The call is really a courtesy call to advise you funds have arrived. Sometimes when you setup a new account they will ask will you be receiving funds from overseas and they have you sign amongst all the other papers they have you sign so you don’t need to go to the bank.
It’s to check the purpose of the incoming transfer and which remittance code they need to apply to it.
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I’ve never been asked what the purpose of funds are for. They just advise foreign currency has arrived and converted to local currency as I do not have a multi-currency account.
I just asked my friend who works at the bank about this. She said they get shouted at a lot about this. The rules say they must ask to stop people getting scammed/money laundering etc and then the customers shout at them to mind their own business.
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Perhaps in my case I have been dealing with the same staff at the same bank for years who know me so they do not ask. In fact when I was at the bank last week they were asking why don’t I open multi-currency accounts. I just replied I have them overseas already and just want my incoming funds converted to NT$ on the day.
I did call Mega Bank back once to ask why they’d bothered calling me if the money was going to go through anyway, and the person who answered (who wasn’t the one who’d tried calling me - they were having lunch or something) told me they’d probably just assumed it was the same situation and remittance code as last time. I guess if I’d transferred from a different account, they might have been more insistent on speaking to me first. At least I’ve never had to go into a branch as others have reported, though. 
My friend told me they have to be careful about everything. Get someone to sign for this, warn about that.
She told me about a customer who sent money to the wrong account. The receiver refused to send it back, so the bank couldn’t do anything. The sender was advised to sue. Instead, the sender complained to the government(FSC?) and the bank got in trouble for not adding enough warnings on their website about checking the acc number. The bank paid the sender out of their own pocket and the receiver kept the money. And after that, they had to give more warnings on the app/www.
She said everything is like that. One customer gets scammed/makes a mistake/does something wrong and they create new SOPs that waste other people’s time.
all about getting the responsibility off their shoulders incase an auntie loses 500 nt
She was also saying there are registered and unregistered accounts. If registered, you can receive money no questions asked. If not, you have a daily limit and they will ask you in.
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Same happens in other countries. I know for my son in Australia I can send him funds just using his phone number from my Australian account. Banks do warn you that if you send to wrong account they are not liable for loss.
As I wrote even for citizens banks will ask you to sign a form so any incomings from overseas to personal account you don’t need to go to the bank to fill forms. Once signed no need to fill out forms or do bank visits.
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I just received that notification:
Does anyone know if they’ll extend their promotion again? Or will all new accounts to back to a lower interest rate soon?
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Am I automatically a “RichartGood friend”?
What about those “good friend tasks” / “pal missions” they mention? 
Why do these bank promotions / terms always have to be so ridiculously obscure…? 
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it’s a stupid way to say: already clients with at least 1NT in the account up to 300K will get 1.3% p.a. until next Jan. That’s it.
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I also have no idea what much of that is talking about. Did an actual bank release this, or a middle school student…?
- Why the hell is it “RichartNew friend” and “RichartGood friend”? New customer and existing customer, I suppose?
- What are “the new friend task”, “the new friend mission”, “good friend tasks”, and “pal missions”? I’ve never seen those terms used anywhere on the Richart site.
- Did I set my Richart NT (sic) current savings deposit account as a securities delivery account? How would I have done that?
- What is “Tongtai New Bank”? Zero hits on Google.
These are the people we’re trusting with our money, yeah?
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It’s the same shit in Canada or the UK.
Transfer money to the wrong account and it’s a big lengthy hassle to get it back… the bank can’t just reverse the transfer, there’s a whole process where they have to contact the recipient and allow them to dispute, etc. And if the person already withdrew and spent the money then chances are you have to sue them in civil court.
Richart isn’t just for foreigners you know… they have different accounts for Taiwanese as well, under the Richart name not just Taishin. My wife has a Richart account.
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Yeah, I know, obviously - they have ads all over Facebook, including in Chinese.
Of course it’s for Taiwanese as well. Taiwanese are even allowed to use the app.
My point was this was an ad specifically targeting foreigners, and specifically for Richart rather than Taishin. I suppose it’s possible that more than 2 million (i.e., “millions”) of people in Taiwan have Richart accounts, but I’d find it a bit surprising for a population of ca. 24 million in a country with so many banks, especially considering Richart is only several years old.
Ahh, well, I don’t think that’s anything bad or dishonest. If they meant to say it’s trusted by millions of foreigners, then I would have expected them to say “trusted by millions of foreigners”.
Looks like they’ve just sneaked into “millions” with “2M+” personal accounts:
There’s actually some more info about the bullshit “missions” in the rest of the page that the table came from:
https://richart.tw/TSDIB_RichartWeb/RC25/RC250003?announceNo=30130
- Qualification:
a. Richart’s New Friends：Customers open a Richart NTD savings account after June 1st, 2023 (inclusive).And must have a valid account for the duration of the project.
b. Richart’s Good Friends：Customers open a Richart NTD savings account before June 1st, 2023. And must have a valid account for the duration of the project.
I was going to quote all the mission stuff here too, but it’s too long and irritating so you’ll have to click the link.
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does anybody have more information on the “Up to 5% cash back on purchases outside of Taiwan.”
https://richart.tw/TSDIB_RichartWeb/FrProducts/DebitCard
currently i’m traveling, so using the richard card and getting 5% back would be great 
Since you’re traveling maybe you can test out a small transaction (~$10), record the current forex rate (from google finance) and then later check the actual charge so you can calculate their foreign transaction fee and foreign transaction rate. I would imagine the fees to be around 3-4% so you get back the difference from 5%