The Dreaded ZTL

[Alpinista]

We somehow managed to wander into a prohibited zone last summer and just now got the ticket (not an uncommon thing from many threads on the old board). Our problem is that our bank needs to know "type of account" for the payment to the receiving agency in Italy and "checking" or "savings" are not the correct answers. The contact listed on the ticket is very responsive to our inquiries, but her answer is "I don't know either".

Anyone have experience who could hazard a guess as to the proper designation. Our bank is saying the payment will never get to its target without this secret code.

 

[Ian Sutton]

hmm that's odd. Normally BIC and IBAN numbers are sufficient. Do you have both of these?

It looks like each city has it's own payment details (logical of course), and Fine = Multa in Italian, so try searching for pagamento+multa+<city of the transgression> and hopefully it leads you to a page like this
http://www.comune.siena.it/Il-Comun...?idSessione=S2017033122110483617&idMenu=10506

Though whether it will have the information required, I don't know.

 

[jonathan]

In my (limited) experience, US and European banks seem curiously unable to understand each other's norms! I've met US forms which haven't been able to cope with the universal European IBAN & BIC numbers; we Europeans don't use the 'checking/savings' distinction. And, quite apart from this difficulty, banks seem to charge an arm and a leg for transfers.

Have you thought of trying a specialist service? I've used TransferWise several times for UK-US transfers: quick, reliable, much cheaper than banks. And their website is set up to understand both US and European systems.

 

[Alpinista]

I might try the specialist service if our latest inquiry doesn't bear fruit. We have transferred funds without difficulty over the years to pay contractors and to shift funds to/from our US and Italian accounts, but this one has different requirements. We have the full site information, as above, from the ticket (including a photo suitable for framing of us happily driving along), but nothing that indicates more than "wire transfer, please".

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Alpinista]

Just to put a cap on this, we did take Jonathon's suggestion to use TransferWise. Was less expensive and removed the inability of our own bank to be able to execute the transfer without specifying the nature of the receiving account. Thanks!!