bank accounts

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A Page from 29 Days to France: Getting the Essentials Sorted

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For those of us who have moved to France, we know there’s a moment that comes right after the dream becomes reality — when the plan lands, your feet finally hit French soil, and you realize… Okay, now what?

It’s where the idea of moving to France meets with the very real logistics of actually living in a foreign country. It’s also where a lot of people tend to freeze, and then the panic sets in. What comes first? What needs to be done? What’s “normal” in France compared to what you’re used to back home?

When we wrote 29 Days to France, we wanted to walk people through not just the big picture of immigration paperwork or visa timelines (which are also included, fear not😉), but also the smaller minutiae of getting settled into your new French life. Details like getting a cell phone. Setting up electricity. Opening a bank account.

Are they glamorous tasks? No. But they’re the foundation of pretty much everything else. So today, I wanted to share one full day from the book to give any of you preparing for a move to France a sneak peek at what’s inside. 

Day 13: Getting the Essentials Sorted

Congratulations, you’ve officially arrived in France! You’ve most likely spent the first few days soaking it all in: your new neighborhood, the sound of chattering French, and the smell of buttery croissants in the air. Now that you’ve touched ground and are ready to start your new French life, you need to take care of a few essentials.

What are the essentials? Your cell plan (and new French number), your electricity and gas (handled by the national carrier, EDF), and your French bank account (which will provide you with a debit card). This won’t be the most exciting part of getting settled, but it’s necessary.

Cell Phone Carrier

There are several French cell phone carriers to choose from, including Orange, SFR, Bouygues, and Free. If you’re coming from the United States, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Cell phone plans in France are much less expensive. I personally have Free and I pay around 20 € per month for unlimited texts and calls within Europe, unlimited internet access, and 30 days of free calls and 25 GB of internet within the US, among other locations. You can sign up for most cell phone plans online, but you can also go to a store and practice your French, if you’d like.

Electricity & Gas

EDF, which stands for Electricité de France, is the leading supplier of electricity in the country. It is majority-owned by the state, which keeps prices affordable. You’ll want to set up your home’s electricity and gas directly with them.

Your landlord most likely will not arrange this for you, so you’ll have to make a few phone calls. Alternatively, you can sign up online, but you need to get used to making these kinds of calls in French so I suggest that you get all of the practice you can! Once you have your French cell phone sorted you can call EDF at 3004. Make sure you have your address on hand.

This is the single most important and reliable proof of residence in France: the attestation that you pay for electricity.

Bank Account

There are also several different French banks to choose from. I have Crédit Agricole and I am really happy with them. They are a smaller bank and I find that the fees are reasonable. To choose for yourself, you’ll need to think about your personal needs. Do you want a larger bank? One that’s foreigner-friendly? Or maybe a small, local bank?

If you want a bank with a reputation of friendliness to foreigners, go for BNP Paribas. Its headquarters are in Paris and it’s the largest bank in France. It’s also among the largest banks in Europe. BNP is used to working with foreigners and I know that they have several representatives who speak English well.

Exercise: Be aware of your needs and do your research, especially when it comes to what you’re looking for in a cell phone and bank account. Practice (write it down if you need to!) what you’ll need to say in French before you call EDF or head to the bank.

Questions to answer: What do I need in a cell phone plan? What do I need in a bank account?

Why This Page Matters

I chose to share this page because it’s such a real moment in the move-to-France journey — one that not many people online talk about. No matter what kind of visa you’re on, no matter your job, family status, or even the city where you live, everyone has to navigate these basics.

And if you’re feeling intimidated by the idea of making a phone call in French, or choosing between a dozen different banks, or not knowing whether you need to bring ID to the phone store (you do) — that’s normal!

The entire goal behind 29 Days to France is to make this process feel less overwhelming and more doable. Not perfect, and not even necessarily easy, but possible. One small, essential step at a time.

If you liked this little excerpt, the full book features 28 other mini-guides just like this one. Each is focused on a task, a mindset shift, or a key moment in the move-to-France journey.

As a special treat for our American in Paris readers, you can purchase the 29 Days to France ebook for just $10 with the coupon code TAIP. We wrote this book with all of you in mind, and hope you enjoy reading it as much as we did writing it 🙂

Photo by Kristina Tochilko on Unsplash

Did you enjoy this article? TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping. If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated.  These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment. Just like at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.

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Bank Accounts, Taxes, and New Legislation: a Quick Guide for the American Expat in France

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Note from the editor: In this special guest post, Robert Levitt, a French licensed investment advisor at Levitt Capital Management, a tax and investment advisory firm established to work with US citizens in France and throughout Europe, shares news of two pieces of legislation that could have an impact on American expats in France. Follow the link above if you’re interested in working with Robert or his firm – MS

Americans who live in France may already know they are unique in the world of expats — they fall under two different tax regimes: the United States and France, and both tax you on your worldwide income.

You may also know that the US and France have some of the most favorable tax treaties in the world, especially when it comes to investment portfolio strategy. These treaties not only reduce double taxation but also allow you to take full advantage of the best of both countries’ tax rules.

So for most Americans in France, changes in US legislation can often be a huge setback, not an advance. At our investment and tax advisory firm, Levitt Capital Management, we closely follow the legislative activity in Washington that can impact expat Americans. Two proposals on the horizon are worth discussing.

New Legislation in DC Most Likely Won’t Impact Americans in France

A new bill, called the Overseas Americans Financial Access Act, is intended to provide relief for Americans who have trouble opening basic bank accounts in the country of their residence.  

I had the opportunity to catch up with Congresswoman Titus, the person who introduced the bill, and I’m impressed with her efforts. However, in my opinion, the bill will not be very helpful for a myriad of reasons.

Its basic premise, sometimes called the “Same Country Exemption,” proposes that Americans who live in a foreign country would not be subject to FATCA on their basic checking accounts open in the country where they live. 

Bills that provide relief for Americans abroad are a good thing and, again, I applaud Congresswoman Titus. But I don’t believe this particular bill will be helpful. Legislation in the United States famously doesn’t impact banks in Europe, and nobody involved seems to have asked the banks if it would change their view on Americans.  

I decided to do the research myself and have discussed the potential of a bill like this with banks throughout the UK and Europe. The answer? No, a bill of this type wouldn’t have any impact on what they do, because if they tried to determine who lived where it would just add to the bank’s burden. 

Most of the people I spoke with also mentioned there are logistical problems with the legislation as well. Each country has signed a specific agreement or treaty with the United States regarding FATCA. Meaning, that even if the bill were passed into law, it would not change the treaty agreement. 

It’s also an idea whose time has come and gone. Thankfully, opening a basic bank account is no longer an issue in Europe (particularly in France). Most banks have purchased the software needed to conform with the FATCA regulations. So, if a particular bank refuses an American, there are plenty of alternatives out there.

Better Legislation on the Horizon?

Far more interesting is legislation soon to be introduced called the Americans Abroad Tax Bill. It’s set to:

  • Combine tax and foreign bank and financial account reporting (FBAR and FATCA) 
  • Study and report on the simplification of currency exchange rates 
  • Increase the threshold for simplified foreign tax credit rules and reporting 
  • Give a time extension for persons outside the United States to request abatements of math errors 
  • Reduce the burden for lower-income dual citizens expatriates and more.  

Some of these issues are probably non-starters because combining the FBAR with the FATCA filings would be opposed by both the IRS and FinCEN, the financial crimes unit of the U.S. Treasury, so I’m not sure that portion will pass.

It’s complicated, but still, this is a bill that I can support and will advocate for in an upcoming trip to Washington — although it has a far better chance of passing in 2025 than in 2024.

There is far more involved in the bill, and if you’re interested in seeing the text, I’d be happy to discuss it with you. While tax and financial issues can seem overwhelming, more and more providers understand these issues and offer straightforward solutions. We are one of those providers, and would be happy to work with you!

In any case, whether these bills are passed or not, I applaud the efforts of all legislators who are trying to provide relief to Americans who live in France. It is needed and appreciated.

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

Did you enjoy this article? TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping. If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated. These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment. Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.

Firing Société Générale

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One of the earliest articles for this blog was about my experience getting my first French bank account at Société Générale.  The process was relatively painless, but that was before FATCA came into force and made life more challenging for US citizens living abroad.  Still, possession of any form of long-term visa will allow you to get a bank account here, as I shared some years later.  When it came time for me to open a bank account for my French business, I decided to hedge my bets and audition another company, BNP Paribas.  Time has shown them to be the better bank for me, and armed with additional European bank accounts at N26 and Wise, I fired Société Générale from my life in February.

Mais pourquoi?

Given how challenging it can be to open accounts these days, why would I get rid of one I had?  Well, firstly, bank accounts in France are rarely free.  There’s a monthly service fee (in this case, 17 euros a month for a very basic account) whether you have any activity or not.  Secondly, I had already had exceptional service from BNP that Société Générale couldn’t match.  When I moved from the 2nd to the 19th, I was able to change my “home agency” using the BNP Paribas app.  With Société Générale, it was a nine-month saga, with multiple trips to my original agence in the 17th.  But the last straw was a denial of a loan.

Americans are used to having a “credit score” which tells lending institutions how worthy we are of being loaned money, and at what rate of interest.  There’s no such thing in France.  Indeed, there’s not even a centralized place for banks to know you have loans at other banks.  I found all this out when BNP Paribas sent me a flyer some years ago offering a 2% loan for my business account.  I didn’t need any funds at that time, but I was intrigued by an opportunity to build my relationship and profile with the bank and thought it might make for a good future article.  The truth was that the process was so speedy, there wasn’t enough meat for the article.  I made an appointment (online, using the app), showed up, and after 15 minutes of us getting to know each other and how we ended up in Paris, he asked what the loan was for.  I told him I actually didn’t need a loan, but was more interested in seeing how the process worked.  He nodded and said, “Okay, how about for working capital?”  I nodded and asked if there was any early repayment penalty.  He shook his head.  Ten minutes after that I was out the door, and 48 hours after that, the funds were in my account.  BNP had once again shown me that they were forward-looking, easy to work with, and fast.

As I audited my expenses for 2019 I wondered about Société Générale and my personal account there, which is what I paid my French taxes out of and was an account I deposited some sources of income into.  Should I really be paying 17 € a month for my personal account there when my account at BNP cost 7 € a month?  But I wanted to give them one final test to confirm my gut instinct: asking for a loan.

There’s no way to make an appointment with your counselor online with SG, so I had to go into my agence.  That’s fine.  I made an appointment in January.  The day of the appointment, he cancelled on me.  Okay, I rescheduled for the next available time, which was two weeks later.  When that day arrived, I brought all the paperwork I might be expected of to get a loan, which includes the “Avis d’impot” (the government document that verifies the veracity of your last filed return) of the last three years, my business tax returns, my business bank accounts, and the usual ID, lease, etc.  Two hours later, he “didn’t have enough information” and told me he would email me for more info.

Of course he didn’t email me.  I had to follow up with him over a two-week period and he kept asking for more info before finally saying flatly, “Non.”  I was appalled.  “Tu rigoles,” I began, and told him that BNP had had the exact same info (actually, BNP had asked for less info) and gave me a decision in five minutes, and I had only been banking with them since 2016, whereas I had been with Société Générale since 2014.  He shrugged and told me that different banks have different practices.

“Okay, then I need to close my account,” I replied.  He was nonplussed.  We made an appointment for the following week.  You can guess what happened next.  I arrived only to find out that he was too busy to keep the appointment he had made and I was traveling the following week and he was in conferences the week after, so yes, I had to delay closing my account by three weeks, giving them another month of bank fees.

It took nearly an hour to actually close the account.  I was forced to sign several papers closing both my Livret A (savings account) and the checking account as well as ending the agreements that went with them.  The final action was to transfer the remaining funds at SG into my newly opened additional bank account at BNP (which took all of ten minutes to open, since they just copied all my information over from my existing account). Ridiculous to the end, offering no apology or regret for losing me as a customer, both my counselor and the bank vindicated my decision to fire them.  I’m literally now doubly happy as a BNP client, having two accounts with them and a solid and respectful relationship with my counselor.

Why don’t more French people fire their banks?  That’s part of a larger administrative issue that I’ll address in a future article.

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Yes, You Should Get a French Bank Account

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A friend recently wrote an account of her experience getting a bank account in France and it reminded me to do an update of my various thoughts on this topic beyond my first time getting a personal account, a business account, and the legislation which is the reason for difficulties Americans face on this front: FATCA.  The most important reason to get a French account is that it’s the only way you may hit a snag on your renewal.  Not having a French account signals a lack of integration into society.  You may be able to squeak by with something else, which readers have received inconsistent results with, so the advice I give is to do what definitely works, not “let’s try this.”  Hope is not a strategy, and certainly a poor idea when it comes to renewing visas in France.

While major French banks are understandably reluctant to give a US citizen a bank account because of the high cost of compliance with FATCA, if you hold a residence card (whether a sticker in your passport or the hard card in your wallet), you can, respectfully and calmly, demand a bank account as a right.  Yes, there are low-cost online banks that have no branches, like Boursorama, that will eject you from the application process the minute they find out you are a US citizen (trust me, I tried).

My recommendations, based on personal experience, are BNP Paribas and Société Générale, in that order.  They both have excellent online banking in the form of web access and brilliant native apps for your smartphones.  My counselors have always been available when I’ve needed help and my cards consistently work in countries all over the world, often offering an extra layer of security by needing me to verify purchases over a certain amount via entering my password on the app on my phone.

What I’ve been told secondhand by readers is that both LCL and HSBC are also willing to grant accounts to US citizens, and feel free to pitch your bank of choice in the comments below.

When you stop in at a bank you’ll almost always be making an appointment for a future date, as the bankers are often booked some time in advance.  If you don’t feel comfortable speaking the entire time in French, make sure to ask for someone who does speak English, and many of the staff do.  They will often provide you with a list of what to bring, which will include, but not be limited to:

  • Passport
  • Carte de Séjour (1st-year visa holders — this is the sticker in your passport, everyone else — it’s the hard card)
  • EDF or ADH and/or lease
  • Proof of income
  • Most Recent Tax Filings — both US and French

and expect to pay around 15-20 € a month for even a basic checking account.  It’s part of the deal.

They also won’t let you pick your PIN, but I’ve found this to be a smart policy, because it doesn’t allow a thief who correctly guesses one pin access to all your cards, which Americas tend to use the same PIN for.

An intermediate step in the right direction, if you want to be able to easily transfer in Euros, pay your rent, etc., is a free Borderless Account from Wise that allows you to hold multiple currencies with no monthly rate and even includes a free contactless debit card.  But it is not clear to me that statements from a Borderless Account will pass muster with French immigration and no reader has yet let me know that such a strategy works.  The euro-denominated account in the Borderless Account is based in Belgium.  I absolutely love Transferwise and use it for other transactions outside of my personal and business ones, which I use my French accounts for.

TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping. If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated. These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment. Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.

Troubleshooting: Branchless Bank Accounts

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Article updated July 2022 for accuracy.

Some time ago I was sitting with some friends and the conversation turned to banks and bank fees.  Both of my friends shared how much they hated “establishment” banks and described with relish how they had recently “fired” them.  They had chosen to move on to the “internet only” banks.  One banked at Fortuneo, the other recommended Boursorama.  I was happy with Société Générale and had long ago written off bank fees in France as “part of the deal.”  Turns out, as an American citizen, I don’t really have a choice.

I went through the process of applying for a basic checking account at both Fortuneo and Boursorama, banks that leveraged technology and virtual offices to offer low-to-no fee banking.  At the end of both applications I was rejected, in no uncertain terms.  Not because of my credit score (because there’s no such thing in Europe), but because unlike my friends, who possessed German and Czech citizenship, respectively, I was considered a “US person” for legal purposes, and was subject to FATCA.

FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) became law in 2010 in the US but came into force officially in France this year.  It places an enormous regulatory reporting burden on French banks servicing US citizens.  The “budget banks” mentioned above do not have the means or the staff to comply with this reporting requirement so they rejected me.  I was told by one person in the know that it costs French banks up to 10,000€/year to service someone like me (a “US person”).  This is all because the US government is determined to get its grubby hands on every last shred of our income, even if it was not earned in the USA.

Now, even if that number of 10,000 €/year is wildly exaggerated, something like 2,500 €/year is still a lot just to comply with US reporting requirements.  When you keep that in mind, you can smile your way through the two-hour process of opening a new checking account, as I had to do a few months ago for my new French business.  It’s not enough to sign a few forms and give the bank your money, as we often do in America.  The French want to know what kind of business you are operating, how much money you think you will make, the name of your most recently deceased pet, etc.

Part of this is simply a “get to know you” policy that French banks are encouraging these days.  But part of it is both French governmental compliance and now US regulatory compliance.  My poor counselor told me that I was his first “US” account and he called in backup from his colleagues no fewer than three times as unexpected screens kept popping up during my registration.

All in all, I was happy with the process and BNP Paribas offers the same level of service and convenience that I’ve become accustomed to with French banks but is (to my knowledge) not widespread in the US.

  1. RIB (relevé d’identité bancaire) This is an upgrade over traditional “online bill pay” as there is never a paper check issued.  The money leaves your account and 48 business hours later it is in another account, whether it’s the account of a friend or that of a regular payee of your household.  When you add a new payee you must key in a pin and every time you issue a RIB payment to someone you must key in a pin.
  2. App-based verification for online purchases.  When you make a credit card purchase on the web you will receive a push notification on your phone.  You must key in a pin in order to approve the purchase.  Then, and only then, is your purchase approved.
  3. No ATM fees.  By French law, you cannot be charged fees for withdrawing your own money, even if it’s from the ATM of another bank.  So you can use any ATM anywhere, anytime. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, as of 2021.

It’s a lot of trouble to set up a French bank account as an American these days, but once you have that account, it’s a great thing, and it makes your life here that much easier.

Did you enjoy this article? TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping. If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated. These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment. Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.