Receiving a one-off credit in EUR

Banks, Insurances & Third Pillar
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Howdy folks,

Silly situation here but I thought to look for the wisdom of the crowd.

Tl;DR best way to get a one-off deposit in EUR, with account on your own name?

A car rental company in France took a deposit of 2’500 EUR, by blocking the amount on my card (Revolut, which I regularly use abroad and which they accepted) and later they made a mistake, instead of canceling the blocked amount they let the transaction go through. Unfortunately this didn’t reflect for two days on my statement and I was long gone by then.

Now, they are happy to return the amount, however they cannot (mhhh) credit it back to the card , or any other card for that matter, and want to wire it to me for which I need to give them an account on my name (with IBAN & BIC coordinates).

I’d be happy to give Revolut or Wise but they don’t have accounts on a person own name, and my only resort is to give my bank (UBS) IBAN which is in CHF. Not sure what happens after that (does it go through since it’s in EUR to CHF, does bank auto-converts at usually horrid rate & fees).

Anyone had a similar issue and has some advice?

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While Revolut displays a shared IBAN for CHF deposits, I have my own Revolut IBAN for EUR deposits (starts with GB). Is this different for you?

Yes, receiving EUR at a regular CHF bank account normally triggers a conversion with the usual bank markup on the exchange rate.

Yuh offers a free multi-currency account but if it’s one-off, it might not make sense to open an account, especially as currency exchange at Yuh is not the best option either (transfer to Wise should be possible, though).

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Sure about that (Wise)? I have an EUR account with IBAN in my name (BExx xxxx…)

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You could open a EUR savings account with UBS, that is free and you can receive payments on it. Later you can figure out the best way to get the money out from that savings account.

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Hey guys, thanks for the suggestions!

So, after further investigation (my bad, had to find the “I will pay in XXX” on the interface), I see that Wise accepts EUR-to-EUR transfers but requires the sender’s account to be in your name or a joint account :frowning:.

Revolut on the other hand seems to indeed have GBxxxx IBAN on the name, had to find it by clicking “Add” within the EUR account instead of the generic one. I’ll try with this one and see if it works.

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Yes, this should work. Alternatively, opening a Yuh or N26 account should take you some minutes.

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Or Alpian…
But with Revolut you have your own GBxx IBAN so it should be ok, and best solution.

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I may consider them, to use as “shared account” with my wife (i.e. on my name but where we only deposit shared money).

Is there a consensus on the fees structure of N26 and Yuh vs. Revolut and Wise?

I’ve been Revolut Metal for a long time and was benefiting from the cashback in non-EU countries, etc. for business travel, but from this year they cut most of those and the replacement benefits are lousy.

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Don’t use them for currency exchange.

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Would it make more sense to dispute the transaction at Revolut ?

This should be for the car hire company to fix. Otherwise you end up paying the FX spread as well as having to deal with all the admin.

You can do this with credit cards, not sure how this works with Revolut though

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When trying to dispute with Revolut there is a big disclaimer at the beginning saying something along the lines of “Have you contacted the merchant first? 99.999% of the problems are solved by contacting the merchant” :smiley:
And indeed, they are happy to refund, just not on the credit card… but if the GBxx IBAN works I think we are set and I won’t incur fees.

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Update for anyone in the same situation: the Revolut IBAN (GBxxx) in EUR worked, however the merchant’s bank flagged the transaction as fraudulent so had to sends the “proof of ownership” (PDF that can be downloaded from the app itself).
All well what ends well - thank you all :slight_smile:

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