Paying for things in La Línea: Bizum, cards, cash and why your Revolut may not work

In La Línea a card works almost everywhere, but plenty of people would still rather have cash, and between individuals everyone pays by Bizum — the instant bank-to-bank transfer by phone number that almost nobody arrives knowing about. The one thing worth understanding before you open an account: Bizum only works from an account with a Spanish IBAN, and not every app that operates in Spain gives you one.

On this page:
Start with Bizum, because everything else follows from it ·
The Spanish IBAN question ·
Openbank, and why I would not send anyone there lightly ·
What I use, and why ·
Pounds, euros and the frontier ·
Cash, and where you still need it ·
The short version for somebody arriving ·
Questions people actually ask

Start with Bizum, because everything else follows from it

Bizum is run jointly by the Spanish banks. It lives inside your own bank’s app, it ties your phone number to your account, and it moves money to another person in under five seconds, free, with nothing but their number. Thirty-nine banks offer it and it reaches almost every current account in the country.

The plumber, the landlord taking a deposit, the friend who paid for lunch, the parents’ WhatsApp group collecting for a present, the bar whose card machine is “broken” on a Saturday night: this is how all of them expect to be paid. Bank transfers still exist. Nobody under seventy uses one for anything under a thousand euros.

Bizum is the only way to send and receive money instantly in Spain and everyone uses it. People arriving here do not know about it from the start, and it costs them — not in fees, but in the daily friction of being the one person who cannot pay the normal way.

The limits are set centrally and each bank may tighten them: €0.50 to €1,000 per payment, €2,000 sent in a day, €5,000 in a month, and at most sixty payments received per month. It also pays in thousands of online shops, and it pays taxes — the provincial service that collects La Línea’s municipal bills takes Bizum.

The Spanish IBAN question

Bizum needs a Spanish or Andorran IBAN. Your phone number can be foreign; the account cannot. So the question to ask of any app is not “does it work in Spain”, it is “which country’s IBAN have you actually given me” — and the answer is in the app, on the account details screen, in the first two letters. ES is Spain. LT is Lithuania.

N26 was the first service I tried. It is something like a Revolut. It is expensive, and it does not have nearly as many options as Revolut does — but it gave me a Spanish IBAN, and at the beginning that is the thing that matters.

Revolut Business is where I hit the wall. The business account I opened in Spain came with a Lithuanian IBAN that I can only really use inside Revolut. That is not much use in Spain, and it means I cannot receive Bizums into Revolut at all.

Personal Revolut may well be different, and I am not going to pretend I know. Revolut advertises Spanish IBANs for residents, and my understanding is that you need at least a residence card to be given one. I have not opened a personal Spanish Revolut myself, because I already have the Spanish account I need elsewhere. So: it may work perfectly. Check the two letters before you rely on it.

And if you already have a UK Revolut, keep it. This is the part that worries people needlessly. A British Revolut account works perfectly well while you live here — the card is accepted everywhere a card is accepted, and it is a good way to hold and change money. It simply will not do Bizum, so it is a companion to a Spanish account, not a replacement for one.

Wise, Monzo, Starling, a UK high-street bank, a Gibraltar bank: the cards work. The phone-number payments do not, and there is no route to them.

One phone number, one Bizum. It can only be tied to a single account at a time, and you move it from the new bank’s app, not the old one’s.

Openbank, and why I would not send anyone there lightly

Openbank was the worst experience I have had with a bank. Their customer support and their app — even when there is a human on the line, they all sound like robots. They just want to get you off the phone. They never give any useful information.

And while my salary was coming in from Gibraltar, for several months they blocked the account every single month and asked for the same anti-money-laundering documents over and over. It was incredibly annoying, and it is why I stopped using them for anything that mattered. That was two or three years ago.

I still have the account, and I will be honest about why, because it is the same reason you may end up keeping one. It is a real Spanish bank, and a real bank does things the apps cannot:

• It receives Bizums, which my Revolut cannot.
• It receives what Correos collects when a customer pays cash on delivery, which arrives in irregular batches.
• It connects to Hacienda. Setting up direct payment of Spanish tax from a real Spanish bank account is straightforward. You cannot do it from Revolut or N26 or anything like them. This matters to anyone who pays Spanish tax, employed or self-employed, and it is the single most-overlooked reason to keep a proper Spanish account open.

That is the honest shape of banking here: the app you enjoy using and the bank you actually need are often not the same institution.

What I use, and why

For everyday money and savings I use my Revolut UK account, and I think it is the best of them, even if Revolut gets a little confused about my being in Spain — they treat it as a country I am visiting, when in fact I live here. It is better on most counts, and especially for savings: I am paid in pounds, I keep the money in pounds, and the interest is good.

For the self-employed side I use Revolut Business, mainly for exchange. When I buy stocks in Romania I move money there first, because changing into Romanian lei through Revolut is far better and the commissions are definitely smaller than Openbank’s.

And Openbank stays open for the three things above. Three accounts is clumsy, and it is what actually works on this frontier.

Both Revolut accounts can be opened from here for a personal account and here for a business one. Those are referral links: the site earns a small amount if you sign up through them, you pay nothing either way, and the warning about which IBAN you get applies exactly as written above. Nothing on this page was chosen because of them.

Pounds, euros and the frontier

Most of the people I deal with, and most people who go looking for La Línea in the first place, work in Gibraltar and want to live in Spain. Which means they are paid in pounds and then have to change it into euros to spend it here. That exchange, repeated every month for years, is the largest avoidable cost of living on this side of the frontier, and the account you do it through is the whole decision.

Gibraltar uses the pound. Plenty of shops there will take euros and give change in pounds at a rate the shop itself decides, which is rarely in your favour, so a card is usually the better deal on the Rock. Coming the other way, nothing in La Línea takes pounds, and Gibraltar-issued notes are a curiosity even in Britain.

The one rule that always saves money: when a card machine or a cash machine offers to charge you in pounds instead of euros, choose euros. Every time. That “convenience” conversion is the most expensive exchange rate in town.

Cash, and where you still need it

Cards are generally accepted — shops, supermarkets, petrol stations, most restaurants, contactless included. But plenty of people here simply prefer cash, and there is one situation where you should assume it outright: if you need something fixed in the house, the person who turns up will nearly always want cash. Plumbers, electricians, the man who comes about the boiler, the one who fits the blinds. Nobody will say so in advance, and arriving with a card is how the job ends awkwardly.

The same goes for the market, the fruit shop on the corner, the kiosk, the smaller chiringuitos, and the bar with the broken card machine on a busy night.

Spanish law caps cash at €1,000 for any payment where one side is a business, so nobody takes cash for a car or a month’s rent from a company. Between two private individuals there is no cap.

The short version for somebody arriving

1. Get the NIE. Almost nothing here starts without it. Here is how, and the forms are here.
2. Open an account that gives you a genuine Spanish IBAN, and check the first two letters rather than trusting the marketing.
3. Turn on Bizum in that account. You now pay like everyone else here.
4. Keep your UK account. It still works, and if you are paid in pounds you will want it. Always let the machine charge you in euros.
5. Carry twenty euros. Someone’s machine is always broken, and the man fixing your boiler is not taking a card.

Bizum limits and bank requirements from bizum.com and the Diputación de Cádiz collection service, read on 2 September 2026. The accounts described are the writer’s own, opened in this town, and one person’s experience of a bank is not a guarantee of yours. Terms change; the IBAN you are actually issued is the only one that counts.