@tempogain are you reading this? See how easy it is to get out of a discrimination complaint?
Believe me, I’m fully aware of that. That wasn’t my point.
So if person is from Afghanistan and lives in Taiwan, person gets treated by Taiwanese same bad as at home because his government is full of discrimination towards Taiwanese. Eye for eye, ha!
The level of complaining and whining here is unbelievable. It’s not xenophobic that they don’t let you open an account online. The message even says you’re welcome to go into the branch and open an account.
Realistically speaking, there are hundreds of countries worldwide, each providing all sorts of different identification documents. It is not realistic to expect a bank to be able to accurately distinguish and validate them. Especially not in a country which is 99% local citizens and barely any immigration.
I also don’t understand how so many foreigners seem to have massive problems here. I got a job, several bank accounts, several credit cards, mobile phone contracts, have taken public and private insurance, and even now have a mortgage. Being non-Taiwanese has rarely been an issue. Plus, the service you get here is still much, much better than the UK. So I don’t know whether people are just experiencing very rare and niche sets of circumstances which caused problems, or they’re just looking to whine about something.
Online only banks have no branches. This was also mentioned in the complaint.
Taiwan provides standardized identification document to all foreign residents. A(P)RC
Passports are also standardized.
Many things can be achieved by wasting a lot of time in the banks for banal things. But this should not be the default and people value their time.
Many complaints here are made out of principle. If there would be no unnecessary barriers, people would not need to complain.
Some only whine, some whine and act and try to correct the thing. And then someone whines about the whining.
Who’s more useful to the foreign community and the country ultimately?
Taiwan has a population of 24 million people. Over 1 million are foreign nationals. How is that only 1% of the population?
I whined to the FSC about Richart Bank as they required ROC citizens to list the elementary school they went to in Taiwan. There was no provision to put NA or Nil. So they changed that.
If we don’t take up these issues then things don’t change. Even us citizens have issues. Some online banks refuse to open accounts if you are not born in Taiwan even if you are citizen. I haven’t complained to FSC and MOI about that yet.
You should, that’s just stupid. Although I know why they do that… had a lenghty discussion at the last event of the TABF
You’ve missed the point, so I assume you haven’t been following any of this and commented without bothering trying to.
The main complaint isn’t about not being able to open accounts online — it’s about foreigners being completely excluded from opening accounts at all (LINE Bank and most of the others) or from specific services and promotions (as in this case with Richart/Taishin).
Going into a bank to open an account is irrelevant to this. That isn’t something I complained about and wouldn’t have helped here because foreigners aren’t/weren’t allowed to sign up at all. That’s just something the banks/government agencies wrote to justify their discrimination (the claim being they can’t be discriminatory because they deign to provide other services to foreigners and don’t exclude us completely).
Again, you’ve missed the point. This is irrelevant here because foreigners are excluded irrespective of what ID they have. In any case, they should be able to use our Taiwan-issued A(P)RCs and NHI cards, driving licenses, etc. Instead they’ve just chosen to say “no foreigners”.
some ppl whine to whine, let them be. We r in the good mate, we r doing something good.
I stopped whining 25 years ago after I naturalized. I had to rejoin forumosa last year to learn to be a whiner again.
There’s not quite that many of us, but your general point is not wrong.
Guy
Every foreign resident in Taiwan should have both a passport and an ID issued by Taiwan’s government (ARC, APRC, TARC for the special foreigners-not-foreigners, etc). Are you telling me LINE Bank can’t handle processing a passport and an ARC? Seriously?
If it’s about tax residence, I also know many Taiwanese who have foreign tax residences, not sure where the issue is here either.
For someone to come on here and say everyone’s whining, and then this is the level of thought you put into your comment…. hmmmmm….
I tell u a secret: according to the financial regulations about bank account opening, foreigners do not even need to show the passport, only 2 pieces of ID and have a Unified ID number (for us issued by NIA).
So A(P)RC and NHI card or TW driving licence are perfectly legit to open an account (I tried it myself and worked after a lot of arguing, but when I pointed the law and their own website and terms, they couldn’t say anything more).
So the point of line bank is not really about the inability of processing our documents, they don’t want to get involved with FATCA/CRS. That’s why they don’t even allow TW citizen born abroad to sign up.
It just feels like some businesses in Taiwan almost freak out when they encounter a foreigner.
The other day, I went to a CHT store to ask about their current offers for home internet (as my contract expired some months ago) and the employee just told me that this branch is not servicing foreigners and I should visit another one. She finally handed me a paper with the current prices, but again emphasized that she doesn’t know if these prices are also valid for foreigners because her store only has the conditions for Taiwanese people.
And unfortunately, the authorities don’t seem to see any discrimination here - as long as the category “foreigner” isn’t being denied service completely, nothing will be done. The response reads a bit like if Andrew complained about being denied a student discount for not being a student or something…
That’s me. A citizen who has invalid listed as not born in Taiwan.
I’ve been inspected, detected, and voided.
HSBC Taichung staff even admitted that if I entered Taiwan on a foreign passport, got myself the Tax ID as a foreigner, they would let me open another account with NO ARC. As @Mataiou says, turn up at the bank branch with the laws bookmarked in Chinese and watch the bank staff’s faces shrivel.
Then when they say can do flip open your laptop, go to the FSC site and start writing a complaint don’t forget to get the staff names. Then tell them another email to go to MOI. Watch them with their petrified eyes run around getting your account opened lol.
They will apologize profusely saying it was all a misunderstanding
Living in Taiwan for almost 5 years. I never had back account. Using Revolut only, I think it’s pretty good. I really stay away from taiwanese banks…
The reason none of this has been an issue for you is the amount of work some of us have done before you with FSC and NCC complaints, bank complaints, and government complaints.
You’re welcome