BMW Bank 3% instant demand deposit

Gordon Gekko said:
Are people sure that this isn’t a scam?

I’ve no reason to think that it is, but there have been plenty of fake Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and Morgan Stanley ones doing the rounds recently.
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It's not a scam and the links to BMW Bank can be found on the BMW website. Most of these car companies seem to operate their own banks, presumably so they can offer attractive financing deals to purchasers of their products. I personally feel more comfortable having my rainy day fund in this bank than in Trade Republic, even though it was in a real bank (in my case Chase in Frankfurt) too, but there was a middleman and always the question of what happens if the middleman goes bust. BMW is a bank and there's no intermediary like with TR. I feel more comfortable with that, but clearly it's not for everyone as there are going to be some hoops to jump through in order not to be subject to the "German DIRT".
 
I'm an Irish resident and have German bank accounts. I only needed to send a utility bill to prove non-residence and get exemption from the German equivalent of Dirt. I supplied my PPS number. Didn't need a German tax number.
I haven't tried BMW Bank though. If I can find some spare cash to deposit, I'll give it a go.
 
I've sent an email to BMW to ask directly if my mother (Irish resident, Irish citizen, no German tax ID) can open an account and if so how are the tax aspects handled in her case. The automatic response said they are experiencing a large volume of emails blah blah and not to hold your breath more or less! I found out by chance that if you have one of these accounts with a few quid in it, you can apply to join the BMW Driver's Club, whatever that is....anyway the only perk of this club membership that would interest me is a free for life Amex, with no minimum annual spend. I'll take that if I can get it. Not sure if they want the "full 50k" in the account (I don't want to leave that much cash on deposit at 3% rather than investing it in ETFs!) to grant membership to this club, time will tell.

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If anyone here happens to have a DKB current account already, they are now (finally) offering instant access deposit accounts at 3.5% to all business with no limit on the deposit amount (though naturally the 100k deposit protection should be borne in mind). I am a DKB customer anyway so I'll be moving my cash from BMW Bank back to my own bank to avail of the extra 0.5% (guaranteed 3.5% until end of January). DKB only offers the savings account to customers with a current account, which costs a fiver a month unless you have at least €700 going in to it.
 
murphaph1 said:
If anyone here happens to have a DKB current account already, they are now (finally) offering instant access deposit accounts at 3.5% to all business with no limit on the deposit amount (though naturally the 100k deposit protection should be borne in mind). I am a DKB customer anyway so I'll be moving my cash from BMW Bank back to my own bank to avail of the extra 0.5% (guaranteed 3.5% until end of January). DKB only offers the savings account to customers with a current account, which costs a fiver a month unless you have at least €700 going in to it.
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DKB no longer open accounts for Irish residents unfortunately. They previously did.
 
I'm still broadly happy with DKB but it's not all free the way it used to be. Unless the account has active status it costs a monthly fee. Credit cards cost €2.50 a month for all customers, even "active" ones. The previously free accounts for landlords now cost a Euro per month. They were quite disruptive when they entered the market but are sort of "establishment" now. I think the likes of N26 have overtaken DKB when it comes to features.
 
murphaph1 said:
They will open accounts for non-residents with a caveat....you can only use a German current account as your reference account for making withdrawals.
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I don’t see how this is legal under the SEPA Regulation. Once it’s in the EU banks are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of either the country of residence of the account holder or the account.
 
Dr Strangelove said:
I don’t see how this is legal under the SEPA Regulation. Once it’s in the EU banks are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of either the country of residence of the account holder or the account.
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I would like to agree but I'm honestly not sure if it's true. I definitely agree that once an account is established, the payee can't refuse a foreign IBAN. I had these struggles with Irish companies/Revenue refusing my DKB IBAN early on but these days I don't seem to run into any trouble. I am however uncertain that a bank cannot refuse to open an account unless some other condition is met, which they are free to determine, in this case, that the reference account you supply when asking them to open an account for you, is a domestic one.

It is very common (unfortunately) to see that condition on German online account products, or a straight up "you must be resident in Germany". I was going to recommend https://www.c24.de/ here but in the fine print they also state they will only open accounts for German residents. It's an awesome deal there: 2% interest on your current account, 4% on your instant access savings account, free mastercard and debit card, like the old days with DKB. It's only my wife stopping me from moving from DKB to them!
 
Lightning said:
DKB no longer open accounts for Irish residents unfortunately. They previously did.
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That's a shame. I opened an account with them many years ago as an Irish resident. I think their target customers were Germans living abroad, but I never had any issues with the application or aftewards with them. Easy to register as a Steuerauslaender (foreign resident for tax purposes). Still get free banking even without regular lodgements. I think it's because I declined the credit card. Hopefully they don't start closing non-resident accounts.
 
BMW Bank's answer in relation to my query about my mother opening an account:
Sehr geehrter Herr murphaph,

vielen Dank für Ihre E-Mail. Wir freuen uns, dass Sie sich an uns wenden.

Ihre Mutter kann selbstverständlich ebenfalls ein Konto bei der BMW Bank eröffnen, auch als Steuerausländerin ist dies möglich. Ihre Mutter benötigt lediglich ein gültiges Ausweisdokument sowie eine deutsche Referenzbankverbindung.

Die Kontoeröffnungen für Neukunden sind außerdem nur mittels Video-Legitimation möglich.

Bei Steuerausländern werden wir als Bank keine Steuern abführen, diese muss dann im entsprechenden Land selbst abgeführt werden.

Wenn Sie noch Fragen haben, erreichen Sie uns unter +49 89 3184-31.
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To summarise:
They will happily open accounts for non-residents but only using video-identification (and presumably only in German as S Class experienced) and the bank will NOT deduct any taxes when the customer is not tax resident in Germany-no further paperwork seems necessary here. The reference account must be a German one, but presumably an N26 account would do the trick). The only real hurdle seems to be speaking enough German during the identification check.
 
@murphaph1 thanks for your numerous responses on this thread. My assessment is that dealing with this bank for someone resident in Ireland who does not speak German is all but unrealistic. Or am I missing something?
 
Freelance said:
@murphaph1 thanks for your numerous responses on this thread. My assessment is that dealing with this bank for someone resident in Ireland who does not speak German is all but unrealistic. Or am I missing something?
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That sounds like a fair assessment. One might get lucky and find their operator performs the ID check in English. They are generally not Germans doing these things, more often than not eastern Europeans. I don't know if BMW Bank instructs their 3rd party ID checkers to only speak German...I know many people who have opened bank accounts here (as residents) who don't speak German and just did it in English, but I don't know anyone personally that has done this with BMW Bank.
 
murphaph1 said:
BMW Bank's answer in relation to my query about my mother opening an account:

To summarise:
They will happily open accounts for non-residents but only using video-identification (and presumably only in German as S Class experienced) and the bank will NOT deduct any taxes when the customer is not tax resident in Germany-no further paperwork seems necessary here. The reference account must be a German one, but presumably an N26 account would do the trick). The only real hurdle seems to be speaking enough German during the identification check.
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That's great that they don't deduct taxes for non residents.

I am still waiting in a queue to (re)open a N26 account to start the process.

Maybe some real time online translator service could be used for the video call if they insist on German. The questions have to be very basic anyway.
 
Idk, I remember it taking several minutes to complete. They ask you to read the details from the ID, cover certain parts of the ID with your thumb, tilt the card side to side and top to bottom so they can see the holograms etc.
 
My guess is that:

1) the requirement to have a German bank account
2) the requirement to carry out the KYC check in German

is part of a deliberate strategy to exclude non-German depositors.

That’s a reasonable business strategy but I don’t see how 1 is consistent with the SEPA Regulation Article 9.

Bunq are more explicit by quoting different deposit rates based on country of residence.
 
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