Moving Money Stateside

[fozzie 41]

Due to the Patriot Act, you cannot open a US banking account unless you are in the US.

I did. See my earlier post, HSBC did it for me in 2006.

[fozzie 41]

Do you know if they make that credit history info available to everyone or is it just for HSBC credit cards? It might be worth doing if they share it with everyone...

I think it was just an HSBC thing, it would enable you to get a credit card in the US to start building a history with the credit unions.

[April + Chris 0]

I did. See my earlier post, HSBC did it for me in 2006.

OKAY, so you can do it with a bank that operates in the UK and US. But you still can't open a bank account in the States if the bank doesn't exist in the UK and you cannot be there in person. So HSBC and Wells Fargo.

[Darnell 8,478]

Maybe another option is to actually USE paypal, tied into the UK account, either a personal premiere or a business premiere account?

You'll get a mastercard debit card,

which , when you tie it into yer UK account,

and then when USED to make purchases in the USA -

(no, not transfers, but actual purchases)

then there's no 'fee' for pulling monies out of the UK account in real time.

it's a 'small wedge' of activity, though -

only useful for WHEN you have the UK account tied in ,

the funds come THROUGH to the payee, via that mastercard transaction.

This isn't useful for 'cash transactions' at all.

[thatbritishlass 2]

OKAY, so you can do it with a bank that operates in the UK and US. But you still can't open a bank account in the States if the bank doesn't exist in the UK and you cannot be there in person. So HSBC and Wells Fargo.

I hate to disagree with you, but I've got a US bank account set up with Wachovia now - admittedly a Wells Fargo bank, but I have not been there in person. Just emailed a copy of my passport, driving license and a utility bill to my contact in the branch local to my fiancé (Moneycorp passed on my details at my request). Now I've got a debit card and check book with online banking. Just had to fill out a form declaring myself non-resident in the US.

Really, really easy, but it's not the best bank account in the world (charges for EVERYTHING), so I will be changing as soon as I get stateside