I’m holding a credit card from Mega Bank but I’m not able to open a simple bank account at Mega Bank to pay my credit card bill without any fees. They just say that I can go to a 7-11 to pay the credit card bill without any fees. So why should I take the bus or drive 2.5km one-way or 5km return to pay the credit card bill without any fees? They said that I have enough other bank accounts and can pay a minimal fee for paying the credit card bill. The thing is that the other bank accounts I’m not using at all as there is no benefit for moving my cash to a bank account only to withdraw the same money some time later. Also paying some fees to pay my credit card bill is a no-go to me. I’ve showed them my new ARC card no. (UI no.) today and claimed that there is no history of opening bank accounts connected to my new ARC card no. but they claimed that they know me and still refused to open a bank account for me.
As I don’t need my other bank accounts anyway, I was thinking of closing them. But in very rare cases the sellers of online shops like Shopee and Ruten pay a refund to me so I still need a bank account for cases like this. I will probably open a Mega Bank account in my daughter’s name and use that one to pay my credit card bill. My daughter is 1-year old now. But then I would have to use 2 different Mega Bank logins. So either always switching between 2 accounts on the same phone or install the Mega Bank App on 2 different phones. Both methods are not very optimal to me but installing the Mega Bank App on 2 different phones would probably be the method which I would use.
I don’t know exactly how it can be that bad in Taiwan that I’m not even able to open a simple Mega Bank account to pay my credit card bill but unless somebody has a better solution I will just open a Mega Bank account in my daughter’s name. What purpose Mega Bank is pursuing not to oppose to open a bank account for my daughter but opposing to open a bank account for me in order that I can pay my credit card bill I don’t understand at all. Maybe they only want to make the life of foreigners in Taiwan difficult. Yet my grandfather is Thai-Chinese born in Shantou, Guangdong province. Also I had several Mega Bank accounts at the Mega Bank in Bangkok, Thailand before but they said that this is nothing that they consider when opening a Taiwanese Mega Bank account. I’m trying to open a Taiwanese Mega Bank account already since many years but as I only got an ARC in November 2020 I was out of luck before. They always claimed that I need an ARC but in the end when I really got an ARC all they give is a credit card but the long-promised bank account remains unreachable to me.
That is so weird. Back last century, we all opened Mega Bank accounts -back when it was known as International Bank of China and had branches in US and Latin America- because it was one of the few not giving you hassle.
My credit card with Mega was the first I got, a secured card, so I obviously needed an account.
They refused to give me a credit card even when my employer was using Mega. Sigh.
Have you tried opening a foreign currency account with them? Maybe it will get your foot in the door. Or at least for the amusement of looking at their faces.
If you tell 7-11 that they accidentally left a 2.5 km stretch of Taiwan without any stores I’m sure they’ll open three of them on your corner by the weekend.
My Mega Bank credit card is unsecured with a credit limit of NT$50k. My wife had to sign some documents to act as a guarantor though. I’ve told them in December 2020, 1 month after I got my ARC, that I need to open a foreign currency deposit account, a TWD bank account and a credit card. I’m holding some money in European bank accounts as well and I wanted to transfer about €3,000 to Taiwan. They said that I can do this with another Bank and that they can only give me a credit card. Then I really transferred about €3,000 to a foreign currency account of another bank which I converted into TWD a few days later when the rate was good. Usually I just withdraw my money from an ATM using a foreign card though.
My advice is to calmly take your Mega Bank credit card and all other relevant documents (passport, ARC, etc) to a different branch. Be polite and ask if you could open a new account.
I suspect you’ll get a totally different response. Good luck!
Going to another Mega Bank branch would be straightforward for Taiwanese citizens. But would Taiwanese citizens even be rejected in the first place? For ARC card holders they always require that the bank branch is located near the place of residency. As I live in a small village in Kinmen with about 200 people I can only try it in the Mega Bank branch in Jincheng. Unfortunately that’s the only Mega Bank branch here in Kinmen. If I would try to open a bank account in Taipei I would get rejected due to the long distance involved from the bank branch to my place of residency. But anyway my wife has promised me that she will help me to open a bank account in my daughter’s name. This would solve my problem.
I remember you posting this situation before. One of my suggestions was to call Megas Taipei office or email them and let them know what is happening.
If that branch is just taking the piss, the head office will set them straight.
When I asked to open a foreign currency account, a TWD account and a credit card in December 2020 they said that the rejection concerning the foreign currency account and the TWD account came from the head office in Taipei. Then when I tried to open a bank account again yesterday they said that it’s too dangerous for them to try to open a bank account for me again even though I got a new ARC card no. yesterday as I’ve just got rejected by the head office last month. I told them that this is ridicolous as last time the rejection from the head office came within less than 5 minutes so what can they check within such a short timeframe? Putting the ARC card no. into a database and check if I have any other bank accounts was probably the only thing which they checked. Anyway I can understand that some younger women in the Mega Bank can’t help me even when I got a new ARC card no. as their supervisor just sits behind those younger women. From now on I will only use my daughter’s Mega Bank account as soon as her bank account is opened. My own bank accounts I won’t use anymore at all. I even don’t go to update my ARC card no. with them. If this causes any problems I will close my own bank accounts as I don’t use them anyway. If they just do what they want here in Taiwan I can also do what I want.
I was gonna say the same thing, drop Mega Bank and open your accounts with a another bank and you can apply for credit cards there also (before you cancel the mega bank credit card).
I’ve asked in Bank SinoPac if I can open a bank account there but without a job I can forget it. Concerning the Bank of Taiwan that’s a bank which doesn’t look appealing to me at all as it seems like taking a time machine back to the 1980s each time when entering a Bank of Taiwan branch. There is no need for such a big effort to try to apply for a Bank of Taiwan account and a Bank of Taiwan credit card. I’ve tried to open a bank account there before and got rejected as I couldn’t provide a Thai tax identification number. I obviously don’t have such a tax identification number at all as I do some private business in Thailand and never filed a tax return form. In other banks I could open a bank account with just my Thai personal identification number. The Bank of Taiwan employees unlike the Mega Bank employees never smile and the Bank of Taiwan customers are in average much older than the Mega Bank customers.
I’m only using my Mega Bank credit card for purchases in PX Mart and Hi-Life. Everywhere else I’m using my Thai Siam Commercial Bank JCB credit card. My SCB JCB credit card gives me 3% cashback in many Asian countries including Taiwan besides still being able to collect credit card points also. Of course they are charging 3% foreign currency conversion fee also so I won’t gain anything compared to the mid-market rate at all but at least I can earn some credit card points as well. I think that the credit card points are worth more than the 1% cashback which I get from my Mega Bank credit card that’s why I’m not planning to use my Mega Bank credit card outside PX Mart and Hi-Life at all. For this reason I won’t try to apply for another credit card which would be very difficult or impossible anyway and just open a new Mega Bank account in my daughter’s name.
Keep in mind though that if a bank sees a lot of transactions that seem out of place, such as a child’s account getting a lot of large deposits or withdrawals, likely AML algorithms will kick in and the account may get frozen. I mean you can try but it seems they have it out for you for some reason.
I did not see your post in 2021. But it seems that this branch of Mega is full of shit.
I have got an account with Mega Bank and a foreign currency account shortly after I arrived in Taiwan. It was my first account I got here. I haven’t used it much since my first job banked with a different bank.
Some other reasons it is dormant:
they gave me an ATM card, which is not a debit card, mostly useless for shopping (can apply for debit card if needed)
no Google Pay back then (I think that changed recently)
I don’t need them, so I don’t want to waste time going there. But one can get an account there and a credit card (no deposit/no guarantor).
Next year I will find some time and get a debit card and a credit card with them to ensure compliance.
They have not been nice to me about this, as I’ve posted in another thread. Despite being their customer for twenty years and having a credit card with them for nearly that long, they continue to insist on the term deposit / guarantor .
I will challenge them on that next year.
My credit score is still a bit fresh and I am out of day off’s at work. This has to wait.
I think my family has some connection in the local bank branch to get it to a good start.
Did you ever get to the point where you closed down your account and decided to bank with a bank that doesn’t discriminate? I guess not
When I had my problem with Esun I closed my stock account and cancelled my term deposits. Since them fixing the policy I still haven’t put my money back with them.
