28 Aug | How to open a bank account if you are not a resident in Italy
If you do not reside or are domiciled in Italy for more than 183 days a year, you can open a non-resident current account at an Italian bank.
Current accounts for non-residents are reserved to:
- customers who are not enrolled in the Register of Residents (namely, those who do not reside in Italy for more than 183 days, or 184 days in leap years)
- customers who have not lived in Italy (for business purposes, etc.) for more than six months
- customers who have not been residents in Italy (habitual residence) for more than six months
For tax purposes, all three conditions must be simultaneously met for a customer to have foreign-resident status.
Usually, these solutions have higher costs because of high commission fees assessed on transactions.
We do not recommend to prospective customers who reside in a non-Euro zone country to open a current account in Italy since, sometimes, high currency exchange commissions may not adequately offset the benefits of holding such account. Likewise, we do not recommend closing your own foreign account after opening one in Italy. Indeed, keeping two separate accounts for different currencies will allow saving on exchange commissions.
Once you locate the bank that offers the best product, opening an account in Italy is a very simple operation. You must: show your identity document, put your signature on file and sign the contract documents.
When you open a bank account, you must provide the bank with an Italian address to which any communications may be sent.
In the case of Italian citizens enrolled in the A.I.R.E. Register, because they reside abroad, it is not possible to convert any previous ordinary current account into a non-resident account. In this case, you will have to close the former and open a non-resident account to which any balance is transferred.