Any suggestions r.e large amount of euros in cash?

[yellowtotebag]

DS and my new-DIL (so happy I can call her that officially now! 😊) got married at the start of May. Very kindly the majority of our family have given them euros for their honeymoon that they are going on in 2 weeks. Very big wedding so they’ve ended up with quite a lot of cash.

DIL mentioned today that she was worried about carrying the money round (they are travelling through Europe for a month, several different countries) but said the only alternative she could think of would be to change it all back into pounds and then load it onto a travel card which she said was a shame when people had gone through all the effort of converting it to euros for them. I said I’d do some research to help out and see if there was any travel card you could exchange euros in person for or something like that? Or any alternative ideas people can think of?

Thanks everyone 😊

I'm not sure what to suggest on this. Various banks, like Starling, do Euro bank accounts. There's a limit on how much cash (£) you can pay into it but I'd be amazed if you could pay cash Euros into the account full stop. I googled and found some old posts on various forums suggesting the large denomination notes would like be treated with great suspicion.

I can understand why she isn't keen to carry a lot of cash around with them (although perhaps it would have been wise to say so before the wedding!) but it is hard to see what can be done short of converting it back to pounds. I would have a word with her regular bank and Starling to see if they can help at all.

The only other advice is of course not to carry all the cash in the same place, they should split it between them and use things like these clever hidden wallets and of course only stay in hotels with safes.

I can't see any way that they'd be able to load it onto a card without effectively selling it back, given that no one in the UK had use for euro notes. They could try to pay for the first two hotels in cash? That would get rid of a few hundred. Nowhere will take €200 notes anymore, but most places are still OK with €100 bills (but obviously not for a coffee!) Where are they going? Germany & France are still predominantly cash based, but the Netherlands is basically cashless.

How much is it? Did they ask for Euros? Seems like a weird thing for people to do. Also are you allowed to take cash over borders? I think there's a limit!

Just looked it up- over £10,000 you have to declare.

There is a cash limit but it's 10 grand, hopefully they aren't planning to walk around Europe with that much on them in notes!

Do people pay for hotels in cash any more? I assume some must, but I could imagine hotels refusing if they were suspicious of the notes.

Some small b&b hotels won't take cards in Germany and Austria, and a lot of places insist on cash for the tourist taxes. Campsites too, if it's only a few nights. I tend to pay in advance now after coming unstuck a few times.

Thank you for your help everybody 😊I did expect that there would be no way round this for them.

No they didn’t actually ask for any gifts at all from guests - they have no blame in this but perhaps I do! 😄When immediate family (me and DIL parents) asked what they wanted they said they would like a donation for their honeymoon and I think we just ended up trickling that down to other people if they asked and then word got out from there. There was definitely no specific request for euros in cash, I suppose people just thought it’d be a nice thing to do because they knew they were going on a big roadtrip. I’m certainly not talking about anywhere near 10 grand though! Maybe 3 thousand? Not sure exactly

They are visiting Germany and Austria so good to know they will hopefully be able to offload some cash there - thank you so much for that info. Will recommend they look into various money storage solutions… Or suggest they just make some wild purchases as soon as they get out there! 😜It is their honeymoon after all!

I'd use the money wallets - like slim bum bags you can wear under your clothes. One year when we had to take a load of money away I secreted money in a few places! I opened a pack of sanitary towels, took the towel out and covered a folded over wad of notes with the wrapping. It just looked like another towel in the pack. That stayed in hand luggage with me.

Revolut

There are some high street banks that offer accounts in foreign currencies including euros, and that can accept cash deposits in euros. Some of them may accept cash deposits. For example, HSBC seems to offer this. However, I do not know if they allow low-fee or zero-fee use of the euros via a payment card.
www.hsbc.co.uk/international/currency-account/#:~:text=The%20HSBC%20Currency%20Account%20is,store%2C%20send%20and%20receive%20money.

However, are also some online banks that offer EUR currency accounts, for instance Starling www.starlingbank.com/current-account/euro-bank-account/
if I read this correctly, it is then possible to directly spend out of the EUR account in EUR without doing any foreign exchange transactions.

So they may be able to do the following

1. open a EUR bank account at high street bank like HSBC
2. open another EUR bank account at an online bank like Starling and order a payment card from them 3)make a EUR cash deposit into the EUR account using the high street bank
3. transfer the money from HSBC-EUR to Starling-EUR
4. use the Starling EUR payment card while travelling in Europe.

All this might take more time to set up than they have available before leaving, and it would require research into all the steps to ensure there are not any hidden fees (I have not personally checked), and then this is only worth doing if it is a fairly large amount of EUR cash.

But, it seemed worth describing in case it is useful.

I would never ever take that amount of cash with me anywhere! As it’s all gifts, either so as described above or open up a pre loaded travel account. But taking cash in money wallets is just foolhardy. Everyone really does take cards!

I've not looked into this, but is there a travelcard they can top up, in cash, in Europe? ie carry the cash for the first few days, but then transfer onto a Euro cash card?

Haven't heard of such a thing KarrotKake. Also if they carry cash around it could be lost or stolen.

Bank staff are within their rights here to ask them where this money came from because of money laundering concerns. It is best for this couple to deposit the money into their current account asap and then withdraw funds from that using their debit cards. They should certainly not carry large amounts of cash around with them even if hidden away. Hotels also are unlikely to accept cash payments.

In France, as part of money laundering prevention it's illegal to pay more than 1000€ in cash. May be the same in other eurozone countries. Wouldn't take much in a posh hôtel to run up that sort of bill.