After living in different cities in different countries and experiencing different cultures and environments eventually I moved to Budapest in Hungary, after a long marathon managed to get a work permit and now can focus on my dream job. There are some reasons that I chose this city, One of them is I have family here and also I traveled here before a lot and fell in love with the city, and while I was in the Hague and during the pandemic and living in a tiny room in a small flat shared with other flatmates and staring at the monitor for long hours, and panicking to go out because the virus, I decided it is better to live close to family members. So I moved to Budapest and I met lovely people and I am enjoying it. By looking at my journey in the past two years, I started it individually with a blog and I named it rezgamedev, now it calls REZGAMEDEV KFT, KFT stands for LLC, and at the moment we are making some prototypes that will announce later, but for now we started a clothing campaig...
Having a bank account is one of the essentials for wherever the
world you are living and it is the same in the Netherlands, but opening a bank
account in the Netherlands if you just arrived is not easy.
Here is what I experienced:
First, when you arrive in the Netherlands you have to know
that if you are not in Amsterdam, most of the shops do not accept MasterCards
and Visa Cards, They just accept V Pay or Maestro cards. So, you have to go to the
ATM all the time and do shopping in cash, which is so inconvenient.
The Netherlands has some banks the most common ones are ING
and ABN Ambro and Rabobank. I use ING, and to be honest it is so inconvenient
especially for online shopping.
For online shopping, you have to use IDEAL which is a third-party
app that makes it possible to shop with your bank account, and mostly online shops
inside the Netherlands have that, so if you want to shop from a platform
outside of the Holland you would have a problem because most of them don’t support
IDEAL.
For opening a bank account, you need to have a registered
address and BSN, and finding a house is hard in the Netherlands. It would take
a while to get everything ready.
After having all the required documents and ready to open bank account you need to make an appointment, If you live in Amsterdam the appointment times
are faster, I live in the Hague and I thought I go to the branch and try to see
if I can get the appointment there or if I was lucky I open the account right
away.
I went to the ING branch in the city center they told me I
need to make an appointment, they said I can use their computer, the computer
loaded “Make an appointment” page and it was all in Dutch, the browser or the
app that they were using did not have a translator on it, and it was hard to
use, so I asked lots of questions from the staffs to fill the form, eventually,
I managed to get an appointment from a branch around the Hague for two weeks
later.
You can make an appointment with ING bank from this link: https://www.ing.nl/particulier/betalen/bankrekeningen/klantworden/index.html
After finally opening a bank account they sent my debit card
and credentials in 5 days, and I had to activate the card and online services. It
has an app which it is useful and it is in English but the problem is you receive
messages all in Dutch, you can translate them by google translate but you
cannot make a screenshot in the app for google translate but you can select the
texts and then translate it. You can deposit to your account from the ATMs
provided inside the bank branches, and withdraw money from any ATM. Bank transfers
between Dutch banks are fast that happens instantly. It seems you can request
MasterCards or Visa Cards but I could not find anything on their website, just
some information about credit cards.
Online Banks:
There is another solution as well, Opening accounts in online
banks, such as Monese, Revolut, Bunq, and N26. I have a Monzo account I opened
it when I was in the UK, and I used it a lot in train stations and shops in
Amsterdam but when I moved to the Hague, it did not work at local supermarkets
because it is a MasterCard.
I tried to open an account at N26, I ran to a problem and
customer support was passing me between each other for days, so it took a long
time and I gave up on it.
Monese provides a Euro account and GBP account but it just
provides MasterCard, so it is not that much of help while I already have Monzo
but the Euro account can be helpful.
I tried Revolut and it is awesome, and it is my main account
in the Netherlands right now. Registration is easy, required documents are
passport, and residency card and 10 or 20 euros online payment to the account
to activate, they will send you a Maestro card to the house in 9 days and with
the app, you can create Virtual Visa cards to use it for Google Pay or online
shopping. It uses SEPA payments inside Europe and it is fast, if you make the transfer
before 2 pm your transaction can happen till afternoon or next morning which it's
fast. you can save different currencies like GBP, Euro, USD, Hungarian forints
and lots of other currencies, with the app also you can purchase cryptocurrencies
as well. Here is a link that describes the services with more details:
Conclusion
If you moved to the Netherlands and you collected your
residency card and you haven’t found a house to rent and you just have a
temporary address and you need a bank account asap, don’t get frustrated you can
try online banks, for me Revolut worked. But after you managed to get all the requirements
for a normal bank account it is better to have a local bank account as well, to
use it for insurance payments or paying rents.
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