That seems steep. May I ask what currency your savings are in? Some US brokers’ accounts can get funded with various foreign currencies. You could then change from your foreign currency into USD using direct Forex trading. Then you could send it from that broker to a Taiwan bank in USD.
Example for Interactive Brokers:
Yes it is steep.
The banks are thieves - I was happy when crypto emerged as an alternative to them but our friends in the government implemented controls on crypto too.
I don’t doubt your motives to help but I prefer to remain anonymous.
Thanks, I’ll look into it.
FYI based on my homework today:
Foreign currency account. 2 of them in separate banks. One is for receiving and disbursing funds. The other is for saving. And you usually transfer from the savings to accounts account when you need to pay bills or transfer funds internationally. Often by cashiers cheque. Usually your CFO will do this.
Personal stamp. Business stamp. These things are important in Taiwan.
Safety deposit box.
Gold. Buy the actual physical gold not the crypto currency version that’s held for you. Check the rules but most gold bullion is allowed on top of whatever currency limits apply. If you do get pulled up it will be because they suspect you’re making jewelry out of it for resale.
Once you look at the prices for property you’ll work out renting is cheaper.
Cars are cheap enough. Manual transmission vehicles are harder to find but do exist. Motorcycles must be gold plated in Taiwan because the prices are ridiculous.
Things to look out for. Electricity and gas prices rising over the coming 3-5 years. China.
Hopefully you’re not from the USA. If you’re from the USA and you buy a mortgaged property you’ll have a lot of tax considerations to account for if you ever sell the property concerning foreign currency exchange rate changes over time.
Thank you for your informative post.
Why have two in separate banks?
Interesting, I didn’t know that. But this can be stolen, or forged? It seems possible to produce a replica easily with a scanner + 3D printer.
Are deposits in a safe deposit box guaranteed? What turned me off them is that they are not, and there have been cases of safe deposit box heists.
Agree.
May be the case but what’s the alternative to large sums of money in the bank being eroded by inflation?
Some I’m going to invest in gold, some in my own business (hopefully profit-making).
https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/Taiwan/rent-yields
What are the rental yields outside Taipei like? I presume the data of ~1.5-2% rental yields is skewed by the high price of real estate in the capital.
in my opinion, residential rental yields are pretty low unless you are aiming at high end luxury. Rent to companies is better, but real estate costs are higher too. I just think the margins are slightly better than common housing, but everything is quite inflated here in terms of purchase price.
Including in other cities apart from Taipei/New Taipei?
Yes. Taipei is certainly the worst. But this has spread outward for a decade or so to all of the mainland. I am not familiar with the other islands though . It all got really bad with Ma’s administration. Landowners were happy, but everyone is seeing the obvious problems with it now.
East, south etc are all way up as well. People in taipei think it is a deal, but it still astounding for what you get. even the countryside, loads of people from the cities buying up land for retirement homes or just investments.
Basically just leases from various government companies or aboriginals are as cheap as regular fee simple type real estate 10 years ago. It is really bad. Unless you bought beforehand of course 
It’s keeps your main account safe as only you and your CFO know it. The only account that is known is the transfers and payables.
Sure someone can forge your stamp but they’ll also need your company info. That’s a separate set of information.
Rental yields wouldn’t even cover an interest only loan repayment. Taiwans property market is a Ponzi scheme of epic proportions. The population rate is declining yet the developers are building even more residential apartment buildings and projects. Where I’ve been the rent I’ve paid in the last 12 years wouldn’t even cover the minimum needed for a deposit on a house loan. Yet the place I’m living in would be valued at near $1 million US on the local market.
Wise is indeed an EMI in the UK and holding equivalent licences around the globe.
Electronic Money Institutes (EMIs) are a step below banks tbh as per operations, however they still rely on traditional banks to actually make operations. So the accounts at an EMI are not interest bearing, are not covered by full deposit guarantee and are only intended for transactional purposes. Then you can have some balances on ofc, but “at your risk” basically.
Here in TW AML/KYC policies are so stupidly strict, in particular for foreigners. Even if the law does clearly states that citizens and foreigners are alike for account opening purposes without any theoretical restrictions (just different documents to be provided, even non-resident foreigners can open accounts according to the law and regulations), the FSC (the regulator) cannot care less and let the banks do whatever they want, it is appalling. So we foreigners, event if with APRC, cannot still open accounts online or apply online to credit cards, just out of laziness of banks to implement the automatic check with NIA of our A(P)RCs, everything thence needs to be done at the branch or via post for applications or account opening.
As for what types of transfers Wise accepts to credit, in every jurisdiction they hold a licence to operate they accept the domestic currency via local clearing, then in some more evolved banking jurisdictions they also accept multicurrency. However Wise does not have any licence in TW (as no other actual Wise-like company) and does not have any collaboration agreement with any local bank or EPB (Electronic Payment Business, the kinda correspondent of EMI in TW). So all payments in and out of Wise in TW are all made via SWIFT as international transfers.
Wonderful, thanks for the explanation.
Reading some older posts about property in Taiwan, some posters said that even though the population is declining, it would probably result in something like Japan, where despite the aging and shrinking population, it is increasingly centered in cities which keeps the prices going up.
Thank you for your explanation! How can Wise be competitive in terms of transfer fees when they still haven’t eliminated the middle men?
Reading about the start of Wise here:
They’re both from Estonia. Taavet, who was the first employee at Skype, lived in London but got paid in euros. Kristo worked for Deloitte, also lived in London, and got paid in pounds. But he had a mortgage in euros back in Estonia.
They both moved their money with their banks — which had expensive fees and bad exchange rates. They knew there had to be a better way. So they put their heads together and invented a beautifully simple workaround.
Each month, they looked up the real exchange rate on Reuters. Taavet put his euros into Kristo’s Estonian bank account, and Kristo topped up Taavet’s UK account with his pounds. Both got the currency they needed almost instantly, and neither paid an extra cent on bad exchange rates or unreasonable charges.
I assumed they kept costs low by using some electronic peer-to-peer forex trading.
Since you seem to be a guy in the know, I’m curious what kind of checks and information sources banks and EMIs have, and do on their clients. For example:
Thank you again for your informative post, it’s a very interesting glimpse into another world.
As you mentioned, it’s peer to peer, kinda. Wise, as other companies operating these such of services, basically avoid using SWIFT by having several local banking relationships all over the world and doing themselves the job of SWIFT and correspondent banking. So, if you need to send USD to the US by converting some GBP, that’s the best use scenario, since you would send GBP via Faster payments in the UK (so local rails), then Wise would convert at competitive rate the GBP to USD and release the USD via local rails in the US to the beneficiary (Fedwire or ACH, it depends).
The above applies to a very large amount of currency pairs, however if you need to send non domestic currency, then it would still go via SWIFT (like sending USD to the USD from Britain or sending USD from the US to TW or any non completely domestic combination).
You could leave your savings in US broker account, travel to Taiwan, then open a Taiwan USD account, then transfer to your USD account at Taiwan bank.