Banking in Porto

Hi Yud,

I am an expat and been livin here since a year or so.

Caixa-geral is what I use and it seems to be the favourite Portuguese bank here. With the MBNet service, it doesn't matter what bank you have an account with, you can withdraw money from thousands of ATMs in Portugal and in other European countries as well. The on-line banking is in Portuguese and has no option to access in English. But if you are fairly good with computers, that should not be a problem.

Cheers,
Kartik

Hello Yud,

I have a decent experience with BES (Banco Espirito Santo). Recently, the GUI has been re-designed and now it has an English version too.

It has good features and provides facilities such as Internet Banking, Gold Credit Card, Debit Card, etc.

You can visit the BES site here.

Hope this piece of info helps to all the expatriates out here.

Thank you,

Regards,
VSB

Hi Yud,

You can get money at any ATM for free even if it is not your bank, or even if the card is not Portuguese.
If you have a Portuguese Bank Account there are many things you can do at the atm. You can charge your phone, pay your bills, transfer money, etc...
You can also do the same thing in libraries that have a "payshop" sign. I use it especially to charge my bus card since there is no way to charge it at the bus stops like they do in Brussels.
The main problem with banks here is that they close very early so if you work it is impossible to go there...
Also they don't have the automatic deposit system yet, (where you can deposit money directly into the ATM's), you really need to go to the bank.

Thanks for helping charlotte1982

Armand

Hello kartik, vsb, charlottes

Thanks a lot for your contribution which am sure will be helpful to other expats having banking queries in Porto...

Regards