Personal Finance

Bank Account for Non-Resident

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  • Oct 27th, 2017 1:15 pm
Deal Addict
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Mar 11, 2011
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Bank Account for Non-Resident

A niece who lives in the Caribbean wants a Canadian bank account. It seems to be because PayPal won't deal with the local banks where she lives. If she comes to Canada as a visitor, can she open an account? Obviously, she has no SIN.

The other option she suggested is for us to open an account and to let her have access to it. I'm not comfortable with this option. What might be the risks?
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Mar 23, 2008
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If the account gets tagged for anything fraudulent (bounced payments, etc) guess whose name is going to get tagged with collections, who the bank will be calling, etc.

People survived without PayPal for many years...

C
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Feb 25, 2014
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Rbc can happily open it for her. She just needs to send them an email.
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Jan 20, 2016
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46jimbo wrote: A niece who lives in the Caribbean wants a Canadian bank account. It seems to be because PayPal won't deal with the local banks where she lives. If she comes to Canada as a visitor, can she open an account? Obviously, she has no SIN.

The other option she suggested is for us to open an account and to let her have access to it. I'm not comfortable with this option. What might be the risks?
RBC havs some presence (even physical) in Caribbean region
http://www.rbcroyalbank.com/caribbean/bahamas/
https://caribbean.rbcroyalbank.com/#/locator

From my experience it's possible, as an option it could be joint account with you as Canadian resident.
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Mar 11, 2011
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Thanks to all for the advice. I'll forward these ideas to her.
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Sep 21, 2016
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UrbanPoet wrote: They changed the id requirements recently.

Yes its possible for. Non resident. But the id reuirement requires id that implies some sort of ties to canada.
I'm curious as to what kind of ID would imply ties to Canada? I've applied for bank accounts at TD and BMO with just my US passport and driver's license, or does that count because I live in a border state? I also opened an account with PC Financial with NEXUS and driver's license but I figure having NEXUS implies a connection to Canada.
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Jan 27, 2004
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yangj08 wrote: I'm curious as to what kind of ID would imply ties to Canada? I've applied for bank accounts at TD and BMO with just my US passport and driver's license, or does that count because I live in a border state? I also opened an account with PC Financial with NEXUS and driver's license but I figure having NEXUS implies a connection to Canada.
Brb lemme look it up.

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