Commission free banking in Spain - my recent experience as a non-resident

Given the number of banks in Spain introducing or increasing their commissions or just providing bad service I thought that my recent experience may prove useful to others.

I needed a Spanish bank account for non-residents. My main residence is the UK. I have a property in Spain. I had had very poor experiences with Bankia, being charged commissions for so-called free accounts and having to write official complaints on an annual basis in order to recover those charges. After spending some lock-down time researching the situation this is how I recently opened 2 commission free accounts in Spain.

N.26 basic account

I arrived in Spain on Thursday last week, accessed the N.26 website from my Spanish address, entered the relevant details using my Spanish address for the location of the account and my UK passport, National Insurance number, Spanish NIE etc as my identification. I then downloaded and used the N.26 app to take ID photos of my UK passport and my face. The app also appeared to use my location as confirmation. The process was simple and I received confirmation that my account was active within minutes. I requested normal delivery for my debit card which took 4 business days to arrive at my Spanish address. I was a little concerned when I then withdrew some cash from a local DeutchBank cash machine which advised that a commission of €2.90 would be applied however I withdrew the cash and the commission was not deducted. You are allowed 3 free cash machine withdrawals per month. All in all the simplest bank opening experience ever. Many banks could learn from this. Please note that you cannot open a joint N.26 basic account.

Cajamar Rural

Following a recommendation by Paulsav on this forum, and having lousy experience with Bankia, we wanted to open a Wefferent joint account as non-residents. I had previously been advised that this could only be achieved by visiting a branch. I visited the local branch last Thursday, explained my requirements and they gave us an appointment for the following day. I have a little Spanish but the lady I dealt with spoke reasonable English. We were advised to bring passports, national (UK) tax ID (we took official copies of our National Insurance number letter - downloadable from HMRC website), NIE, P60 and proof of sources of income (my wife showed details of her NHS pension, I showed proof of private pension/investments). All the form filling and signing was completed in about 30 minutes and we were each given a slip of paper with temporary user names and passwords to allow us to access the Cajamar web site and App so that we could then order the Wefferent account online.

We then discovered an issue in that the default address for delivery of the debit cards was our UK home address whereas we had understood that we would have the cards delivered to the local branch or our Spanish address. We also needed a correction to our home UK postcode. We therefore re-visited the branch and the assistant made the necessary corrections, ordered the Wefferent account for us and  gave us a card containing the account’s IBAN and BIC numbers and told us that the cards would be at the branch within 4 working days. We were then able to lodge money in the account and set up relevant direct debits. All-in-all a pleasant experience. We wanted totally free banking, the Wefferent account appears to provide this and yet allows you to visit the branch should you need and only be charged for the month in which you visit (€7 I think). Providing the cards appear on Monday next, this will have been a good experience.

I hope this helps others and was our experience of late September 2021