A checking account can cost up to 240 euros a year. And if the customer also wants a card, the price is even higher. Many consumers complain about the price these products have reached, especially since it is almost essential to have an account today.
But while some consumers pay tens of euros a year on their own, others pay absolutely nothing. "You don't even need to have a payroll to avoid paying maintenance fees," explain the experts at the financial product comparator HelpMyCash.com, who have compared the best banks without fees in 2022.
In some banks, in order not to pay commissions, a long list of requirements must be met. In others, it is enough to direct deposit a salary and in many others, the only requirement that must be met in order not to pay anything is to open an account as a new client and operate online. In fact, most banks sell digital accounts with no fees and no strings attached to attract new customers.
Some banks not only remove commissions, but use other hooks to seduce new users. Now that official interest rates have risen, some banks have taken to playing with profitability to make their products more competitive.
This is the case of Banco Sabadell, which has spent months promoting its Online Account without commissions and without payroll. New customers who open it before October 31 will benefit from a remuneration of 1% APR for a whole year for the balance they have in the account (up to 30,000 euros). It has no maintenance costs, includes a free debit card and does not require direct debiting of a salary. New Sabadell customers can take up to 300 euros gross in interest.
Other entities such as Pibank, MyInvestor, Orange Bank, Renault Bank or EBN have recently improved the profitability of their accounts without payroll pushed by the rise in interest rates of the European Central Bank, although at the moment none offer paid accounts above 1% , explain HelpMyCash sources. It is likely that if the European body raises them again, more offers will appear on the market.
ING also does not charge commissions to clients who do not have a payroll. The orange bank's NoCuenta Account has no fees or ties. The only requirement that must be met is that you cannot have a balance of more than 30,000 euros. It includes a free virtual debit card that can be associated with Apple Pay and Google Pay and, in addition, allows you to recover the money if an online purchase of more than 30 euros is made and the order is not received or arrives defective.
This ING account is an alternative to your Salary Account for all those who do not have regular income.
BBVA, Banco Santander and CaixaBank also have accounts without commissions in which it is not necessary to direct deposit a salary if the client does not want to, they point out from the HelpMyCash comparator.
More than a million BBVA customers have contracted their Online Account without commissions and without payroll. The bank provides a free Aqua debit card to all account holders (a maximum of two). This card is a pioneer in terms of security: it does not have printed numbers and its CVV changes regularly, so the customer is more protected.
Customers who only have one account and a couple of cards can easily switch banks if their bank charges them fees. The problem is for those who cannot leave so easily because they have a mortgage.
In these cases, the easiest way to stop paying commissions is to ask the bank what requirements must be met to operate for free. Probably, direct debiting a salary or a pension is one of them. If the requirements are unaffordable or you are not interested in meeting them, you can go to plan B: reduce operations with the bank exclusively to paying the mortgage, that is, take the income, balance and receipts to another bank and stop using the cards.
“If the mortgage was signed before April 2012 and the client uses his account only to pay the monthly payments, the bank will not be able to charge maintenance fees. If it is later, you will be able to charge only what the contract establishes and the price of the account will not be able to increase while the mortgage is in force. If the contract states that the account linked to the loan is free, it will have to be free if it is only used to meet the monthly installments. And if it is not, it will have to cost what it puts in the contract”, they explain from HelpMyCash.
In the latter case, the key is to check if the commission that appears in the contract is lower than the one charged by the bank for using the account for other operations that are not related to the mortgage. However, you have to be careful, because if you choose to reduce the relationship with the bank as much as possible, you may lose the loan discounts.
