Topic: Do any banks offer SEPA-depositable accounts to US citizens? - page 2. (Read 9414 times)

Several banks in Latvia will open accounts by mail for US persons. Rietumu Bank is one, although I think Bitcoin-Central.net just had their bank account closed by Rietumu. Do you care to tell us why that happened, davout? Am I wrong?

I think there's at least one bank like this in Lithuania as well although I'm not sure which bank it is.

I'm pretty sure several banks in Malta will open accounts by mail for US persons. They accepted US account holders before 2008 anyway.

Some banks in Cyprus will open accounts for US persons by mail. You may need an introducing broker for this however. Google "open bank account in cyprus" and you'll get a bunch of these "introducing brokers" who will charge several hundred dollars to give you account application forms.

Also there are still one or two banks in Switzerland which open accounts for US persons, but I'm not sure which banks still do this. Some even by mail, I would bet. There are hundreds of banks there.

Liechtenstein has a handful of banks and I think most will open accounts for US persons. They probably will want you to visit the bank in person and probably sign a waiver about the IRS asking for information on your account.

There are quite a few banks in Jersey and Guernsey (the Channel Islands) that will open accounts by mail. This is true of the Isle of Man as well.

HSBC has a large network of branches in many SEPA countries. You can usually open an account at one of their foreign branches if you have a US HSBC account and go to your nearest US HSBC branch to get your documents certified for the foreign branch.
https://www.expat.hsbc.com/1/2/hsbc-expat/home#dropDown

EDIT:
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Opening a bank account for a non-resident would be possible, but you'd probably have to visit the bank in person.

I'm also interested in this. I'm curious how much trouble it would be to use BTC as a vehicle to go USD -> BTC -> EUR for a vacation. Maybe at some point in the future I'd do arb, but for now just interested in the small-time tourist forex use case.

-bgc

Yeah seriously.  And the minimum balances are a killer since as a US citizen there is a very strong incentive to have no more than USD $10,000 offshore at any point in time.  If you go over that limit, even for just one night, it triggers a boatload of tax reporting requirements.  Red tape galore.

I saw that webpage too but I don't think it means they offer SEPA.  I think that page is more of a "here's how banking works" page for their clients.  For example, it doesn't list their fee for SEPA transfers.

I haven't used the service, but I bank at PNC at they seem to offer SEPA.

I looked into it but I couldn't find a method for US resident to open a SEPA capable bank account.  Not sure if there is some explicit law or if the banks just don't want the hassle.

There are some offshore banks (barclays is big on this in places like Isle of Man) which are SEPA capable but the fees make it pointless. 
Something like $20 per month, $10 per check draft (yes per check), $7 per SEPA transfer, $30 per ACH, and $50 per international wire.  Oh yeah don't forget 2.99% surcharge on debit card usage.

Have you asked HSBC? I'm just starting to look at international business accounts for US Citizens and HSBC seems to pop up a lot.

Bump because I want to know this too.

Yes, I've googled this, and all I could come up with was a few unhelpful pages at Citibank.

I run some arbitrage bots, and I'd be able to save a lot of money if I had a bank account that could receive EUR via SEPA.  I've done a few direct exchange-to-exchange SEPA transfers, but apparently this is starting to piss off the anti-money-laundering people, who want to see these transfers come from or go to an individual's bank account.

Unfortunately I'm a US citizen, which imposes obnoxious reporting requirements on any bank willing to give me an account (assuming that bank ever deals with any US banks, which most of them do).

So… anybody know of a bank that will let a US citizen open a EUR-denominated account and send+receive SEPA transfers?