Stay Away from Novobanco --- 52 Days Locked Out of My Own Account — My Novobanco Golden Visa Experience

Finances
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44

I’ve seen reports of many Portuguese banks charging high fees for transfers from brokerage accounts. Something about them assuming it’s capital gains or dividends and they charge a percentage of those.

Not sure if that’s the case with your transfer, but best not withdraw from brokerages directly to many mainstream Portuguese banks.

On the plus side, Revolut now actually started offering Portuguese bank accounts to residents (including MB way support etc). It’s a decent option for day-to-day banking.

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45

I am using Revolute and have been successfully transferred to a PT50 IBAN account and MB way. The original IBAN still works. It is so much more straight forward with online help. It’s very nice.

46

It was not a capital gain and i did zero trading with IBKR. In fact it was a test transfer from a PT IBAN to my IBKR IBAN (my IBKR was opened in Asia, but they provide an IBAN of Belgium or something like that). And then I onward transfered to my MBCP account.

As I already have an Revolut account, i can not have 2nd one with Revolut PT.

47

Is anybody having issues with accessing Novobanco account online in last few days? When I try to log in, I see “Service unavailable” message, and I wonder whether it is the general issue with the service, or my account is fully blocked now…

48

Santander. They have annual compliance requirements too, but they actually send letters and reach out by phone when there’s issues.

49

I’ve had repeated issues with functionality on the website such as service unavailable and failed transfers. But it seems to work fine on mobile app.

50

I did all the KYC stuff through my lawyer first, and then they instructed me to send the translated / whatever files directly. Still very unsecure, but it eventually worked.

52

Wow… I got the email from Novobanco with the account statement with saldo=0 and short note that my account is closed:

Informamos que procedemos ao encerramento da Conta DO nº 0005 1416 8289, na data 20/01/2026, bem como de todos os contratos associados e suportados por esta conta. Este é o último extrato da sua conta no novobanco. Para qualquer esclarecimento adicional, ligue para Linha Direta 707 24 7 365 (atendimento personalizado das 8h00 às 24h00) ou dirija-se a um balcão novobanco.

I did not request the account closure. I did not have any notice about this in advance. My branch manager does not reply for several days, and I can’t use the hotline as the associated phone number is the one I can’t use from the country I’m in now… Also no idea I have where the money from the account is now.

How do you like it?..

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53

Update. All clear. They just close the accounts of everybody who has Russian citizenship.

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