Check Cashing in France
 

My husband, who is a British citizen, recently came into a small (under 5K euro) inheritance. It was written on an Irish bank, in euro. We are going to be traveling in France this summer. I'm trying to find out if we'll be able to cash the check, in France, in euros, so that we won't lose all sorts of money in the exchange. We have made arragements with the issuing bank to have the check converted into a cashiers type check in lieu of a personal check, but beyond that have no idea what our chances are.

I think a cashier's check, with proper ID, would be honored at a French bank, but why don't you actually contact a French bank that you know will have an office location near where you'll be and ask? This is another one of those questions that is probably not best answered by strangers on an internet site.

I would agree with that. I've never tried to cash a cashier's check myself in France at a bank, although I've certainly sent them to some others who have French bank accounts. But if French banks are like some where I live, they won't cash checks for people who don't have accounts there. I've been to the Banque de France in Paris, and just getting in the door required a security check, it isn't open to the public. I was there to exchange old bank notes for euros, and even then, you didn't just wander in off the street. That may be irrelevant, but I just wouldn't put any bets on a bank doing that for some person off the street. Cashiers checks can obviously be bogus, or not valid, and if they give a stranger cash and they leave, and the check is no good, they'd be out the money. You can cancel a cashiers check after it's written, for example, it just means there was money in the account when it was made.

could your Irish bank issue you a debit card? You could use that in France with no problem..

Heck, we had trouble just getting banks to break a bigger euro bill (just 100 euros) into smaller bills. No account with them - no help.

Crédit Lyonnais was the most helpful. I like Kleroux's idea.

Unfortunately the rule is generally - Irish check - Irish bank.

Is it a check or a bank draft - they are different.

Sometimes for example in the UK you could "Lodge" an irish check to a UK account and wait for it to clear.

What am I doing? - CheQUE

CheQUE

try to see if the irish bank has an office in france, or a sister bank they can write this cashier check on.

i would have thought this bank could have resolved this for you if it were possible. what have they told you?

i doubt there will be instantaneous confirmation and cashing of any type of check ( not from that bank) when you ( or issuer) has no account there.

Any bank that cashes this cheque will charge you a lot in handling fees. It could cost you more to cash a cheque at a French bank, assuming they will allow it, (which I doubt)than to have the money transferred to your own account. Holland doesn't use cheques at all, I'm not sure about France. The rules for banking in Europe are quite strict so I have my doubts that a bank would just accept a cheque from you with no account there.
Given the Euro dollar exchange rate you may be better off asking for an electronic transfer to your own bank account.
Does your husband perhaps still have an account in the UK that it could be paid into?
I have paid dollar cheques into a bank account in Holland - believe me it is an expensive business, and takes a good chunk of the money in fees!

My British bank charged me £8 the other day to pay a conventional cheque for roughly this amount, drawn on a major foreign currency and issued by a foreign branch of a minor foreign bank, into my business account.

They don't just offer that facility for cheques in USD and €, but for the other Western European currencies, AUD, NZD, JPY, HKD and CAD. The (different) UK bank where I keep my personal account offers roughly the same price for roughly the same service. I do this reasonably frequently: charges have drifted from about £15 a few years ago to £5-£10 today

If he's still got a UK account, your husband should just post the cheque to that bank with none of this cashier's cheque (whatever that might be) faffing about. Alternatively, if the Irish bank's happy to issue one of these cashier's cheque thingies, they'd surely be just as happy to transfer real money to your personal bank account. My bank'd charge about £20 to wire £3,000 to the US, and I can't imagine AIB or Bank of Ireland would charge you significantly more.

Ring the Irish bank that issued the cheque - you should easily find phone numbers on their website - and find out whether this is possible. To the best of my knowledge, it's not. Co-operation between eurozone countries isn't all it should be - especially when it comes to the possiblity of banks losing out on commission. However, you may find that the Irish bank has a presence in the UK - certainly AIB and Bank of Ireland have branches in London and other major cities - and they may be able to accommodate you.

Thank you all for the comments and ideas. Flanneruk, are you saying that the draft from the Irish bank could be deposited into a British bank account and withdrawn in euro? Lawchick, I believe the cheque is being exchanged for a bank draft, in the belief that it would be easier to cash. I have been in touch with the Irish bank. They want a 10K euro minimum to open an account to which they'll link a debit card.

What I'm saying is that a cheque (any cheque: there's no point paying for anything fancy), drawn on any proper bank, if not anywhere in the world, at least in any serious country, in any major currency, can be paid into my British bank account for a derisory charge.

If you don't live in the UK, you then have a number of choices:

- you can get the bank to wire the money to your main domestic account. This WILL incur a second set of charges, both for the tranmsmission (another £10) and for the exchange into the currency you deal in (about 1% on the midmarket rate that day), if that's different from the currency your UK account's in (there's no difficulty here in setting up acouunts in €, USD or some other currencies). Typically takes 2-3 days from giving the instruction to seeig the cash in most bank accounts in the USD or € area, though they'll only accept these instructions once the original cheque's cleared

- you can keep the money in the UK and use it as and when you want, for paying UK bills or for withdrawing from any ATM in the world if you've got a debit card on that account.

- you can withdraw the cash (notionally, in the currency the account's in, though they'll convert it to most major currencies for the usual fee, since most British banks keep reasonable forex stocks, at any rate in € and USD) when you're next in the UK.

- if the UK bank has a branch in a foreign city you're visiting (most have some kind of branch in Paris and New York) you MAY be able to withdraw from that branch. In the past, I've taken cash from a Paris Barclays, and in the much more recent past, substantial sums in a Hong Kong HSBC branch from my London HSBC account.