How to Open a Portuguese Bank Account for Non-Residents

Hello everyone. I am Portuguese, and I have been living abroad since I was a teenager. Last month I went to Portugal, to Lisbon and wanted to open an account by AtivoBank. The young employee informed me that the same day, that the account is opened the bank keeps all the information for the Tax Authorities of my country of residence. I give up. THIS IS SO IN ALL THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. WHO IS ORDERED IN EUROPE IS THE MAFIA EUROPEAN UNION

When you say visa Card.
Is it an international card that you can use anywhere in the world?
and do you get the code straight away or do they send it to you by post?
And what about the NFC option ?
Can you get one also the same day?

So I live in the US and am looking at going back to Portugal in a few years to get my NIF and possible open up a bank account so that when we decide to retire we will already have things in place and make it easier. How difficult is it to open up a bank account as a US Citizen with a US address? I plan to have my NIF prior to opening an account. Is it possible to do?

Yes, it’s been discussed here. First read… (forget about this first paragraph.)

Then bring proof of address and income.

Hi, thanks to the article I opened an Activo account last Friday, arrived at the bank at 10.10am and there was a short queue of people waiting to open an account as it’s proving very popular. :sunglasses:
I am from the UK and only needed to provide, passport, Nif (I used original document as it had address on and counted as proof), UK national ins. number and €250.
I didn’t open account online before going to the branch they did it all for me at the branch, took about 15 minutes and their English was excellent.
Can highly recommend :sunglasses::+1:t2:

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any advice on getting a free sim online without a contribuinte (taxpayer) number?

Thanks!

This year ActivoBank has changed their policies: now they need proof of living/working in Portugal also initial deposit increased to 500 euros. Today I was declined my request to open an account with them (I am freelancing EU citizen).

That’s an interesting development. Which branch did you visit? And did they say what they would accept as proof?

Amoreiros branch. Rent contract, but prefered bills with name, local work contracts. Suggested me to go to other banks (unspecific). So got annoyed and got Revolut instead.

Has anyone tried opening an account with Atlantico Europa?

From what I read on their site, they are a mobile bank based in Portugal that offer free accounts and support EUR, USD, GBP and CHF. A minimum of 250 € is required for account opening.

They allow you to open account from anywhere and you just need a smartphone for a video-call verification. To open the account, you need your original ID document, proof of address, and proof of profession.

(Their site has an English option by clicking the PT button at the top right)

Sounds like worse conditions than Revolut or Monese, but would have to resarch deeper…

Well, neither Revolut nor Monese are actual banks nor are they based in Portugal. I consider them more as tech companies that offer financial services, aka neobanks.

Although a lot of neobanks offer fee-free accounts and good FX rates, it comes at the cost of terrible support and compliance issues. See this link for more details.

I use Revolut for small purchases when traveling and would never trust it with more than a few hundred Euros. I would suggest at least having one real bank in the country where you live and use neobanks such as Revolut or Transferwise for light travel spend. I would advise against relying on neobanks, especially those with no banking licenses (or questionable banking licenses ahem Revolut), for your business or day-to-day banking.

Requirements to open an account from Activo’s website, with my experience last year in brackets:
Minimum opening € 500 [250] (excluding paid accounts, students and online account opening - € 100). Opening of an account subject to the acceptance of the Client by the Bank, under the terms of its Client admission policy. Just take your ID card [passport], taxpayer or citizen card [NIF document], proof of address [atestado de residência], profession or professional situation [told them I was a pensioner / retired].

By law they can’t refuse anyone, though they may refuse you specific accounts, possibly giving you only one choice of account to open. With that said, provided you meet the set out requirements for any specific type of account I’ve never heard of them refusing anyone

Have you taken a look into moey (www.moey.pt)? I have an account there though I’m a Portuguese citizen so I can’t attest to their requirements for foreigners. I can say, however, that ive read somewhere about a non resident opening an account and he/she was talking about it being a nice, smooth process.

Having said that, they’re a fee free account like activobank, with the main differences being no FX fees for non euro transactions, they use the Mastercard rate (activo charges 3.25%) and no deposit is required to open the account. They also offer a very nice Revolut like app while incorporating all the Multibanco and mbway services used in Portugal. They have no physical branches

Just like activo is a subsidiary bank to Millennium BCP, moey is connected to Crédito Agrícola, a well established legacy bank. There’s a difference in that moey is technically just another account type from crédito agrícola, though a segregated one with its own app, costumer service, etc instead of its own bank. There’s no difference in practise really

@tkrunning , maybe you could take a look into moey and do a write up about it given the trouble people seem to be having with Activo

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Exactly - it was last year…

  1. Now you have heard the case of account refusal. When I probed for the reasons, why - the response at Activo was: - ´better just go to try to the other bank´
    - ´could you advice which one?´
    - ´ just any other´…
    I was left with impression, that:
  • Activo has typical quality of customer service
  • They are not aware of new compliance requirements
  1. Shame I have recieved your tip only today, because today I have received Revolut already, but I will look into it.

Before posting I compared the current requirements to those I copied from the site last April. There are 2 differences. One is the minimum is now € 500. The other is the wording of the second sentence I quoted is slightly different.

Honestly, Activo/Millennium (they’re basically the same) have degenerated into a very sorry state. My parents who both have had accounts with millennium (it’s predecessor banks actually as millennium didn’t even exist back then) for more than 30 years are now lied to by their account manager on a regular basis with stuff like him saying he sent some process to hq for approval and hq when contacted directly saying they got nothing from him.

Opening an account to a foreigner/non resident is a little bit more work in inserting the paperwork into the system and the like and they probably just didn’t feel like doing it, maybe encountered some software bug or had some question and didn’t feel like calling in to hq

Just checked. Moey currently is only able to process Portuguese national ID cards for ID verification. If you have a Portuguese ID it’s great as you only need an SMS code and boom, account opened, however it wouldn’t do in this case.

That I can think of, the only other option for a fee free Portuguese bank account is banco CTT. They offer pretty much the same conditions as Activo and you can open an account at most post offices that have the white background “banco CTT” sign. Opening deposit is 100€

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could you please help me with the below considering i am coming from a non EU country:

1- should the documents required to open the bank account be in Portuguese, should i translate all my documents to portuguese?
2- can the proof of address be an international driving licence valid for 1 year, or can it also a bank statement in english showing my address at the top

thanks

I agree with the point, that most probably they did not bother. However, the fact was that decline came from Compliance team.

I have tried CTT before, however they asked me for the tax payments proof. However, I could not get that from UK (where I was working most of the time) - so I could not get it.