25K assets in e-trading.

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