Section 12 - Opening a Bank Account

You will need a bank  account in Argentina, so you are able to receive the rent payments, and to be to pay services and taxes of the apartment through internet.

Opening a Bank account in Buenos Aires can be more difficult than you would expect being a non-resident foreign.

You would expect that the main American banks would gladly open an account to an American but this is not the case. Citibank, Bankboston, HSBC Bank and BBV refused to open a savings account to a non-residents.

The requirements changed from bank to bank, but they usually require you 1 year of residence, or a national ID document. This is stupid since you don't reside and don't plan to reside either in Buenos Aires. span>

By law the only requirement to open you a saving account is to have a Tax ID, an address certificate from the Police Department (we already explained how to obtain the CDI in Section 8 of this guide) and your passport.

If you are introduced, or if you already have an account in US / Europe with any of these banks they will open you one, but you may have to inquire the bank in your country so they refer you.

Banco Nación www.nacion.com.ar actually is the only bank that opens accounts to foreign non-residents requiring only the CDI (tax ID) and address certificate. The minimal deposits are for a pesos account ($ 50) and they charge $3-4 pesos for maintenance fee.

The minimal deposit for a dollar account in Banco Nación is U$S 500 (American dollars), and they charge U$S 2 dollars for maintenance fee.

They will give you an ATM card that you will be able to use worldwide to get money because it operates with CIRRUS MasterCard Network. Most of the other banks already mentions (except for Citibank) operate with Visa Plus Network.

You should be able to open the account in the day, but the ATM card will take from 10 to 15 days to arrive to the address you provided.

You may have to get a second address certificate after buying the apartment with the address of the apartment, so the ATM card arrives safely there.

You don't want your ATM card to arrive to the first address you provided before buying just to get the CDI (probably the hotel or apartment where you were staying at that time.

Anyhow, you won't need this account to be open until you already own the apartment, to make payments and receive the rent.