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".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.
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.
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.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.
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.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.
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.DKB no longer open accounts for Irish residents unfortunately. They previously did.
To summarise: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.
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 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?
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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