Best EUR-PLN banking option?

Hallo again!

if you're going to stay in Poland few months and you're not going to have incomes, I would not open a bank account. I never tried myself but I seem to understand there are bankomat where you can withdraw €uros that you can later exchange to PLN to any kantor across the city.

Alternatively, you can open a bank account here and exchange currencies through an on-line kantor like cinkciarz, kantoronline, internetowykantor, etc... and withdraw PLN with your polish bankomat.  Any bank is fine; they are all the same: cost zero, almost 0% interest. Some might require a passport to open an account.

Rgds
O.

Hi Oniros!

Thanks! I was considering the second option... staying min 6 months, but probably 6 more...
So I was looking at Millenium... (I have seen it has an English website).
Are the kantor similar to Transferwise?

Best regards!

Daniel

Since you already have Spanish ING card the easiest will be to try to pay with this card or withdraw from Polish ING. My experience is that the national branch of the same bank is handled as separate entities and there is no easy way to transfer between the banks sharing the same logo/name.
PayPal is free and transferwise dot com is cheap

danielexposito wrote:

So I was looking at Millenium... (I have seen it has an English website).

If I didn't miss any button, customer area is in only in Polish.

Oniros wrote:

If I didn't miss any button, customer area is in only in Polish.

Oh...huh... I thought it might have been in English A part of the website is...
https://www.bankmillennium.pl/individuals

Will have a look at the other alternatives!

I ran across the Millennium website awhile back:  https://www.bankmillennium.pl/en

If you must have a debit card, just guessing that kantor exchange and a local Polish bank account is your best option.  (Just guessing because I can't quite remember the spread taken by the best kantors, but I think it's less than 3%, which is typically the very best you can get from a bank on small amounts.)

The transferwise option sounds good, too, if their rates beat the banks.

Credit cards vary but are often not too bad, but you did not mention that.

Thanks gponym!

Yes, definitely debit card...The internship I am doing is via a grant, so we get the salary in 2 payments and have no ‘actual’ work contract but an ‘agreement of collaboration’ (we have insurance, and pay social security contribution etc... though)...

Transferwire looks great when it comes to exchange rate. It is real time (more or less) and they charge you a fixed amount depending on the transaction you are making.

I am considering Millenium or ING (maybe mBank, but I doubt the have English online banking).
I will look for the one that charges less money for maintenance (most account nowadays require to have a regular monthly income of X money to avoid maintenance fees but, like I said, I received the entirety of the grant/salary in 2 payments so...not an option!)

Thanks you very much for your input!

To wszystko jedno... all banks are the same. Just pick the one you find more... pleasant and go for it ! 

I am not ashamed to say that In my early days, I was used to copy-paste bunch of text to google translate (toward English) to understand what I was doing