My Experience With A Local Ba Bank Today

[steveinbsas]

The job can be done in a polite manner without fiery red eyes, snarling face and a frothing mouth.

Are you referring to the bank employee or one of your "dates"?

It actually looks like he was describing my first Argentine girlfriend (without exaggerating).

 

[sevi]

Last year Banco Nacion required Permanent Resident status for Savings Acct. Spoke with the Station Mgr. at Heaquarters...!

Interesting! I had no idea that was an official requirement. When I went to the local branch they were trying to open a saving account for me with just precaria and passport. At the end they were not able to open one because my passport number was too long (one digit more then their system would accept). But they really tried - even logged into another (probably older system) to see if that accepts a passport number with the extra digit for opening an account. This was a month ago. Private banks like Macro had crazy requirements like one year on monotributo etc. before they would open an account ... so I will just wait for my DNI and try again at Banco Nacion.

 

[sevi]

Anyone from the US (and a few other countries) who has an Argentine bank account can easily transfer $8000 pesos (if that was the required monthly income when their visas were granted) directly into their Argentine bank accounts using XOOM or RIA. I seriously doubt that migraciones would have any issues with that.

So you can send money to yourself with RIA when you have a bank account here? Or do you have somebody else send it to you? I know it works with XOOM but was always wondering if RIA works when sending money to your own bank account in Argentina.

 

[steveinbsas]

So you can send money to yourself with RIA when you have a bank account here? Or do you have somebody else send it to you? I know it works with XOOM but was always wondering if RIA works when sending money to your own bank account in Argentina.

You can send money from your own US bank account to your own Argentine bank account, but not if RIA thinks you are physically in Argentina. The "way around" this is to use a VPN that makes you appear to be in the USA and it's probably a good idea (if not essential) to have a US phone number they can call (possibly one you can "buy" on Skype) top verify the transaction.

Instead of trying to "trick" their system (and pay extra for a VPN and US phone number I otherwise do not need), I have a joint US checking account with my brother who can make the RIA transfers to me with a few mouse clicks and answer his home phone to confirm that the transaction is legit. RIA is very good at checking to see that the sender is not a victim of fraud.

 

[mariano-BCN]

Steveinbsas: so the need for an account in Uruguay is no necessary according to you? Just asking.

I don't have one in Uruguay but I'm considering opening one, just to have some dollars nearby in a bank.

 

[steveinbsas]

Steveinbsas: so the need for an account in Uruguay is no necessary according to you? Just asking.

I don't have one in Uruguay but I'm considering opening one, just to have some dollars nearby in a bank.

I can only speak for myself and it certainly isn't necessary for me to have one. In fact, it would be undesirable for me to have a bank account in Uruguay, as I live over 600 kilometers south of Capital Federal. Imagine what an ordeal it would be to get to Uruguay to get dollars (for which i have no need in Argentina). The closest I want to get to Capital Federal is when I go to the Bahia Blanca airport, but only to greet someone who has come here to visit me.

I can use XOOM (which has always been faster an RIA) to receive funds (dollars converted to pesos at an attractive rate) the same day I initiate a transfer to be sent from my US bank (which is different from the joint account I have with my brother). I can transfer funds to the joint account (without charge) on a monthly basis for him to make the transfers using RIA. It only takes a few mouse clicks for each of us to accomplish the transfers.

 

[ElCordobés]

I'm just liking everything steveinbsas is saying. It his experience matches my own closely. Bank account was easy to open (in my case Galicia and Credicoop both with permanent residency and a monotributo recently created...not more than 30 minutes to do each). That said, it's far more rigorous than in the US and I wasn't able to use it for several days.

I do however have a Banco Republica (BROU) account in Uruguay (I had lived there for 18 months...so this is really just by luck that I have as a back up). I only use to access funds if I go to UY or a friend goes (a good friend...not an acquantance...I believe there is a long story on this forum regarding friends going to Uruguay) BROU lets you pull USD1200 per card per day in my experience.. I have a joint with my wife--so two debit cards. Not going to buy property with that limitation, but a nice bit of spending money. Of course, if I go in person I can go to the caja to make a withdrawal.

EDIT: The Argie accounts have made life easier here. It really is easier to be in the banking system than to not...paying bills, having a couple credit cards, CBU transfers, and not having to worry whether I have enough cash on hand to make it through a long weekend. Of course, one should spend within their declared means...at least whatever is debited from one's accounts.

 

[Sockhopper]

Steve,
In reference to Argentine requirements for obtaining temporary residency as pensioners, I can say that in 2011 its Montreal consulate told my husband that we (Canadian/UK citizens living in Canada) could apply from Canada and that we'd have to prove our regular monthly Canadian pension income, set up an Arg peso bank account and prove that we'd arranged with our Canadian bank a regular monthly bank transfer worth 16,000 pesos per month (for 2 pp) for 3 years. ARCA with whom we were not contracted suggested we offer 22,000 pesos/month to increase our chances of being issued temporary residency as pensioners. We were fine with all that.

That was prior to the first of a spate of financial restrictions begun in Oct/11.There was at that time no blue rate, no 'Xoom' generally being used which has never been available to non-US-located bank accounts anyway, no arbolitos chanting "Cambio" nor massive increases in monthly peso rents of unfurnished rentals due to a 'blue rate'. My husband would retire in June 2012. We'd have our temporary residency by then and have our movers ship all our household goods to BA. We even had help getting a leased unfurnished rental in BA.

In early 2012, we heard that Argentina was about to no longer allow foreigners to apply from outside Arg, that we'd have to apply while we were IN Arg. We couldn't handle uprooting our lives, giving up our home etc wthout knowing in advance of doing those things we'd be issued temporary residency. Also, in Apri/May, 2012, a final financial control of a spate of them was the first one that we couldn't cope with. Three years of retirement planning down the drain followed by an unplanned move to France and a city we'd not been to in 15 years!

Despite being EU citizens with an automatic right to reside here, to actually set in motion the normal needs of life here is fraught with at least as much bureaucracy as obtaining temporary Arg residency or an Arg bank account. More government authorities are involved when you're trying to get permission from just one public or private institution. Each little segment of a process involves 6 stages. Things here are in utter detail so as to be 100% fraud-proof. You'd be an irritable fool here to think that 8 weeks or 26 months wait time for something is slow!

Getting a fully operating bank account here sounds way harder here than in BA. We each signed over 40 pages of a contract, had 4 long meetings with a bank manager, and he had to apply to our local post office branch for it to conduct a 6-week long procedure aimed at its ensuring that we actually lived full-time at the address we said was ours. For 3 of those weeks, one of us had to be home all day long weekdays.

 

[nkotb]

Sockhopper: ok, so France sucks. What does that have to do with anything? I mean, I'm sure the guy who used to reside in the Congo has even more frightening stories about bureaucracy, but we're talking Buenos Aires here.

 

[Sockhopper]

I posted because Steve wasn't sure if Arg enforced the monetary requirement of depositing a certain sum of foreign money monthly into a peso account in connection with getting temporary residency, and I could answer that it did and affirm the sum required since I've dealt with both Arg and an expert, ARCA, during the period Steve was referring to. (Steve knows ARCA.)

Some people in this thread found getting a fully functioning Arg bank account to be hard. Others found it easy. Hard or easy is relative to how a thing is done in other countries. People who decide whether to go to, stay in or leave Arg do so after they've compared it with conditions and ways of life in their own and other countries. That's what I did posting. This is done all the time on this forum and is visible in this thread.

Bureaucracy's red tape exists everywhere. What's hard in one country is easy in another and vice versa.

I doubt you've ever lived in France since you decided it should suck upon hearing only that getting a bank account here is complex! There are plenty of rewards here for our efforts and successes. That's why France is the world's most visited country year after year. Some of the benefits are similar to BA's. I also wouldn't dismiss Africa. What's a good or bad country to be or live in is radically changing before our eyes at a pace that's astounding and that nobody envisaged 15 years ago. People's options are greater now.