Monese UK requires UK address - edit: no it doesn't

Finances
1

Just a bit of advice to save anyone else making the same mistake as me.

Monese offer a free UK account with no proof of address required. I thought that would mean that I could open one from France. However, the way that they verify is by sending your debit card to the address that you specify, and the app wouldn’t let me enter a French address, it had to be a UK one. So you do actually need a UK address to open a Monese UK account.

2

Try one remailing service

Reship provide UK addresses and you pay only a one time fee.

3

And they don’t ask utility bill etc?

4

Hi there Philip, I’m Karolina from Monese :raising_hand_woman: We just want to step in here, and mention that you can open a Monese account as long as you’re a resident of any country in the European Economic Area! You can certainly open one from France and get your card delivered to an address from there, just get in touch with our support team so they can get you sorted! :muscle:

2 Likes
5

Like @Karolina mentioned, you can open an account with Monese from any EEA country.

If you open a Monese account in France, I think it will default to giving you a EUR account. But to get a GBP account, you simply open one within the app afterwards. Perhaps @Karolina can confirm?

6

In the app, if you try to open a GBP account (not a EUR one) it asks you to enter your “residential address” and the “done” button is disabled unless you select UK as the country.

7

Did you already open a EUR account? I think you’ll have to open the EUR first, then after your account is active you add the GBP one. At least it worked like that for me (in reverse, since I signed up while Monese only offered GBP accounts).

8

That shouldn’t be the case, Philip! You can open the GBP account as a primary one straight away, regardless of whether you’re in the UK or not. Do please reach out to our support team so we can investigate further!

3 Likes
9

Okay, there’s a bug. The app uses the GPS to pre-fill my current city, “La Garde-Freinet”, but then it doesn’t accept city names with hyphens. Manually removing the hyphen reenables the “done” button.

2 Likes
10

Thanks for your feedback - the team is looking into it!

3 Likes
11

Just tested out Monese recently and have to say that I’m very happy with the product!