Stricter Requirements To Open a Corporate Bank Account in China
Banks have become stricter about opening corporate bank accounts due to organizations and individuals taking advantage of the COVID situation and illegally gathering personal information and opening a large number of corporate accounts under their names.
In order to carry out daily operations a foreign-invested company needs to open 2 corporate bank accounts after obtaining a Business License: a RMB Basic Account and a Capital Account in foreign currency, for example, USD or EUR.
Banks have now implemented on-site visit procedures, in which the legal representative must come in person with their original passport for the account opening to verify the real business of the company, and a bank officer will visit the premises of the applicant to verify that they have a physical location and staff. The photo of the location with the company nameplate and a photo of the building where the office is located will be taken for the bank’s internal compliance purposes.
Banks also require that the applicant submitting the original passport of the legal representative on behalf of the company provide, at the time of the account opening, two Chinese phone numbers and related passports/IDs of two persons able to speak Chinese or IDs of 2 Chinese persons and their mobile phone numbers. Some bank branches will allow a video verification of a legal representative who, due to a travel ban, cannot physically come to China to do the in-person bank account opening. After the video is accepted by the bank staff, the “physical office” location visit is performed.