We went into a local furniture shop, just looking for a bed for a spare room, and found that, although their showroom featured lots of 'modern' style furniture of Far-Eastern origin not to our taste, they also had a very wide range of catalogues which we were welcome to browse and we ended up with some Italian made, traditional style wooden wardrobes and chests, all delivered within a very few weeks and at very reasonable prices. You may be surprised if you investigate.
Yes, that's exactly the type of thing, the BP one doesn't require you to have a bank account either. From (fallible) memory charges are a simple €1 per transaction. These cards offer pretty well everything except loans and overdrafts. Makes life easier and you save a bit of currency exchange costs by transferring larger lumps less often. No fuss internet banking. I have noted that transfers from UK account take a couple of days longer for no apparent reason. No other drawbacks. For what it's worth the bank told us that they were happy to open a conventional account even if non-resident.
We have a "K Due" card from Banco Popolare. You can use it like a bank account, in particular for internet banking, and set up all your DD payments, make one-off payments etc in euros of course. Charges are minimal. simply top up as necessary from UK.
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We went into a local furniture shop, just looking for a bed for a spare room, and found that, although their showroom featured lots of 'modern' style furniture of Far-Eastern origin not to our taste, they also had a very wide range of catalogues which we were welcome to browse and we ended up with some Italian made, traditional style wooden wardrobes and chests, all delivered within a very few weeks and at very reasonable prices. You may be surprised if you investigate.
Yes, that's exactly the type of thing, the BP one doesn't require you to have a bank account either. From (fallible) memory charges are a simple €1 per transaction. These cards offer pretty well everything except loans and overdrafts. Makes life easier and you save a bit of currency exchange costs by transferring larger lumps less often. No fuss internet banking. I have noted that transfers from UK account take a couple of days longer for no apparent reason. No other drawbacks. For what it's worth the bank told us that they were happy to open a conventional account even if non-resident.
We have a "K Due" card from Banco Popolare. You can use it like a bank account, in particular for internet banking, and set up all your DD payments, make one-off payments etc in euros of course. Charges are minimal. simply top up as necessary from UK.