Bank Choice for Golden Visa

Hello, we are from the US and doing an investment golden visa in Portugal and the company we are working with (GCS) has three bank options to work with. Bison, Atlantico, and BNI. We are doing a ton of research into this, but being new to banking in Europe (and Portugal) in general we are trying to make sure we aren’t missing anything. GCS is of course giving us guidance, but we wanted to ask this group too, for a different perspective! The banks all have different fee structures, and we can do the math, but also want to work with a bank that people have had good experiences with.

Also, it seems like we would use Wise to transfer smaller amounts of money from USD, but for larger transfers we have heard good things about Spartan FX. Have any of you had good experience with Spartan FX and their exchange rates and service? And, if we use these companies, should we expect any additional fees from the banks for the incoming money? They shouldn’t be charging fees for exchanging, but we want to be absolutely sure that we are doing this correctly, and not making any mistakes that we may not have thought about!

Thanks for any advice here, we have been doing a ton of research like I said, but again, we are well aware of the phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know”.

Check out also BPI Private, highly recommended on this forum.

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I have no particular advice on one bank versus another, but I can report that we’ve been using Atlantico for the last two years and have been very happy with the customer service — our account rep has been responsive when I’ve had questions (e.g., about bank transfers).

We have used Bison and been very pleased with the account level responsiveness and easy access to the Director. They are a wealth mgmt bank (one office, no retail branches) and for GV purposes are fine. Their tech is solid and they are FATCA compliant (one of our core requirements 4 years ago…)

We have recently opened an account with NovoBanco for retail access. The tech is solid, if quirky, but their ability to perform routine tasks as one would come to expect from US standards is abysmal.

I used Wise for all currency conversion and transfer purposes. compared to other solutions, they were extremely fee-efficient, and the biggest benefit was the no-games exchange rate (way better than ETrade/JPMorgan would do (wanted 2-3% on top of the midmarket conversion.). Move your USD to Wise at your leisure, then wait for when you want to do the conversion…right now, the exchange rate is far superior to the .88 it was when we did it. Your USD earns decent interest while parked.

We are Mid atlantic US and went the fund route and now own property.

My consultant referred me to Atlantico. They offer good service, but they don’t have lots of local branches (if this matters). Also, their fees are very high. I suggest you ask for a list of fees (e.g., custodian fees, transfer fees,…etc.) to compare first.

I can agree from personal experience that Bison is a good entry bank for GV candidates. As noted elsewhere, you will also need a high street bank for your day to day banking affairs.

Hello. First post… I’ve opened an Atlantico account and did a couple small payments via Wise to activate and a bank transfer as a test. As for the upcoming large transfers for the PE funds subscriptions, what would be recommended? Wise (and which form, connected account, manual transfer etc?), or bank wire from US checking account (via SWIFT), or something else? Thx

Greetings, we followed a similar path. Once we tested the various segments of the path (US bank > Wise via wire transfer / Currency conversion at Wise / Wise > PT Bank) with some low dollars to test the functions and validate, we then proceeded with larger funds transfer up to Wise, then tried to select the best conversion rate within the window (a bit of gamble as one never knows), then moved the Euro value direct to the PT bank. No muss, no fuss. You dont mention where you intend to perform the currency convert. I suspect Wise will be most fee-efficient. Our US bank was not even in the running.

Good info. Thx. Any daily (or other timeframe) limits on the value of each transfer in your case?

There were some due-diligence KYC matters at Wise for the inbound larger amounts. Nothing extreme, just a statement of source of funds (ie: “I sold some stock” that is represented in a brokerage statement). We chunked it in several transactions that got us to the investment amount, basically due to selling off some stock in increments as it rose. I dont recall at the moment if there were some transfer limits from the source bank in the US.

Once at Wise, all pretty straight forward. Currency flip is practically immediate. Then, since you are transferring common currency to the EU, the inbound is straight forward. Send your PT bank a note letting them know its coming with the transaction IDs.

The key thing is that nothing in this (GV) process happens immediately. its all a matter of prep and staging a bit. It took us a week or two to line up the funds in preparation for currency conversion and transfer to our PT bank. Then, from PT bank off to the investment firms.

There is a rhythm here, just not the beat you may be used to in the US.

Thanks again. What transfer/payment function did you use within Wise specifically, to receive the USD from the US account and from the Wise euro account to the Pt bank account? For example ACH appears quite expensive, like approx 100 on an approx 40k USD transfer (from my US account to my Wise USD balance). A wire from my US bank to my Pt bank is 40 usd by comparison. For Wise be easier, faster, less expensive, there must be a better way to do this that I’m missing, right?

Btw, also I’m encountering a 50k usd/day limit within Wise. Is this typical?

May be uneven comparison issue. I used wire transfer from the US Bank (Etrade) to Wise. This cost, dunno, $25 or $50) for six figures amounts. Then, currency conversion must occur somewhere. I used Wise who tracked very closely to the published mid-market rates. The “fees” on this from wise were a couple hundred dollars for the size of conversion, but I separate their operation fee from the efficiency of the conversion rate. You can convert your USD to Euro with your US relationship bank, and my guess its going to be very pricey. Morgan Stanley wanted 2-3 percent (ie, in the thousands) for this service.

The transfer from within Wise to the PT bank was almost immediate and cost nothing.

Really, at the end of the day, given the scale of the other costs and scope of investment, as long as you get a decent rate on your conversion, a couple hundred bucks is noise.

Same here re Atlantico. I like the fact I can do most of what I need to do online.

Hi Everyone - My consultant suggests to use Bison for banking as well transferring funds from the US. I understand that their currency exchange fee 0.2 %. We are beginning to embark on that path, has anyone used Bison Bank for this?

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Yes, we just did this with Bison Bank. The web site is limited, but the service is great whenever I have a question or want to do something. I think like every bank in Portugal, they charge a fee for everything. It took about 2 weeks to open the bank account.