US banking and credit in your own name
How someone living outside the US can hold a US account, start a credit file and qualify for cards in their own name.
How does someone living outside the US get an account and credit in their own name?
A personal account is opened for you, so the bank asks who you are, where you live, what you do and where your money comes from. There is no company for it to look at. If you also run a company abroad, that route runs separately, and the two can move forward together.
A personal account is a different conversation from a business one.
A business account is opened for a company, and the bank reads the company first. A personal account is opened for you, so every question is about you: who you are, where you live, what you do and where your money comes from.
That is simpler in one way, since there is no company to explain, and harder in another, since there is nothing else for the bank to look at. If you also run a company abroad, its route to US banking and credit runs separately, and the two can move forward together.
The bank asks who you are, where you live and where the money comes from.
A banker opening a personal account for someone who lives abroad will usually want to see the following before the account opens, and often again later.
- Your passport, and sometimes a second form of ID
- Proof of the address where you live now
- What you do, or did, for a living
- Where the opening deposit comes from
- Why you want an account in the US
Give the bank the address where you actually live.
The address on the account should be your real home address, abroad if that is where you live. The bank checks it, and an address that doesn’t match your documents is one of the most common reasons a review stalls.
Credit starts with a tax number and a first account.
A US credit file is tied to a US number. Most people abroad have no Social Security number, so the file usually starts with an ITIN, and the IRS issues an ITIN only for a US tax reason, such as US income.
The number alone builds nothing. The file begins when a US account that reports to the credit bureaus is opened in your name, and it grows from there, one month of history at a time.
A credit file grows with time, not with the size of your deposits.
This is the part that surprises people of substantial means. A large deposit makes a bank comfortable with you as a customer, and it can help a banker agree to open the account. It does not show up in your credit file. The bureaus record how you handle credit: whether you pay on time, how much of your limits you use and how long your accounts have been open. Only time and steady use build that record, whatever the balance in your accounts.
The first year, in order.
Each step needs the one before it, so the year runs in roughly this order. Some of the waiting overlaps, but none of it can be skipped.
-
Get your US tax number
If you have a US tax reason, the ITIN application starts first, prepared with the return or papers that support it. It is usually the slowest part, and everything after it waits on the number.
-
Open the personal account
A banker reviews your documents, your address and where your money comes from, often over more than one conversation. The decision is the bank’s, and it can ask for more before the account opens.
-
Start the credit file
A first account that reports to the bureaus, often a secured card or a card the bank offers its own customers, starts the file in your name. From that month on, the bureaus have something to record.
-
Use it lightly, pay in full
Small, regular spending, paid off in full every month, gives the bureaus months of clean history. That history, not the size of your balance, is what the next issuer reads.
Cards in your own name follow from that file.
Once the file has some months of clean history, issuers have something to read, and a first card application becomes realistic. The bank that already holds your account is usually the natural place to start, because it knows you.
After that, each card adds to the file, and each application is recorded on it whatever the answer. So cards come one at a time, spaced out, in an order planned around your file rather than around this month’s offers.
Your accountant at home should know.
A US account in your own name is a foreign account from your home country’s point of view. It is usually a short conversation, and having it first means nothing about the account needs explaining later.
We can help you be more efficient.
It reads like a lot from the outside. We take care of the steps, line them up in the right order and tell you what comes next, so you only do the parts that need you.
