French Bank Account

Can anyone give me some information about opening a french bank account. I need to do this to pay for utilities connected with an apartment on Cote d'Azur but have no idea about which is best bank or charges that apply.

We recently opened an account with HSBC and we had been dreading it based on what we had heard about the famous French red tape. It turned out to be very easy. Did the application online. We went into HSBC's offices in Harcourt St Dublin to have our ID documents verified by a staff member. We posted that and the job was done. We have banking online with the new account.
Not sure how the charges compare - but we won't be using it much and we needed it opened in a hurry and it was the easiest to do with the online application etc. Also it has a branch near us in France - Bordeaux city. I called in for a bank draft ("cheque du banque") and the man who looks after the account brought me in for a chat.
We asked for 2 debit/bank machine cards which cost us 50 euro altogether so watch that - will cancel one for next year and we'll see later if we even need one.

Thanks, have also been checking out Credit Agricole online so will see what comes out of that

dakra said:

Thanks, have also been checking out Credit Agricole online so will see what comes out of that

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Hi

As I posted recently there is a quite good website for this and France stuff as a whole that is : http://www.french-property.com/guides/france/

I recently read info about this in a newsletter I recieve, could not retrieve the exact info on the site but there is much stuff there about this

c ya

Stevetr1

You should not need to open an account in France to pay utility bills. Ask your Bank about making Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) payments. Basically using the BIC and IBAN of the account(s) in France you should be able to send money directly to the utility. All banks in Ireland are providing this service.