Show Me The Money

Now that it is official that we will be staying in Singapore for a few years, it was time to open up a local banking account.  So far, I have been able to make do with my US Visa cards for most purchases, and using an ATM for cash.  You really don’t need much cash in Singapore as cards and Android Pay/ Apple Pay are the norm almost everywhere.  The main exception is hawker centers where cash is king, and the local debit network, NETS, is the queen.  For over 3 months it worked, but now I needed a local account in Singapore dollars to be able to pay utilities and get reimbursed for some of my expenses.

Being the financial center of Asia (sorry Hong Kong), Singapore has many choices for banking.  They fall into two camps; a local bank such as DBS or POSB, or an international bank like Citibank or HSBC.  I have been around long enough to realize the best way to make my decision is to as our administrative assistant what she recommended.  And her answer was a good one: go with an international bank as they are not as crowed as the local banks.

So I elected to go with Citibank as they have a branch at Asia Square close to my office and they also have lots of branches in the US.  It took about 40 minutes to set up 2 accounts, one is US dollars and one in Singapore dollars.  A few days later I received my debit card and two checkbooks (USD and SGD), the next day my PIN, and the following day I went into the branch again to get the electronic token I need to make transfers.  As I logged into their website I needed not only my PIN, but a six digit “one-time password”, known as an OTP, sent to my phone bay SMS text. 

Once Julie gets here we will add her to the account, but for now I feel like I live here in Singapore.