Paphos Life

My partner and I are UK citizens and will soon move to Cyprus. We will need to open an ordinary euro bank account, for paying utility bills etc. Can anyone recommend a bank that is relatively easy to deal with? Ideally they would not impose excessive maintenance fees. Many thanks.

No bank here is good. I prefer the Hellenic that I've used for 22 years as being the best of a bad bunch. I also had an a/c at the Bank of Cyprus but I closed it as being user-unfriendly and a tad greedy.

We are happy with Bank of Cyprus. Lots of branches and ATMs and reliable e-banking.

A.

Thanks to you both.

Avoid Alpha, in my opinion

Thank you, everyone.

Yep. We use BOC and have never had a problem with them.

I have accounts with BoC and Alpha and neither are perfect but Alpha has recently become problematic and have closed too many branches.

Been with the BOC for the last 15 years with both Euro and £ GBP a/cs

Always found them helpful, polite, efficient and courteous although they don't exactly rush < after all we are in Cyprus and we all should all have our CY mode buttons in the on position >

Whatever I spend on my debit card be-it only €5 in Paps I get a text from them before the till closes to say the card has been used, where and how much. We dont even get that facility in the UK. I think its a good thing and applaud them for this service

Plenty of free ATMs locally for me, the BOC branch on the TOTK rd is a 3 min walk away from my place so it ticks a lot of boxes for me personally

Not the cheapest but at them moment I can't really see too many serious players as comparable alternatives on the horizon based on the " you only get what you pay for basis" I think what I pay personally to service these accounts at the moment is well worth it for what I benefit

We get the same text on our phones for both Debit and Credit cards. We are with Alpha Bank, having transferred from BOC due to there charges.

I use an Isle of Man Bank which issues Debit Cards in £,€ & $ and makes no charge for the card or ATM withdrawals anywhere in the world. They have branches in Jersey and London too. Their service is like banking was 30 years ago (helpful, knowledgeable staff). All usual UK banking facilities like direct debit, cheque book, BACS transfers, online banking and a great mobile app.

The downside, they require a minimum balance of £50,000 or equivalent but this can be made up of cash and investments so you can hold shares, investment funds to make up that balance. any income from those investments drops into your bank account. The result is you can keep as much cash as you like, available in Cyprus without the risk of the local banking system