Both a company and an individual may need to open an account in Austria for personal needs. In order to open a corporate or personal account in Austria, you need to go through a series of procedures described below.
In addition, the chosen by you bank plays an important role in the account opening process, since different banks have different internal procedures and requirements for the procedure of registering bank accounts.
How to open an account in an Austrian bank
If we consider a personal account in Austria and the procedure for opening it, it should be taken into account that banks divide all customers who apply to open a personal account into two categories.
Category No. 1 – Deviseninlaen-der. This group of persons includes residents and citizens of Austria.
Category No. 2 – Devisenauslaende. This group of persons includes tourists, businessmen and others who do not reside in Austria on a permanent basis and are staying in Austria temporarily or with the aim of becoming an Austrian resident in the future.
In order to become a resident of Austria and move to the Deviseninlaen-der category, an Oitsu must continuously (without leaving the territory) live in Austria for at least 3 months, and also have an appropriate visa.
If we talk about opening a corporate account in Austria, then it is, of course, critically necessary for any business to conduct its operational activities. VigoLex team will be happy to advise you on how to open a corporate account in Austria for your company.
Account types in Austria
Before opening an account in Austria, you need to decide on the type of such an account.
There are three main types of bank accounts in Austria:
- Savings account
This account must be registered personally by the owner or with the help of a representative. The term of the actual process of opening an account, including the passage of banking procedures, varies in the range of 4-7 days.
After opening an account, the owner is issued a savings book, which indicates the bank name and the bank account number. The savings book validity is limited in time, the limit is from 3 months to 5 years.
- Trust account
The peculiarity of this type of account is that the account owner authorizes the bank institution to act as a trustee of the account owner. As a result, the bank has the right to independently dispose of the funds that are in the trust account.
Maintenance of a trust account is paid; the cost of such services varies from 0.1 to 0.6%. A trust account can be opened in any currency. The term for opening a trust account is set in accordance with the bank internal procedures and may depend, inter alia, on the amounts that the owner plans to service using such an account.
- Current account.
This type of account is the most convenient for making settlements not only in the territory of Austria, but also abroad. The current account can be multicurrency, which allows you to avoid unnecessary conversions when making transactions.
Most popular banks in Austria
When opening a bank account in Austria, you can use the services of one of the following banks:
- LGT Bank (Austria) Ltd;
- Deutsche Bank (Austria) AG;
- Anglo-Austrian Bank;
- Erste Bank AG;
- Raiffeisen Bank International AG;
- Euram Bank AG;
- Benduro Bank (Austria) AG и другие.
Documents for account opening
When opening a personal account in an Austrian bank, you may be required to provide the following information:
- passport, international passport;
- a document in German that confirms the place of residence: registration in Austria or the EU (utility bills, bank statements, etc.);
- proof of employment (document of admission to the university, information about the place of work, visa, etc.);
- photo;
- additional documents at the discretion of the bank.
When opening a corporate account, the following information must be provided to the bank:
- tax number of the company and the number of registration of the legal entity in the register;
- address of the company registration;
- the company articles of association;
- certificate of absence of financial and tax debts.
VigoLex team will be happy to advise you on opening and maintaining a bank account in Austria.