I am an incoming undergraduate student this september and plan to make a JP Post Bank account since it’s the only bank i am able to get as student in their first six month in japan. However, i’m getting worried from this information i got from the internet:
“Under the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, banks are now obligated to review the transactions of “non-residents” and determine whether each transaction is to be subjected to certain restrictions under the law. For this reason, as a rule, Japan Post Bank and a handful of other banks treat certain domestic money transfers of “non-residents” as “international transfers”, despite the fact that the money is only moving from one Japanese bank account to another.
Under this law, persons, including international students, are considered “non-residents” for their first 6 months in Japan.
Please be aware that students completing bank transfers to pay for things like tuition, miscellaneous membership fees and airport usage taxes during this “non-resident” period may be subject to a 7,500 JPY “international transfer” surcharge on each transaction. (That being said, in some cases payment of tuition fees via bank transfer using the deposit request form issued by the university may be treated as a domestic transfer.)”
Doing domestic transaction is of course unavoidable especially for paying rent, health insurance, and others. any way to avoid the fee mentioned above? Anyone mind to share their experience regarding this?
Source: https://www.jp-bank.japanpost.jp/kojin/sokin/gaitame/kj_sk_gt_index.html
5 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**Japan Post Bank and other banks treat certain domestic money transfers of “non-residents” as “international transfers” – any way to avoid the surcharge?**
I am an incoming undergraduate student this september and plan to make a JP Post Bank account since it’s the only bank i am able to get as student in their first six month in japan. However, i’m getting worried from this information i got from the internet:
“Under the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, banks are now obligated to review the transactions of “non-residents” and determine whether each transaction is to be subjected to certain restrictions under the law. For this reason, as a rule, Japan Post Bank and a handful of other banks treat certain domestic money transfers of “non-residents” as “international transfers”, despite the fact that the money is only moving from one Japanese bank account to another.
Under this law, persons, including international students, are considered “non-residents” for their first 6 months in Japan.
Please be aware that students completing bank transfers to pay for things like tuition, miscellaneous membership fees and airport usage taxes during this “non-resident” period may be subject to a 7,500 JPY “international transfer” surcharge on each transaction. (That being said, in some cases payment of tuition fees via bank transfer using the deposit request form issued by the university may be treated as a domestic transfer.)”
Doing domestic transaction is of course unavoidable especially for paying rent, health insurance, and others. any way to avoid the fee mentioned above? Anyone mind to share their experience regarding this?
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I’m a student in Japan and I’ve never heard of anyone having this problem.If you’re coming here for an undergraduate program,you’re going to get a resident card as soon as you go come here.
Change banks. Japan Post Bank is awful. It is definitely not the only bank you can get.
At least for yucho you can do a cash furikomi to send money to a yucho bank account.
I’m not precisely sure when this went into effect, and I am a professional, not a student, but I moved to Japan in Nov 2022 and opened a bank account in Dec 2022 at SMBC Prestia, and never ran into any mention of anything like this.
You could avoid a lot of this by dealing in cash. Not sure if that’s an option for rent and tuition, but you could handle most other things that way. It’s much easier to deal in cash in Japan than most other countries, and you can pay a lot of your bills in cash at your local combini.
Obviously that’s not convenient, so I’d look into foreigner-friendly banks. SMBC is one, though I can’t speak to how easy it would be for a student to open an account. Shinsei and Sony would be other ones to consider. Maybe cross-post this on /r/japanfinance.
Last option is use a foreign credit card, if you have one. Preferably one with no foreign exchange fees and a reasonable forex rate. It’ll probably be 1-3% more expensive (on a good credit card) than paying from your bank account, but that’s still a lot cheaper than 7500円 per transaction. Just be aware of any tax consequences of remitting money to Japan if you have any income overseas.