We are going to be in the Taichung area for 6 months. I am thinking we need a local bank account (instead of living on cash and travelers checks) during this time. I know Citibank has a big presence in Taichung (and Taiwan in general?), but are there other banks that I should also be looking at?
Here in the U.S. if you have a weird bank sometimes it’s hard to get money from a random ATM without paying a per transaction fee. Is there anything similar to that in Taiwan?
I don’t think we need a lot in the way of bank services, but we would need the capability to wire money from our U.S. bank account to our Taiwan account as needed, use of ATMs, and maybe writing checks.
How did you go about setting up bank accounts? Did you wait to set it up once you arrived in Taiwan, or were you able to set it up long-distance beforehand? Any pitfalls to avoid?
Big thumbs up for Citibank from me. PM me and I will set you up with a contact at Taichung Citibank.
[quote=“hether2”]We are going to be in the Taichung area for 6 months. I am thinking we need a local bank account (instead of living on cash and travelers checks) during this time. I know Citibank has a big presence in Taichung (and Taiwan in general?), but are there other banks that I should also be looking at?
Here in the U.S. if you have a weird bank sometimes it’s hard to get money from a random ATM without paying a per transaction fee. Is there anything similar to that in Taiwan?
I don’t think we need a lot in the way of bank services, but we would need the capability to wire money from our U.S. bank account to our Taiwan account as needed, use of ATMs, and maybe writing checks.
How did you go about setting up bank accounts? Did you wait to set it up once you arrived in Taiwan, or were you able to set it up long-distance beforehand? Any pitfalls to avoid?
I think you can forget about writing cheques in Taiwan. Here mostly only big businesses and the government uses them. You will almost certainly not find debit cards.
Chinatrust has debit card that doubles as ATM cards as well… I dont know of other banks that do this… No one accepts check in Taiwan unless you are like a huge business or something, cause theres too much fraud in Taiwan.
just had big problems in hong kong and japan with my debit/atm card. make sure your bank turns on the “international usage” function on the card. why this isn’t a default function is beyond me…