Does anyone have experience with less mainstream banks or rather exotic/newcomer neobanks? I know what the often recommended bigger banks offer and decided to get a second or third bank for more flexibility (reasons below), so let us here consider banks with the minimum requirement of coming with a modern app that would be a side gig to something like AEON, Rakuten, Sony or SBI.
What special features do banks have and what are the unique points and perks of:
* PayPay bank (I’m already using PayPay without their bank product, what would be better if I get the bank, too?)
* Seven bank (I can already withdraw at all konbinis for free with other banks), something special?
* GMO Aozora bank: Kinda wannabe digital bank of brick and mortar bank. Is this one of the only few that would be good for business transactions?
Or more less-known/exotic banks like:
* “Minna no ginko” (good app reviews, since 2021; some kind of neobank/online only product of Fukuoka Financial)
* UI bank (newcomer since 2022)
* other banks that I forgot (I don’t watch TV and use ad blockers, perhaps there’s another interesting newcomer on commercials)
For nearly same products, I would give preference to banks that:
* support 通称名 (registered alias) as account holder name, eg. showing them the MyNumber card and they use the Kanji name instead of the Romaji/katakana name. Which banks do support that besides Rakuten and AEON?
For the reasons and motivation:
1. Most bank accounts are free anyway but often come with limitations, a second and third thoughfully selected bank can compensate the main bank’s deficits and why not split/categorize via separate banks (eg. housing/car expenses, online shopping and side income)? Could at least make accounting/tax simpler.
2. Would need separate accounts for business, and expected to have 1-3 different kinds of side income – some banks explicitly state “no business transactions”.
3. One of my banks out of the blue announced the hard daily withdrawal limit for all accounts to be 20万 and many grant only 2-5 free withdrawals and transfers a month. Now I have no problem to furikomi the money to somewhere and withdraw it there because the bank and app are great.
What I don’t understand, forcing people to use more cash if free transfers are used up just makes AML more difficult for the bank, Japanese customers already often prefer cash.
by Murodo
