I have a sole trader business set up in my home country and would like to set up a business bank account here in Taiwan. I’ve tried a number of banks such as HSBC, ANZ, citibank, Chinatrust, Far Eastern, DBS, Mega. All of them have said no for various reasons and a couple have said I need to set up a rep office here first which I can’t because it’s not a limited company in my home country. Does anyone know a bank here that will allow me to open one up with a certificate of registration from my home country or is it impossible?
If you have a company in your country, then you can open a USD account in Taiwan, here we call it OBU (Offore Banking Unit), but if the entity it’s not a company, then it’s not allow to open bank account.
You can’t open a business bank account in Taiwan as a sole trader, sorry. Taiwan does not have any concept such as a sole proprietor or DBA.
The same goes for a rep. office - you can’t open a rep. office as a sole trader.
Do all banks in Taiwan have OBUs? My Mandarin is not very good so would this limit me to the large multinational banks? Or can anyone recommend a Taiwan bank - like ChinaTrust?