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How to Move Your Digital Life to a New Country

It isn’t easy — currency issues and payment problems often require cancelling or creating new accounts for companies like Google, Apple, and more

Owen Williams
OneZero
Published in
5 min readSep 3, 2019

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Photo: d3sign/Getty Images

IfIf you’ve ever packed up your life and moved to a new country, you’ll know the most stressful parts of moving: getting a visa, finding a new place to live, and moving all of your stuff. What might surprise you, however, is that it’s even more difficult to move your digital life.

I’ve moved internationally twice, from New Zealand to Amsterdam in 2015, and then, most recently, to Toronto. While it’s always exciting to move and explore a new city, there’s a lot to think about — but a more modern problem is taking all of the subscriptions you’ve set up over the years with you. For most people, this is probably a handful of things: Netflix, HBO, and maybe your extra iCloud storage. After moving, especially from a country like Europe to Canada, you probably don’t want to keep paying in a different currency, which is more expensive and likely restricts which features you can use.

On the surface, this doesn’t seem that hard. But, in reality, the process of moving your accounts over to your new home can vary from super easy to outrageously…

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Owen Williams
OneZero

Fascinated by how code and design is shaping the world. I write about the why behind tech news. Design Manager in Tech. https://twitter.com/ow