Living in Brazil

It looks like I’ve succeeded finally, although it will take a few days to be processed.  Thanks for the comments private and public from those of you who provided information or offered advice.  A lot of this stuff in Brazil is trickier to do than in the United States.  I mean, if you’ve got money, foreigner or not, there’s a bank in the U.S. happy to hold it for you.  Just don’t ask where they put it while they’re holding it…

Anyway, I digress.

Apparently Banco do Brasil, the big national bank isn’t very foreigner friendly and requires residence for at least a year before they will open their doors, or so I was told.  Another friend, an American with permanent residency, recommended HSBC.  They have a nice wesbite with pages in English where they explain their requirements.  There are two HSBCs within easy walking distance of me, both close to busstops I use.

I had everything on the list (due to all the other things I’ve had to do already) except for “proof of residency,” and what that was exactly wasn’t clear to me.  I was already registered with the Federal Police as a foreign resident and had an “RNE,” and my situation with having bills in my name at my apartment is awkward since it was about a thousand times easier for my colleague here to do things in her name.  We just called the bank and explained the situation and asked what they would like to cover this.

Well, what they told us they wanted was a notarized letter for the University, providing the University address and stating certain things clearly about who I was and what I was doing in Brazil.  We put that together, and I went today.  The process was pretty quick and easy, although they didn’t initially take my birth certificate and called me back because they needed a document with my parents names on it, and the other items didn’t have it.

Oh, and if you haven’t been inside a bank in Brazil, at least a bigger bank in a bigger city, it’s a bit of a trip.  Mostly everyone just does business with ATMs, much as in the U.S.  If you need more, the banks have these revolving doors with built-in metal detectors that won’t turn if they’re set off.   You have these slots to pass through items like cell phones, keys, etc., to get past the metal detectors.  This is in addition to several armed guards, who watch the process.

I still have to wait until next week for the account number and a debit card, as HSBC here sends their stuff to an office in Curitiba, if I understood correctly.  Anyway, one more technical step done in establishing myself in Brazil.  I have to say it hasn’t been too tough to get by using only my ATM/debit card from the U.S., although losing that would make things difficult in a pinch.

Tags: bank, HSBC, money

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.