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I am planning to live in Costa Rica for a few months as a prelude of moving for good. Is there any relationship between the banks in Costa Rica and the US banks? Can one’s US bank account be somehow connected to an account in Costa Rica for the purpose of withdrawal and other financial functions?
Your advice will be greatly appreciated.In another forum, a participant said that their U.S. CitiBank account could be linked to a CitiBank account here. I e-mailed CitiBank in the U.S. about this and they said the only way to get at your funds in a U.S. CitiBank account from Costa Rica is to use an ATM. So that’s no help.
HSBC has banks in both countries. In the past, I’ve been told by HSBC-U.S. that an account there could be linked to a Costa Rican HSBC account via an International Premier account. The downside: you must maintain a $100,000.00 balance. Fat chance of that!
But last week I asked the local HSBC branch manager in Grecia. He said he thinks there’s a way to create a link and would look into it. He said it might depend on the amount of our income. Haven’t heard anything yet.
In the meantime, every month when the pensions are credited to our U.S. credit union account, I deposit a check here into our Costa Rican HSBC account. It’s free and foolproof, but it takes ten working days for HSBC to release the money.
Of course, we could always do a bank-to-bank wire transfer but it’s a pricey option.
The only other alternative I’m aware of, if you qualify (if you’re collecting Social Security, that is), is to have your U.S. Social Security check direct-deposited to a Banco Nacional or Banco de Costa Rica account. They use a New York bank as an intermediary. I think I know that it takes a couple of extra days for the funds to be available each month and it costs $6.00US for the service.
[quote=”badi@badi.net”]I am planning to live in Costa Rica for a few months as a prelude of moving for good. Is there any relationship between the banks in Costa Rica and the US banks? Can one’s US bank account be somehow connected to an account in Costa Rica for the purpose of withdrawal and other financial functions?
Your advice will be greatly appreciated.[/quote]I have yet to feel the need for a Costa Rican bank. I bank exclusively in the US. No problem in accessing the cash I need at the ATM’s unless it is a large amount (over 500,000 colones) then it takes multiple days.
I also pay my bills through the US bank.
badi, you’re welcome.
grb, I’ll post whatever I learn.
waggonner, you pay your ICE bills via your U.S. bank’s online banking? How does that work?
i have an hsbc account here and an hsbc account online. i established the online account i thought i could withdraw funds without paying the atm usage fee, and maybe no withdrawal fees. so i thought, but there is no connection between the hsbc here and any other hsbc i was told, online or otherwise. now i do what david does — write a cheque on my U.S. account, deposit it into my hsbc account here, wait 10 days and withdraw dollars using my atm card
(for which there is no fee, but not for the online account) and convert it to colones. my online account was charging me a flat 3% plus $1.50 to use the ATM machine, so i figure i am saving nearly $25 a month in charges by depositing a US account cheque.For what [i]should[/i] be obvious reasons:?: I no longer maintain any accounts in the nation formerly known as the US of A.:shock:
I find BCR to be very helpful and professional and their online services make life pretty easy.
The other day I tried to grab c/100,000 out of the ATM and twice got error messages and no cash.. I got home and saw that c/200,000 had been deducted. I called the branch and the gal told me to come in at 2.
At 205 My account was credited.
The CLP floats around a bit but is not likely to collapse.
I feel the colon is stable enough to call a ” safe” currency too, if one must be tied to FIAT money.I went to HSBC’s U.S. website the other day and posed the question of interlinked accounts in the U.S. and Costa Rica. I got an unequivocal “no”. They said there’s just no way to make it happen.
So our next approach will be to reopen our account at Banco Nacional and have our Social Security payments transferred there each month. When we were at BNCR on Friday, they said that we’d each have to have our own account as Social Security would be unhappy to learn that our pensions were going to an account that’s joint with anyone else! I guess I don’t understand. But tomorrow Marcia will open her own account, just to make everyone happy.
Anyway . . . Seems like a while back I talked to the Federal Benefits staff at the U.S. Embassy in Pavas. They said we could redirect our Social Security payments to Banco Nacional with just a phone call. We’ll try that this week. It would be nice to avoid having to drive to the Embassy.
I knew it could not be that easy David. I guess the only advantage of having an HSBC account would be possible free ATM service @ CR HSBC ATM’s? Or a check written on a US HSBC account should clear within one day at a CR branch? I am fine with BN, especially after I got an on the phone tutorial from Veronica in Cobano on how to use their online system; that would never happen in US.
[quote=”grb1063″] I am fine with BN, especially after I got an on the phone tutorial from Veronica in Cobano on how to use their online system; that would never happen in US.[/quote]
Your statement is totally ridiculous!! Many (probably most) US bank customer service departments will help you with every step on a toll free line.
This constant US bashing gets tiring. Where did all you US bashers earn and save your money so that you could buy houses in CR that ordinary Ticos could never afford??
Open a free checking account at Charles Schwab Bank, [u]a fine US bank[/u]. They will give you an ATM/Debit card FREE which you can use at any ATM worldwide for local or US currency. They pay the transaction fee. I use this card wherever I am in CR and have not found an ATM that didn’t accept my card. Which CR bank will do that for you?I study financial fraud of all kinds.
You can see the 255 US banks that have gone under since 2008 in the USA on the Wall Street Journal page which is here http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/info-Failed_Banks-sort.html
And you think the FDIC with a negative $8 billion will help? http://libertymaven.com/2009/11/25/fdic-officially-goes-bankrupt/8148/
Or see http://www.dailypaul.com/node/109115
Our whole country is imploding and our dollars are worth less every day.
Post edited by Moderator to remove a four letter word.
Thanks for your post. I too bank with Charles Schwab and have for about 15 years. Between them and my Credit Union, (been with them for more than 20 years), I have a hard time deciding which of them are better at customer service. By contrast, the banks I’ve had to do business with in France, Italy and the UK due to my many international postings, …well there’s no comparison.
@badi badi: There is no bank I know of that REALLY gives international preferential service by claiming to be linked to the bank back home. All of the banks I have run into (including Citibank, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, etc.) operate almost as if they are independent, when it comes down to it, (almost like franchises). Your best bet is to make sure your U.S. bank is a good one who will handle your international withdrawals and wire transfers to C.R. with ease…and, if you are lucky, not charge you exorbitant rates in the process. When you move down there for good, find the best local bank you can, but don’t expect it to be ‘hooked up’ with any U.S. bank, operationally speaking.
That was US bashing? Wow, your threshold is very low.
As a matter of course, I don’t use any US banks anymore, I much prefer member owned credit unions.Badi: “Welcome to Costa Rica.” More than a gracious offer of hospitality ‘Welcome to Costa Rica’ is the response one receives upon discovering that Costa Rica is indeed a foreign country and has its own ways of doing things, and NOT by any stretch of the imagination similar to what one is used to in one’s home country. We signed up with BCR because we were told by our bank in the US that BCR and our bank ‘had an association’. We assumed that meant that all things related to banking would somehow be made easier, less painful, by the fact of this ‘association’. NOT! But, somehow, we have survived in Costa Rica for over 4 years now by doing things the Tico way and on ‘Tico Time’. One of the first lessons of living in Costa Rica, take whatever happens in stride, shrug your shoulders and say ‘Welcome to Costa Rica’.
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