IF YOU plan to live in Slovakia for a long time and you find fees for withdrawing cash from ATMs on an international payment card issued by your home bank too high, you should think about opening a bank account in a Slovak bank.
Opening a new account in Slovakia is easy to do even when you are a foreigner.
A basic document for the new account is your passport. Some banks require also a confirmation of your temporary residence basis in Slovakia.
Other just want your temporary address in Slovakia to fill in a contract form without any documentation. If you do not have a confirmation and a bank requires it, you will probably be offered an account without advantages of a residential person. It means you will not be able to have, for example, a payment card or an overdraft limits. You can just use it for cashless transfers.
After obtaining the confirmation or finding a bank that does not need it (that is most banks), a bank will treat you as a residential person and you can take advantage of every product that your bank provides.
With your current bank account you usually get a payment card, regularly delivered account statements and often services via electronic communication media (internet banking, mobile banking) - usually all included in a bank services package.
The deposit minimum for a current bank account is usually around Sk500 (€12). Fees for the bank account are the same as for a resident and are often included in a monthly flat rate for the whole services package. If you are under 26, try to find out whether a bank provides discounts or special packages with lower fees, because many banks do so.
You can have a bank account in Slovak crowns or in a foreign currency - US dollars or euros. If you work in Slovakia and will get paid in Slovak currency, of course, the best option is to have a Slovak crown account. If you will in most cases get money from your home country, it is better to have an account in a foreign currency. In both cases you can deposit or withdraw money in a different currency from the one in which your account is registered. The money will be converted on the daily foreign exchange currency rate.
