@meishijia My citibank application is showing as processing on their website now
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I recently read a post on Dcard saying that Cathay plans to replace all costco card with their CUBE card if the contract is not extended by August 2023.
They recently rolled out a new spending programme for the cube card, probably from fear of losing their 2.5 million costco card holders 
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I applied for a Costco Cathay credit card (The blue one) via my Cathay bank branch office. The process went pretty smooth - they told me to deposit at least 10k in my account and I put in 50k and they helped me fill in the forms (I can’t write Chinese), asked me my job occupation and I told them I’m a business owner and gave them my name card. Also asked me if I have other credit cards (I gave them my ESun world card, and 3-4 other TW credit cards). Got approved by mail less than a week later with monthly credit limit of 400k (I didn’t ask for this much, so they probably queried my other credit cards).
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They’ve been pushing people to apply through their app. Just that us stinky “foreigners” are not welcome to apply… At least not with the convenience of online… Make it hard for those bastards and their different ID numbers!
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Two weeks ago on a Thursday, I was feeling adventurous and decided to open a second bank account with Cathay bank because they seem to have an ATM in every MRT station while E.SUN ATMs seem to be much more sparsely found over Taipei.
After strolling into a bank branch and asking to open an account, I was told that all appointments to open an account on that day were already fully booked. I decided to book an appointment in a different branch for the following day.
The next day, I again made sure to pack all the essentials for opening a bank account (ARC card, passport, stamp, health insurance card, birth certificate, recent health check, primary school transcripts, recommendation letter from my mother, a bottle of water, a 711 sandwich and of course my girlfriend to help me with any language issues).
They started by asking me why I came to Taiwan ([pointing to my girlfriend]), how long I would be staying in Taiwan ([looking at my girlfriend with a questionable look on my face]) and why I want to open a bank account (“Uhh, because I don’t want to keep all that cash at home!”).
Otherwise, the process of opening a bank account was fairly painless and done within roughly two hours. I didn’t even get to eat my sandwich and I even got away without writing down the address of some random McDonalds in the US as my home address or making up a US SSN on the fly (the employee at a bank seemed surprise to learn that not all countries in the world tax their citizens if they aren’t residents, but she accepted that explanation to continue with only providing my Taiwanese ID number and no other tax ID).
After the account was opened, the employee also offered to apply for a CUBE credit card as I already had brought my ESun bank book (forgot to mention this in the things to take to the account opening!). She took a copy and asked me for some proof of salary. I sent her my latest payslip via email - she accepted even though it wasn’t stamped nor signed (unlike the tax office which assumed I created that document myself because of the obvious lack of stamp and signature).
Anyway - two weeks later and I have the card in my mailbox at home. $100k credit limit (for non-US standards that seems decent - if I would be from the US, I would probably rant about how they can give a credit limit which is less than 2 months of salary).
Overall, no complaints - I kept my expectations really low and everything went better than expected.
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Cathay was grumpy at the beginning with me too, but then they did all very professionally, even showed me how to use th ATM to chabge the pin for the debit card.
Quite like them
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What is the cube card, a are the benefits ?
They have a really confusing reward schema which gives up to 3% in certain categories. One has to use their app to chose the category which can only be changed once per day at maximum.
One of the categories is “Shopping” which seems to include some department stores, shops and apparently most restaurants (with some limitations for fast food, small restaurants, …) and Foodpanda / Ubereats. They also have “travel” (HSR and hotels) and “digital” (online shopping, …).
yeah, I had a look at it, but got headache haha. Not too appealing to me.
Funny that… Because Taiwan doesn’t tax its citizens who aren’t residents too!
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Well, finally received my CTBC JCB Line Card.
Application process was painless, sent all the docs and forms via post, the sent me the message after 3 days they received my application. They called me the next day since the card design I chose was not available, so they would change it to the other one available, I agreed. One week processing, they checked my credit score, then they called me to verify my mailing address and very, very weirdly asked me a bunch of questions like “please confirm your Chungwa post account balance and which other credit cards and bank accounts you hold in Taiwan besides CTBC”…
Following day received the approval message and yesterday got the card in the mailbox, but the most incredible surprise is the credit limit, a whopping 20K TWD:joy: will use this card most at 7-11/famima/hilife via line pay, and sometimes at watsons for the line pay points, also a few restaurants have some discount promotions for jcb cards, but jeez, 20K is ridiculous
Applied in the meantime for the First Bank iCash JCB card, has some interesting cashback deals when paying at 7-11s and some other places. They already checked my credit score.
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My lowest limit is Mega Bank with $10k. Guess they didn’t trust me. Highest is $200k. Quite a lot of variance
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My highest is 400K with cathay united, this is my lowest. Very interesting
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Whats the point of a 10k limit 
My Costco card is 30k and amex 90k. I’m still waiting for Citibank.
They checked my credit and tried to call but I missed it. They don’t answer the numbers they called on and the normal customer service line don’t do anything.
I did answer a call from them last week and they said it was all fine
I hope you remembered to pack your girlfriend back in to your bag when finished at the bank? 
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Of course! I am keeping her right next to my passport and stamp in case I need to open another bank account!
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My costco card has 60k on it, but it was my first card ever here without credit history, so it’s ok, using it only at costco, no big spending on it.
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Which bank was this?
Fubon
Really 8%? Google brings up nothing
For it to be that high it must be some USD fixed deposit? But other banks are only offering 5%.
Entie has 5% interest on fixed deposit for USD.
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