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Chinese Banking

28 Jan 2006

As I said last time I was going to go to the bank. So I did, I went down to two foreign banks, HSBC and Citibank. Both banks are chinese subdivisions so they can not provide the services of the larger parent companies.

Citibank china only offers a RMB savings account. No ATM card, no Credit card, no money exchange. The only thing is offers is over the counter money access and an online wealth management service. Since I need access to my money in foreign countries this is no good.

HSBC offers a little more. They offer money exchange, but they charge 0.25% for extracting USD and EUR. The charge for converting JPY is 0.35%. This account is also useless as I can only get my money out of the bank over the counter in their Beijing office. I think they also offer money transfter to international bank accounts, but there is also a fee the needs to be paid for this.

In the end I chose to just stay with my chinese bank China Merchants bank and get a Visa credit card. This will allow me to access my money work wide. I can still can not exchange RMB for foreign currency in china.