French credit card (question for french residents) (1 Viewer)

[Peter and Julie]

Our circumstances mirror yours. Moved here permanently in 2006, retained Nat West accounts and debit cards with French address, no property in UK. Our then credit card provider offered to turn a blind eye to our lack of a legit UK address but from experience a semi-dormant account is a security risk so declined. We have banked with Credit Agricole since the late 80's but to my knowledge their credit cards must be cleared every month; although that might work anyway. For the information of non-residents who might not realise the French state control credit much more tightly than the UK. We did have a Credit Agricole Gold Card with much higher monthly limits for a while but it is quite expensive and we hardly ever obtained any benefit from it. I will also watch for helpful responses to your question.

Withdrawal limit for my Mastercard/Debit card is E2,600 a month but it can be raised at any time with a call to the bank. Luckily my account manager speaks excellent English opposed to my poor French (for now). And for a full CC it needs to be paid back in full at the end of the month.

 

[varaizian]

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I live in France, and although I still have a uk account most things go through my french account in euros. In fact I would probably not be able to get a uk credit with a french address anyway, I think that the only reason I still have my nat west account and credit card is that I have had them for over 40 years.

Like you I don't think we could get a UK credit card; even if we wanted one. Our Nat West accounts are quite busy because most of our income passes through them en-route to us here and are always well in credit.

 

[gus-lopez]

But surely if you hire a car with a security deposit of for example 1500€ which is not uncommon these days, with what ever card it will block the value of the deposit from your account, so you either have to have available credit, in the case of a credit card, or have to have available funds or funds/overdraft facility in the case if a debit card, otherwise the security deposit would be meaningless, you might say, but it's only a holding deposit, they don't actually take it.

That is fine until you have an accident or somebody reverses into you in a carpark and drives off, certainly in france it is illegal to try and make any payment knowing that you do not have the funds available.

Also the hirecar situation was just an example, personally I don't keep 1000's€ in my bank account, If I want to buy something in france that is 1000€ or more, I have to first arrange to get money out of savings and put it into my account before I can buy whatever it is.

With a credit card I have the option to pay up front, then arrange funds to pay off my credit card at my leisure usualy at the end of that month.

Uk cc always used to be s minimum 3k for starters.
Uk must be odd one out as there is no requirement to pay it off in full only the minimum amount.
When I recently got a spanish cc I asked what use it was if I had to repay in full every month?

retained Nat West accounts and debit cards with French address, no property in UK.

When we moved to Spain years ago we changed all the uk bank accounts to our spanish address. That was HSBC,Lloyd's and tsb .no problems with any of them even now and I use a spanish mobile number for security codes with them all.

Our then credit card provider offered to turn a blind eye to our lack of a legit UK address b

As above . No probs whatsoever having spanish address.

 

[Widge]

Thanks everyone for your input, including Frankie who messaged me.
It looks like there isn't realy anything available here that compares to a uk credit card, and certainly nothing that doesn't have a monthly charge, so I will abandon the idea.

Thanks again
Dave

 

[Ridgeway]

Ooh having UK accounts and being a French resident..... always a risk unless declared i suppose.

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[Widge]

Ooh having UK accounts and being a French resident..... always a risk unless declared i suppose.

I have no problem with legally declaring UK bank accounts, now if I had a Swiss bank account, that might be different, unfortunately I would need a lot more money before I could warrent a swiss account.