OT - British Pound Bank Account?

[ABCanada]

DD is going to school in Scotland so we will be incurring costs in British Pounds.

We have been maintaining a US bank account and charge cards for our US $ denominated purchases and I would like to do something similar for this. It is nice to convert the money when the exchange rate is good rather than when the expenditure is made.

She will have a bank account and charge card there but I would like to fund that on an as needed basis rather than have her seeing a balance that I expect to cover a long period of time. She's a great kid but ...

It does not appear that my bank offers accounts denominated in pounds. Is anyone aware of a Canadian bank that does? Any other suggestions on how to handle this easily and inexpensively?

Thanks in advance

 

[Gigi22]

This is a bit OT, but we found out the hard way that you can't purchase British pounds and sock them away somewhere against the time when you may need them for a future trip. They go stale. We got stuck with some stale bills in Canada, no bank here would redeem them, so we had to have them redeemed by a friend living in England.

 

[minnie56]

I seem to recall my friend having a bank account in GBP with TD here?
I assume she could withdraw from there using any bank on the same system?

A friend of ours who is an AC Captain loves HSBC..he can withdraw from anywhere in the world with no bank surcharges. That said-his acct is here in CAD so you would have to deposit as such.

 

[MaMudduck]

I work for CIBC, CIBC doesn't have a GBP account. But we currently are the only CDN bank that has a debit card that will work in other counties to do IN-STORE purchases. (all big 5+ banks can use ATM in other countries for a fee of $5.00 per withdrawal)
I would suggest you open a joint account with her & then it would be very easy for you to make deposits, and "oversee" her spending via internet banking.

There is no extra fees to debit, it's just converted at the current exchange rate (which does fluctuate all the time). Anywhere that will take visa can use CIBC visa debit card and the money is taken from the "checking" account on the card. PM me if you need more info.

 

[kuhltiffany]

We looked into this last year, I think it was HSBC that had one...

 

[minnie56]

https://www.hsbc.ca/1/2/en/personal/chequing-savings/savings-accounts/gbp-high-rate-savings

Looks like!!!
And as mentioned ..I only hear great things about them as a bank!

 

[Baltica]

I've had great luck using XE Trade (http://www.xe.com/xetrade/) to transfer funds from my Canadian bank account to the one I have in the U.S. Transactions are free - online billing from Canada, electronic funds transfer to the U.S. - and the exchange rate is better than the one I have at my regular bank. If your daughter will have a bank account in Scotland that might be an idea.

The only minor drawback I've found is that it isn't instant. The process (booking it online to their withdrawl of funds to deposit in the foreign account) takes about a week. But I can wait until I get the rate I like and won't need the funds right away.