I wanted to open a bank account in the Czech Republic. I needed one for Ltd and the other for himself as an entrepreneur. And since I haven’t used parchment and quill in a while, I wanted to do so online. By that I mean over the Internet, at worst over the phone. As an IT nerd, I don’t like to get out of bed and go somewhere. Yeah, I feel a bit like Sandra Bullock in The Net.
First of all, I found out that it is not possible to create an account for a legal entity (i.e. it Ltd.) online at all. And after opening a “free” account with Moneta Money Bank, we also discovered that we have -1,000 CZK available in our account until the beginning. In the Czech Republic, there is probably a difference between a free account and “free”.
In the case of an account for the self-employed, it’s even more of a comedy. Most Czech banks offer its establishment online on their website. Moneta even offers you a +1,500 CZK bonus when you set it up online (given the fact that they block your 1,000 CZK right after setting it up, so actually only 500 CZK, but well, it’s still a bonus and not a negative).
At first, I struggled with the fact that the bank application wants to register a self-employed person in some RES register, but the trade office (or whoever is in charge of these registrations) registers it in ARES and RŽP (status after nine days from the issuance of the Trade Certificate). I don’t understand why they don’t take it from these registers, or why is it not enough to send them-like any other normal institution-a digitally signed extract from the trade register (a foreign bank can only use its photo).
However, it probably doesn’t matter. As I found out, in order to open an account online, you also need to have another account already established in a Czech bank. Which of course I can’t have because that bank would want the same when setting it up, so it’s a vicious cycle. Anyway, I would have to go there at least when setting up the first one. And once I have it, I usually don’t need to start another one, even if it could already be done online. Certainly not in the Czech Republic. In addition, they said they would want two identity documents from me-again, I don’t understand why I have to provide the same documents twice! In short, online in the Czech Republic also means something different than online abroad.
I knew that the Czech banking legislation was not worth much. But I didn’t expect such a (tragi) comedy. However, thank you for the topic for the blog article :).
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