To keep money...

One must have a bank account. Getting a bank account in the UK is notoriously difficult. There's also quite a number of differences, and gotchas, particularly with Australian bank cards, which I'll explain below.
You should also bear in mind the difficulties involved in communicating with banks when you're in a different time zone, and that you can't go into a branch to sort things out. Changing institutions is going to be very difficult, unless you're created a power of attorney (which we discussed, but did not do. Damnit.)


First up - applying for an account. As a foreign visitor, even with right of abobe, or a youth mobility visa, you can't just walk into the bank and say "gimme an account" - you almost always need an introduction. From our point of view, there was two ways in which we could do this. Our relocation company MyOE would arrange it for us with HSBC. When we arrive, we have to go into the branch, with an introduction letter, proof of address and a passport. This can all be kind of difficult and overwhelming for the first few days in a new city, especially if you may not have a permanent address yet. (We did, and a signed lease, so it was not too bad)

The other option, which we took, was to stay within the institution we use at home, and use their migrant banking service. They basically arranged all the pre-stuff with Clydesdale over here in the UK, and then we showed up and went through much the same procedure.. proof of address, passports, welcome letter, etc.

So it's not just a matter of walking into a bank, and filling out some forms. Then again, it's probably very similar in Australia from what I remember.

Cards... one of the first things I noticed here is, our NAB ATM Debit cards do not work in supermarkets, or what we would term EFTPOS at home. It'll work fine in most of the cash machines (ATMs at home) but don't even bother at Sainsburys, or any other places.
The major difference in the way it works is, all cards here use Chip and Pin technology. IE, the card has a smartcard chip on it, much like many newer Visa cards do in Australia.

The next difference is, the cash cards here don't have different accounts on them. It just has one account. Cash machines don't give you an option to choose, neither do the EFT machines.

What I have established, is our NAB Gold Visa Debit card (despite not having a chip) WILL work, but you cannot use a pin, you must sign.
Due to the absolute debacle with our NAB Visa card, we don't have one right now, and I can't test that yet. It's a whole other story though.

Anyway, as this post is getting wordy, we have been issued with a standard ATM card (or what we could call it) which is attached to a "current" account (our equivalent is probably a 'savings' account) and a Mastercard Debit card, which is attached to a separate account, so we have to make sure we move money in there.
The bank manager basically point blank told us not to bother applying for credit for a minimum of 3 years... so to compensate, we still have a NAB debit card, a NAB Visa Debit, and a new NAB Visa on the way...


So cliff notes:
To get a bank account in the uk, you need a passport, proof of residential address, and usually they want proof of employment also. Don't expect to get credit for the first few years, and be prepared for the differences in cash terminals, be they EFT or ATM. Also - you can change a pin number on ANY card, at any cash machine here, as opposed to home, where you had to go to your specific bank.