Current account BNP

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A bank account is an important element to be able to move between the intricacies of life and other things when you go to another country where payment with a card is a lot more normal and utilized than in Spain, like in France. Here in France it is unusual to pay with cash, straight and sound, and it is normal to pay with a card and you can see it being done in all the supermarkets, shops and bars where you do not see a single note. But to be able to pay with a card (as well as having money in your current account) the above-mentioned current account is needed. It is one of the first things that you should do, along with the already mentioned French telephone number, since it will be with this current account that you have to get going.

For me, I now find it an indispensable resource for everything. With the French checking account, I am doing a lot of activities, which without it I could not do, (or would be much more uncomfortable with having to do some of them with money in notes and coins).

There are in France, as in Spain, different entities, which offer you to create a current account on your arrival in France, but for us, the students of the University Institute of Saint Nazaire, they recommend that we set up our current account on arrival in the city and residence with BNP Paribas, one of the most important banks in France, and they have their reasons. BNP Paribas has plans prepared specifically for foreign students, such as university accounts, which are adjusted to our age and the movements that we are going to carry out in this one. The accounts they offer are free of charge, both at the time of opening and at the time of cancellation and have a duration of two years.

In my case, the account and of course the card that I requested with that account, allows me to be able to carry out activities daily such as buying on the Internet, allowing me to transfer money between my Spanish and French account, to be able to pay the university residence to recharge the campus card... And at this point I want to stop, because it is good for everyone who is coming to study at Saint Nazaire to know that the campus card can only be recharged with a BNP Paribas card, and that the data, (known as the machine through which we pay our purchases), belongs to this bank, so they do not accept payments or reloads with cards from another bank. It happened to me and when I went to recharge the card from the dining room, I went to pay with a card from a Spanish bank and again and again it refused the payment with that card, having to resort without any remedy to the BNP Paribas card. It is the same as, for example, with the card of the University of Valladolid, which can only be used and reloaded in data phones of Santander, so the use of other cards is useless.

The bank account, has a fixed number where you pay your French telephone contract every month and the house or the bills you have to pay, (which in my case does not happen since we do not pay bills in the residence, we have a flat rate XP).

The website of the BNP Paribas is quite well organized, so there is no problem in getting in there every now and again to see how your money situation is, being able to keep an eye on the schemes and graphs (such as food, leisure, travel, ATMs, etc. ), or by making changes in the account, such as expenditure graphs divided into months or weeks, or where money is spent on the account to see what the future payments are that will arrive with the respective invoices, for example, your mobile phone.

The account number and the pin will take more or less than a week to have arrive at your house, since it will arrive in the mail in two different letters once you have signed and delivered all the paperwork and the same with the Internet access key, which arrives a few days later in another letter once you apply for the account at the BNP Paribas bank.

In Saint Nazaire there is also a very central branch, right next to the town hall, where you can go both in the morning and in the afternoon, until about four in the afternoon or so and where there is a section dedicated specifically to young people and students, and where a very nice woman works who will serve you with all the patience in the world, (as on our arrival in Saint Nazaire we understood very little).

I imagine that when I return to Spain to stay, in June, I will remove the account but until then you have to keep it up to be able to use it when needed.

See you later.

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