Jan.26- Getting an Ecuadorian Bank Account

When we first arrived a few months ago, a dear friend warned us that unlike in the USA or Canada, you are very lucky to get at least one planned thing done in any one day, especially if it involves business or government. Things just move slower and require more paperwork than back home.

So on Thursday what do we do? We plan on going to the bank to open a new account at 9AM, getting a ride to our friends Kay and Jim in Chullabamba ( a suburb of Cuenca) for lunch and then sharing a taxi with them to our Spanish class for the afternoon- WHAT WERE WE THINKING!!!

Let's start at the beginning- getting a bank account in Ecuador. Angel , our driver and friend, knew an officer, Omar, in the Banco Pichincha who dealt with extranjeros ( foreigners).
The Bank of Pichincha is one of the main banks in Ecuador and the only one that will give an account to gringos who do not have a cedula ( permanent residency card). We were told we needed the following items:

Application which we filled out along with
2 color copies of our passport picture page
2 color copies of our Censo ( Ecuador identity card if you stay more than 3 months)
Letter of recommendation supplied by Angel- thankyou
A copy of a Utility bill less than 60 days old
Some proof of our bank accounts in our home country- I took copies of our bank statements of both our USA & Canadian accounts
$300 minimum cash deposit

The only reason we wanted an Ecuadorean bank account is because we wanted our rent checks from our future renters to be deposited here rather than mailed to us whereever we might be. Both our USA and Canadian ATM cards worked well for all the cash we needed to live here especially after we found two bank ATM's that did not charge us the usual $1.50 per withdrawal. These banks were the Banco De Austro and Banco de Machala.

Now back to our banking adventure. We arrived on time and were shown into Omar's modern office . We hit our first snag when it was impossible for Omar to enter our Canadian passport numbers into his computer- only numbers were accepted and Canadians have two letters as well. We would have to return in one hour while he got special permission from head office in Quito to change our letters to '00'. As well, we had brought our condo maintenance bill ,rather than a utility bill,  which was not acceptable .

Back to our apartment we went to wait out the hour plus try to hunt down a recent utility bill for our rental. It took 2 more trips to the bank plus one trip to our rental admin people for a more recent utility bill before we finally met Omar again at 1PM for our final meeting. We had cancelled our lunch date with Kay & Jim during one of the many back and forth trips- hopefully next year!

Everything was now set- we signed many forms , gave him our $300 cash and a check from our USA bank for deposit.  For our Canadian readers- Canadian bank checks are not acceptable- don't ask why, he gave us no explanation. There is good advice for getting a USA account at one of my other favorite BLOG sites, please see http://www.gringosabroad.com/how-to-do-your-banking-in-ecuador-for-canadians/

We arrived at our last 2PM Spanish lesson class slightly late but thrilled that we had accomplished yet another feat on our list.