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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?

Bump because I want to know this too.

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.

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. :)

I haven't used the service, but I bank at PNC at they seem to offer SEPA (https://www.pnc.com/webapp/unsec/ProductsAndService.do?siteArea=/pnccorp/PNC/Home/Corporate+and+Institutional/Treasury+Management/Payments+and+Disbursements/Funds+Transfer).

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.

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'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

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

Several banks in Latvia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_in_Latvia) will open accounts by mail for US persons. Rietumu Bank is one, although I think Bitcoin-Central.net (https://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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_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 (http://www.swconsult.ch/cgi-bin/banklist.pl) there.

Liechtenstein has a handful of banks (http://www.swconsult.ch/cgi-bin/banklie.pl) 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_in_Jersey) and Guernsey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_in_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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If anyone would like further help, I can possibly point you in some good directions depending on your needs. Just ask. ;)

Thanks Casha.  Those are some good links.  HSBC looks like the easiest and most direct option.

How about the other way round? Is there a way to open a bank account in the US for European citizens? Used to have one at Citizens Bank a few years back, but I was in the US at the time. Closed it again to avoid fees when going back. Love to do some arbitrage.

Apparently it is not possible to open an account these days without being resident.

Interested too, if anyone know a way please post here or PM me. I am only interested in legal or FUD ways though.

Yep.  Know Your Customer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer) regulations require a physical address in the US.  You could probably manage it if you got a citizen to forward your mail for you, but if you were doing a lot of transactions and any flags were raised they (and their property if they own it) would be in the firing line.

Yes and physical identification.
Apparently it became much harder to open a bank account in the US after 9/11

This is just stupid. One world. One future.

Yep, it was part of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act.  I've read it's mostly just an translation/adaptation of the Nazi constitution, but I don't know enough German to look into it.  Either way, it's a bunch of fear-based, freedom-eliminating, nonsensical, nationalistic bullshit.

That too can be done although it is difficult. KYC "regulations" do not require a physical address in the US. Most US banks do want a US shipping address to send your statements, checkbook, debit card and such to, which is easy enough to take care of. Most also will say that they require the foreign resident physically come to the bank to open the account. The most common answer you'll get is that it's not possible, but that is not true at all.

EverBank at least used to open accounts for foreign residents by mail, although they did want a lot of documents.

E*Trade Bank used to open foreign resident's accounts by mail without even notarization of your ID copy that you mail in. I think they stopped this account opening by mail for foreigners a few years ago, but it was the easiest way to get this done for several years before that.

Most of the biggest banks will open accounts for foreign residents too. Just visit their site and look around. The process may be not worth the trouble or cost, but it's very possible to do, especially if your initial deposit will be "substantial" and they understand the reasons that you want to open an account.

You do not need a Social Security Number to bank in the USA but having an SSN will almost guarantee that opening a bank account is an easy task. It's often treated as a well known fact that you must have a valid SSN or the bank cannot legally open an account for you, but in actual fact that it not true.

Was this Everbank experience before 2001?  Since then things have changed drastically.

And in 2008 when I worked customer support for Bank of America, they taught us that it was a US government requirement to have a physical address.  Can you provide evidence or experience (more recent than 2001) that it's possible to open an account without a physical address?

It was 2008 when I checked into it. What you get told about "the law" very well might just be bank policy weather the banker knows this or not. Usually they don't. They only know what they've been told.

There may be a way around the physical address restriction, but if they are giving up potential customers that tells me the workaround is sufficiently troublesome as to make it de facto the law.  

What I found in the US Code(http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5318A) was this regarding the required records for all transactions:


(i) does not specify the specifics of what constitutes and address record, but it is probably specified somewhere.  I'm just too lazy to find it.  It's also possible that this is left up the the Secretary of the Treasury, as the identity requirements are.

Being a US citizen or not is not such a big problem.

Please tell is it possible for you to come to Europe physically to open the account or not?

If you can come physically to Europe, I can recommend you lots of options, depending on other priorities for you.

If you don't want to come physically to Europe, that's a completely different story, and your options will be VERY limited, if any.

You just need to come to Europe once, for about half an hour in the bank branch, that's it. Of course not every bank will open an account, and not every account will be the best idea to manage fully remotely without an easy way to come to Europe to fix things, but there are lots of options if you can come at least once.

I was planning to visit Neitherlands... What would you recommend there?

Well, that's not the best country for non-resident accounts.

You should go more to the east.

Poland: http://www.aliorbank.pl/en
Estonia: http://www.lhv.ee/en/banking_services/

and generally the "new" EU countries (which entered EU in 2004 or later) seem to have more non-resident friendly approach, with a lot of polish and Estonian ones quite good. The two above I'd try first.

Besides that Austria might work. 

In Belgium http://www.montepaschi.be/ was quite hassle-free also. That's the closest to Netherlands that I can recommend for non-EU residents.

It is possible, but my experience is that if you do this once they think it's reasonable to ask you do to it in the future.

I can't afford to have my account frozen and be told that I must fly to Europe to unfreeze it.  If I've never been there physically it is totally unreasonable for them to say "you must come here physically to get your account unfrozen" -- a stunt like that would wind up in the press and be enough of a black eye for the bank that they wouldn't do it.



Yeah, that is an absolute non-starter.  Exactly the sort of BS I was talking about above.

What you're talking about isn't me coming to Europe to open the account -- it's me giving the false impression that I'm willing to fly out there when there is some sort of need to "fix things".  I am not willing to do that.

BTW, just to reiterate, I don't want a "European bank account".  I want a SEPA-enabled bank account.  So I don't think me not flying to Europe is unreasonable.

You can open non local accounts via your local HSBC branch, it might cost a fair bit in fees to do it like that but it's cheaper than flying to Europe.
Bank of East Asia offer the same kind of service if you're in San Francisco or New York.

Ummm that's wealth management services not simple accounts.

However it does generally look like you're screwed if you're a US citizen trying to hold wealth outside the country.

Maybe time to hit up Costa Rica or Belize for one of their nice cheap citizenships?

I may find you some options, but nothing will give you a guarantee that there will never be an issue that the bank will require a personal visit to solve it. Even if you open it without visiting the branch, and it works for some time, law and/or bank policies may change and at some point they may say "we are sorry, but we need you to come to our branch and sign this paper in the presence of our employee to continue banking with us". This will never be a completely unreasonable requirement, and because hardly anyone ever has a account in Europe without being here physically, if a bank places such requirement it won't give bad publicity, because you'll probably be the only customer of the bank for whom it is a problem. Even if at some point they decide to stop servicing you, it won't be completely unreasonable for them to say: "Sorry, because of legal changes we cant continue servicing you, you are welcome to come in to any of our branches to pick-up your balance in cash". Cash in branch is a most legitimate form of refund, and nobody will see it badly here if a bank does this to someone.

You can try something from http://www.offshore.barclays.com/ but even if it works, it'll probably require very high balances and be very expensive.
I think even non-EU offshore Barlcays accounts have SEPA-accessible numbers.

If you don't want to risk flying nor the Barclays offshore would work for you, nor HSBC accepts you, then you'd be better-off partnering with me, and when you have someone who wants to pay with SEPA, you contact me, I accept the SEPA, convert to USD and send a USD wire to you, and in exchange you do the same for me - when someone wants to pay with US bank transfer I can't accept, I can ask you for the same thing in the opposite way, with the difference that I will want a USD wire to my account in Poland.


If you want your own account, there is a bank http://www.sync.pl/ in Poland that would not require ever visiting the branch, as they service customers in Poland that way too, they have virtual branches with video link, and don't service anyone in physical branches, you can be a foreigner and have a foreign address, but:

1) you first need to have an account at any other bank in Poland and make a transfer from it to verify your address - and to open that you'd need to come here
2) you'd need a polish ID number PESEL, which you can get as a foreigner if you even temporarily live in Poland even for a short time.

Getting a PESEL number requires a temporary residence permit in Poland probably.

Your Sync account will not be tied to the address you get your residence permit in Poland for, and you can use your US address together with the polish PESEL number in Sync without problems.

So come to Poland for three months, get a PESEL number, open one bank account at any polish bank, then open a http://www.sync.pl/ account, make a transfer from your first account to Sync to verify it, and then you can fly away back. Its a nice country. That way your visit will only be for the first bank account, which you will later close, and you will never have visited the Sync Bank which you will keep, so they will never be able to make the assumption that you can come to a branch to fix things. They don't service anyone in branches anyway.

Cos mi sie wydaje, ze malo komu by sie chcialo poswiecac 3 miesiace czasu, tylko dla konta bankowego w Polsce ; )