What Opening Up a Bank Account Taught Me About Oil Futures
In China, opening up a checking account seems more difficult than investing in complex financial products.
An unexpected lesson.
Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
With a quarter of its interest-bearing assets overseas, Bank of China Ltd. is by far the most international and outward-looking of China’s largest lenders. But have you tried banking with them lately?
I have. In mid-January, I was eager to open an account in Shanghai. With China vowing to increase access to its financial services industry, this process has become a lot easier for people like me, overseas Chinese with a foreign passport — or so I heard. I also desperately needed a mainland account to top up mobile payments on AliPay and WeChat Pay. These apps have become so ubiquitous that the sorry few without them are practically walking down the streets of Shanghai naked.