Bank account for salary in another Euro country

Question

I have a bank account in Euro in a bank in Europe inside the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) where I live an work.

I'm wondering if I could relocate to another European country that it also uses Euro and it's inside the SEPA and keep using my original bank account for my salary and all the expenses.

If I'm right, inside the SEPA the fee for a "cross-border" transaction is the same of a "local" one, so as long I will provide my IBAN adn SWIFT code to my employer and the utilities it should work, but maybe I'm missing something.

Answer 1

In theory it should work since the SEPA schemes got in place in the Euro-zone countries in 1 February 2014, but as it's quite recent it's possible that you'll have additional issues with your employer or some utility companies, so you should defintiely ask them first if it's okay with them (it should be however)

On the other hand while having a foreign account might not cause extra issues for your employer, it might for you:

• if you have to visit your bank personally for any reason, you have to travel abroad
• your bank might not properly support foreign addresses
• your bank might not support sending two factor authentication codes to foreign mobile numbers for online banking purposes

Also check that your debit / credit card is properly supported in your chosen country. For example in Germany a lot of retailers only support Mastercard/Maestro or local EC-cards, so you can have probems if you only have a VISA or Amex card at hand