The International Schools Review Forum

Better than being an American in Denmark, apparently.

You don't have online / telephone banking and multiple atm choices plus easy transfer options? Hard to believe in western Europe, particularly the northern bit (I'm northern European, by the way).

I'm assuming most of the major schools in Cairo use Barclays and HSBC, so I think I'm pretty much giving an overview of the situation in Cairo, bearing in mind I live 25km out of Cairo and 30km from Maadi, the expat centre. Given Stellalocal's name, I'm assuming he's in Egypt too. His experiences parallel mine.

Did you have time to set up a bank account in your short time in Egypt? Or just enough time to collect your first pay cheque in cash before heading to the airport?

I am just gonna roll with these 3 for now.

BoA

- Free online checking account. Leave card with family in the states

Charles Schwab

- Free International Debit Card use

Ally

- Savings Account, Money Market Account, & CD's

Just enough time to pick up my first paycheck in Egypt.

I have a great bank in Denmark, I have PC banking, bill pay, ATMS, and we even have mobile pay. Where you use your phone as a debit card. What I CAN'T do is deposit my money in my overseas bank and login to PC banking and just transfer it to my bank account in the USA. To do that I need to either:

1) Send a wire
2) Use Bill pay to pay my self, which is my local bank sending my USA bank a bank draft through the mail.
3) Western Union the money and have a friend/family member deposit it in my account.

Again, there are only two international banks in the USA that have retail banking in other countries, HSBC and CITI. If you have that available great, if you can get it cheap even better. MY experience with HSBC at its USA branches is that to qualify for all those free international banking privliges you need the Premier account, and that's a $50 a month account fee.
Considering my local banks wire fee is $15 and Chase doesn't charge me an incoming wire fee, I'd have to send 3 wires a month to begin to justify the account fee.