I am a freelancer trying to get clients to remit payments to a bank in Taiwan. Recently, I have been tearing my hair out with the service provided by local banks.
Tried:
ESun: Opened a foreign currency account and tried receiving payments, only to be told that I must come to a branch and present my APRC card every time I receive an inward remittance in order to release the funds (of course, Taiwanese can just release the funds through internet banking). The “reason” given is that my APRC could be revoked at some point in the future, so they need to check that it’s still valid. If I argue enough and say I can’t make it to a branch, they kindly let me email a scan of my APRC…(which kind of negates the point of asking me to present my APRC in the first place).
Bank of Taiwan: Was working okay until the change in my APRC number. I went to the bank to change the APRC number registered with them. About 3 hours later, after filling endless forms, I was given a new bank book, but this time, my middle name had been added (not requested by me) in the format Surname - Middle Name - First Name. Clients continued remitting payments to me with the payee name in the format First Name - Surname with no problem, until one day BoT suddenly decided that the names didn’t match and they would not release the funds. Eventually, I had to get them to send the remittance back to sender, but not before they had deducted a US$30 fee for the privilege.
Now I need to find a new bank that does not have these ridiculous rules and will let me receive international payments without any hassle…Would be very grateful for any suggestions.
With Cathay United I was able to credit the foreign remittances via the app/online platform.
HSBC calls you to confirm each time, but that’s it, you pick up the phone, answer what’s the purpose and they credit in like an hour. Also free credit in foreign currency.
DBS have no clue why, but they called me for a few times, then they stopped and they were just crediting (mind you I am talking about my salary paid from abroad in USD to my bank account here in TW)
Any issues with matching names? BoT also calls and credits immediately when you confirm the purpose, but this issue with matching names is driving me crazy because I can’t get clients to reliably write the payee name in the exact format requested by them.
can’t help with that, I am Italian and we don’t have middle names, Name surname, that’s it. But yeah, they can be very anal on that, I am glad I don’t need to put up with their nonsense about that.
Can you open a TW company? It’s treated as a Taiwanese person for remittance. ESun sends me an automated email, I click the tax declaration and funds are released, all automatic and happens in a minute without any manual person doing verification
Otherwise open an account in the US/HK/SG and there’s no fees to receive USD
Where are your clients, and what currency/currencies are you being paid in?
Personally I mostly just use (and would recommend using) Wise. Generally I get paid to my USD account details on there and just transfer it to one of my Taiwanese multicurrency accounts when it’s approaching US$10k or so to minimize fees.
I also sometimes use my GBP account details or one of my UK accounts, depending on what’s most convenient, where the client is, and where I want the money.
I wouldn’t bother attempting to do regular payments to a Taiwanese bank, for the fees and for the reasons you mentioned. But Mega Bank has always been quite convenient for me when receiving USD. I’ve never needed to visit the branch to approve the payment — they usually just call or email me to ask the reason for the transfer, and they sometimes just approve it anyway without asking.
When actual people are involved, I’ve sometimes stressed to the client that it’s essential they follow the Chinese name order of family name first.
It’s a bit more difficult nowadays when working with online platforms and automated name/ID verification systems, but I tend to follow the Chinese name order when setting those up, particularly if I’m using my APRC rather than passport (sometimes required based on residency, sometimes not… and I’ve found quite a few automated verification systems reject APRCs anyway because they misread them as expired given the lack of an expiry date on the front — I’ve been complaining to one major company called Persona for like a year and they refuse to fix it).
In any case, receiving the payments to a Wise USD account kind of bypasses this problem, because you’re then the one responsible for doing the transfer to Taiwan and can enter the name in the correct order.
Actually, I already have a Taiwanese company, but mostly use it for local clients who need fapiao. I haven’t registered my company details with most of my foreign clients, partly because they start asking questions about whether I am outsourcing the work.
I also use my UK account for UK clients paying in GBP. But for USD, figured it was better to remit directly to Taiwan rather than having to convert currency twice USD to GBP and then GBP to TWD.
PM’d you my referral code, but you’re under no obligation to use it and I recommend the company either way.
You can do this from Taiwan btw, no issues with having a Taiwanese address AFAIK. (I had an account before moving to Taiwan so updated my address later.)
There are things like Stripe that convert USD to GBP at a reasonable rate for depositing into a UK bank account, but yeah it doesn’t make too much sense if the ultimate goal is TWD.
Direct remittance to Taiwan should in principle be fine (notwithstanding the issues you mentioned), but kind of expensive if you’re doing multiple transfers from multiple clients and paying fees for each transfer. That’s the main benefit of Wise, I would say. Can also accept ACH transfers (free) from U.S. companies.
For direct remittance from clients to Taiwan, the client pays all of the outward remittance fees, just need to pay to deposit in my Taiwan account, but the fees are minimal (think it’s only TWD300).
If the client remits to my UK account and I want to transfer to Taiwan, I need to convert the currency twice and also pay the outward remittance fees myself from the UK to Taiwan.
Not sure whether that includes the client paying intermediary fees too, but either way I don’t see much reason to give banks more money haha. My usual receiving fee at Mega Bank is a bit lower.
A couple of us occasional post the fees for Wise transfers in this thread: