So how can foreigners open up a Chinese bank account in China easily and without any faults? Check out our guide to find out!
Opening up another bank account in another country may seem like a bit of a nuisance and many of you may be wondering what’s the point, especially if you have a card from your home country that would work fine in China. The answer is simple, you need to.
The majority of purchases in China day to day are through Alipay or Wechat pay, even if you want to purchase something online for example through Taobao, you need a Chinese bank account. You’ll need a Chinese Bank Account number to set up an account on any of these apps, as they simple won’t accept cards from anywhere else, they sometimes don’t even accept certain cards in certain areas of China, even more so when some ATMS don’t accept VISA cards! So be prepared when you come to China, you can set up your Chinese bank account with online, mobile and physical banking and you’ll be living life like a true Chinese.
In our guides, we try to be as clear and accurate as possible, making things simpler for you!
1. Choose which Bank you want to go to!
There are a range of Banks in China, but we suggest going with the biggest ones, they are: Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank or Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, or China Merchant’s Bank.
We suggest choosing the bank based on the below preferences:
Nearest location (because if you need to change your passport number or report a stolen card etc. you’ll need to go to the exact branch that you opened the account at!)
ATMs nearby – Some ATMs from other banks can often charge a % if you have a withdrawal from one of their machines, and using your own bank’s ATMs means you can access the majority of the things you need via their 24/7 service machines (which are location specific)
2. Prepare your documents
Just your passport, and maybe your residence permit! (Oh and we recommend taking some cash in case they ask you to pay for the card or printing)
3. Go to the bank!
When you go to the bank, we suggest going to the bank as early as possible to try and avoid the crowds, even at 9AM there will be a fairly decent sized queue, so try to make sure to get there early!
When you get inside, head over to the reception desk, and they’ll have a staff member who will speak to you to ask what service you need, tell them “我想开一个银行账户” pinyin = Wǒ xiǎng kāi yīgè yínháng zhànghù.
But don’t worry if your Chinese still isn’t great or even if it’s nonexistent, the majority of larger banks will have at least 1 English speaking staff member, so you can ask for them. What they’ll do now is give you a number, and also a form for you to fill out, it’ll have English titles aswell as Chinese, but if you can’t write Chinese very well, you can ask the clerk to help you with it.
When you’re eventually called up the procedure and process is quite simple but can take quite a while, there’s a lot of scanning, photocopying, signing forms etc. but once this is out of the way, they’ll tell you how much of a deposit is required (if it’s needed), if you would like to put any currency into it, and then they’ll hand the card over to you!
Oh and quite a few times you’ll have to input your 6 digit bank card number as they like to have you verify it a number of times.
4. Once you’ve received your card they’ll ask you if there’s anything else they can help you with.
Say yes, tell them you want mobile banking and also online banking, and they’ll take you through the process, give you a USB stick for online payments (depending on the bank), and they’ll hand you even more paperwork to sign, and after inputting your card number a few more times they’ll hand over all of the paperwork, and you’re done!
You can then download the apps, use the usernames, passwords, and digit codes that you created whilst doing the paperwork with the clerk and you’ll have the ability to use Alipay, Wechat Pay and also Taobao!
