[hocuspocus]

So the receiving bank applies a fee, but the fact it's in Greece has nothing to do with anything. Don't do business with crappy banks.

Plenty of people regularly do cross-border SEPA transfers for free. I do, and I'm not even in the EU/Eurozone.

[ravingraven]

All banks in Greece charge a fee. The fact that plenty of people do SEPA transfers for free means nothing for the other people (e.g. the whole population of Greece) that can not do SEPA transfers for free.

[hocuspocus]

So don't do business with Greek banks?

What stops you from doing day-to-day banking in Greece using a German account? That's kinda the whole point of the Euro.

[ravingraven]

First of all, you are not allowed to have a German account if you are not a resident of Germany.

Besides that, this is not the point of the conversation. The original comment compared SEPA to Bitcoin, saying that SEPA is better since it is free. It is not. There is no law that mandates it to be free and it is de facto not free everywhere (it might be for your use case but not for everyone). It is many times a lot more expensive than Bitcoin. If I also elect to not transact with Greek bank accounts, I exclude 99.9% of the Greek economy since I have no influence on what kind of account my counterpart has.

[hocuspocus]

> First of all, you are not allowed to have a German account if you are not a resident of Germany.

Of course you are! Have you never heard of N26? And even some traditional banks will happily have you as a non-resident customer.

[ravingraven]

Direktbanken (i.e. purely online Banks) are an exception but they come with their own set of asterisks and are not a blanket solution as you can't open an account from all European countries.

[germanier]

There is no such exception. Banks are free to do business with whomever they wish. Direktbanken are usually probably the hardest to open an account with if you are a resident abroad.

Deutsche Bank is well known for offering accounts to non-residents. Pretty much any Sparkasse will open an account for you if you walk in even without a German address.

The list of banks that don't offer accounts to non-residents is probably shorter than the other. Granted, these are mostly the ones with the best offers.