Open a Bank Account

Submitted by fyl on 28 June, 2007 - 17:13.

There are lots of "stories" about how to open a bank account in Nicaragua on this site. By stories, I mean personal accounts of successes and failures. I have just been told that "things changed due to a new law". This HowTo will be the attempt to offer the current information on the subject.

First, anyone with a Nicaraguan cédula and a reference or two can open a bank account here at any bank. That's the easy part. In addition, any legal entity (in Nicaragua) should be able to open a bank account but that appears to not be the case. As you now need a cédula to create a new legal entity here, I suppose this doesn't matter.

I wondered why a Nicaraguan bank would not want to allow you to open an account as you are essentially allowing them to use your money. I talked to a bank manager and he said that the issue was pressure indirectly applied by the US government. In order for a local bank to do anything with dollars they need a correspondent bank. He said that the US Federal Reserve applies pressure on US-based correspondent banks to only work with banks they are sure are not doing "anything wrong".

The implication is money laundering but that is hard to define and harder to control. So, an easier thing to control is setting requirements on who a local bank accepts as a customer. Obviously, you have to say that they can have Nicaraguan citizens as customers. Thus, that seems to be the default and anything beyond that is negotiated.

Historically, we have had examples of people without cédulas opening accounts in:

  • Personal accounts in BDF
  • Business accounts in BanPro
  • Personal accounts in Banco Pro Credit

In addition, everyone has said that BankUno would not allow them to open an account without a cédula.

All banks offer accounts in cordobas and dollars. BanPro and Bancentro offer accounts in Euros as well.

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Personal account at BDF

Submitted by chele leon on 30 June, 2007 - 21:40.

We recently opened a personal account at BDF. The necessary documents were a letter of good standing from our bank in the states, 2 local references, and standing in line for a morning. They have their own forms for the references so don't bother cooking up your own. After that it was easy, and no cedula or local address required.

BancoUno

Submitted by NicaNix on 28 June, 2007 - 18:52.

Banco Uno also works with Euros.

Beware that if you are moving large sums of money on a regular basis, then banks will hassle you severely and ¨suggest¨ you need to open a corporate account.

We were blessed to have several donations come through for church projects, but I ran into all kinds of problems, and they almost refused to let me have my own money, because the account activity didn't fit within their profile for a personal account.

NicaNix