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  • 3 Post By alexdown

Bank Account Suggestion

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  1. #1

    Question Bank Account Suggestion

    Hi, I just arrived in HK with a 2 year working visa. I got my HK ID and I now want to open a local bank account.
    Do you guys have any suggestion? I won't be using this account for much.

    -I don't care about credit cards
    -I prefer 0 monthly fee accounts

    Any suggestion is highly appriciated.

    Thanks


  2. #2

    Join Date
    May 2012
    Posts
    1,186
    Quote Originally Posted by FrancItaly:
    -I don't care about credit cards
    You should - debit cards are not really a thing here. Plus you need a credit card to register for octopus auto top-up (THAT is a must-have service in hongkong)

    Ask the company if they have some "selected" banks to deposit your salary.
    HSBC/hangseng are the usual suspects, lots of ATM around.
    Otherwise SCB (=standard chartered Bank), Citibank.

    If you speak Chinese, you can consider boc (bank of China), wing hang, bocomm (bank of communications), ccb (china construction bank)..

    With SCB you won't be able to use it with payme (a popular P2P payments app in hk).

    In my opinion...if they take you, get an HSBC One account. You may think you won't use any of their "international" services, but never say never.

    Also download https://payme.hsbc.com.hk to send small payments to ppl, buy stuff online, etc

    Oh, and when you leave...DO NOT close your account. Again, you never know!!
    Last edited by alexdown; 18-07-2021 at 09:28 PM.
    shri, LifeInHK and traineeinvestor like this.

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Jun 2018
    Posts
    1,478

    HSBC do a proper Mastercard debit card now. Quite some innovation(!) It's actually reasonably good in that it works multi currency with an integrated account and gives you some token cashback. That's probably your best bet. If you have your HKID you can try the online account opening.