New German bank account for Swiss residents?

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
21
I just learned about cortalconsors.de

They offer a free current account, and also a free depot for shares if you want.

Coolest thing is their credit card. Apparently free, and also no fees attached for withdrawing or paying abroad.

I don ́t have or use their account, so still looking for the catch, but on first sight it ́s very good!

22
It took longer than it should have due to my mistake. After validating my identity with deutsche post, I was supposed to send an email to them with a scanned copy of my passport and residence permit. Since I didnt know, i didnt do it and once they reminded me, i still procrastinated. I lost about 15 days due to this. There is also the topic of the mail. I got the welcome letter on August 28th and the 2nd card i received on September 6th. I think they sent me a total of about 8 letters that reached in staggered phases.

welcome letter

account info

pin giro card

pin visa card

internet banking tan #

internet banking account info

giro card

visa card

I would say 2 weeks is the minimum if everything runs perfectly

23
When you do the Postident-procedure in Germany, you are free to enter into the envelope whatever you want. So you could have those copies handy and send them together with the application from the start. Maybe this will shave a few days off the overall process?

Rgds, Christian

24
How is DKB with online banking and TANs? They don't ask you to have a German mobile number to receive mTANs, hopefully?

25
DKB supplies a TAN-list on paper. They will ask you for a specific TAN from that list.

As far as I see mTANs are not offered, not even if you ́d want to have them.

26

I wasn't offered this option by the post office. However, its even easier as you can email DKB scanned copies

27
I also opened an account with DKB over the summer. Totally easy. The only hurdle was the "Postal identification" procedure. I tried to get Postfinance and a local bank to do it, but they refused to follow DKB's procedure. So I made a quick trip to a German border town and got it done at the German Post Office.

28
I have an income of CHF 700 per month in Germany, and they refused me, maybe there was a misunderstanding between capital and income?

29
To the ones that were accepted and the ones that were refused by DKB, a question...

I got a phone call from DKB, asked in English if they were talking with me (by my name), and basically said I would get a letter from them within 2 weeks (no more questions about me etc., as I would expect from the description by kiwiguy08 in an earlier post). I have a feeling this means they are going to reject my application. Comments?

30
I wouldn't say that. Did they say they will reject you? After my phone chat they sent me an email to get my identity checked....Perhaps thats what they meant

31
As an update, I did get rejected. So I guess if they don't do a mini interview when they phone you, you are likely not going to get the account opened.

32

I must admit...i am more than a little surprised by this. Did they give a reason for this? Do you have a south american or arabic last name?

33
What a pain.

There are other banks in Germany offering free current accounts:

www.ing-diba.de www.cortalconsors.de (BNP Paribas) www.comdirect.de (part of nationalised Commerzbank) www.dab.com there are probably more... Not sure about their attached features. Cortalconsors offers free international withdrawals + paying. They seem to charge the mean fx-rate without markup.

Also no clue if these accounts can be opened from here.

Hope this is useful.

Rgds,

Christian

34
I have Portuguese last name, but I would think given that I'm EU citizen that wouldn't be an issue.

Maybe they don't want to give me a credit card as I haven't had one before (maybe that shows up when they do a credit check), even though I do not have debts? They could have limited the credit to a small amount so I don't really understand it.

I asked for the VISA + the EC card, but I don't think the EC card would be an issue for them.

35
I don ́t know how German banks credit-check anyone in Switzerland?

My income is a little short of the Swiss average, but I got the account w/o problems. A friend who surely has a very high income + huge inheritance (i.e. balance) was refused regardless.

So I wildly guess that they don ́t really know what they ́re doing?!

36
For me the Visa card is not really a "credit card". More like a special bank card. I am allowed to only go 100 euro below 0. You have basically two accounts and two cards. One is for the Giro card and the other is for this Visa. You can switch money between them all the time. The Visa account even pays you 1% interest.

I think the reason for the two cards is that the Giro card is used mainly for payments in Germany and places where no credit cards are accepted. The Visa card is for europe where maybe the Giro card is not accepted or vpay is not accepted.

37
I investigated a bit. There is some information in toytowngermany.com

Apparently DKB has a special points system (or so they claim) and don't really explain why they turn you down. Another post from someone that got accepted revealed that for people outside Germany they do a credit check. I probably got refused due to never having a credit card. I don't know how that looks like on a credit check, but I guess they don't want customers who never had a credit card before. This may also be the same issue with the rich friend of ChrisNeedsToKnow (possibly due to being rich, he never used credit and maybe shows blank on a credit check?).

More relevant is that I found a suggestion for a similar bank,

comdirect.de

which was on the list by ChrisNeedsToKnow (see post above) and apparently also includes a nice VISA card with free withdrawals abroad. I'll look into that and if I apply I'll post here.

EDIT: I looked more in toytowngermany and from other posts I saw I think applying to comdirect.de will result in the same credit check and refusal.

38
Found a great site for comparing German banks (in English) and it also list the very few banks in Germany which have English language portals/online banking.

I'm thinking of opening a German bank account for cost and convenience as I shop there pretty often, and taking out Euros or using my UBS Maestro card is expensive.

39
That Number 26 bank account sounds enticing. Castro, if you apply to it and get an account opened please let us know some more information.

40
I ́m with Commerzbank and happy with them as happy as you can be with a bank. They did organize my mortgage in connection with my UBS contact (bought a house in Germany, financed with my Swiss salary)