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It's broken alright! Not sure this will fix it though!
This has been an absolute disgrace from the banks for a long, long time. If you are a small business doing work overseas you get ripped off mercilessly by the banks. Unless you are big enough to warrant paying the banks a substantial monthly fee for 'free' multi-currency banking you get nothing from the bank. Sure, you can open a currency account - but there is NO on-line banking and NO currency debit card . All payments to other currency accounts (e.g Euro to Euro accounts) have to be done by cheque or by telephone using CHAPS transfer (that's £10 per transaction, thank you very much!). As you have no Euro debit card, you can't pay anybody in Euros when you travel on business. This means you have to pay using a sterling debit card with exchange rates about 4% away from the BOE spot rate. And then when the customer pays you in Euros you have to transfer it to your Sterling account to pay off the expenses you paid in Euros in the first place - another 4% - Kerching!
To add insult to injury you also have to pay a £7 transaction charge for EVERY INPAYMENT in Euros into your Euro account. Why? I have absolutely no idea. And because the bank hides the charge by just deducting it from the inpayment in Euros you have to work out manually for every single transaction what part was the customer payment and how much was the bank charge because, obviously, they go to different accounts in the books.
If the government were serious about small businesses exporting they would do something about this...