First of all, IB LLC has an account at the Tokyo Branch of Citibank, but while this account is in Japan, IB LLC is not. If you try to do an online transfer through the standard remittance masks of most of the Japanese websites, their account will just not be found (despite having the usual setup of branch code and account number).
From my understanding, if you try to remit in a foreign currency (and your bank allows that remittance), it will count fee-wise as a full foreign remittance with the usual fess in the x000 JPY range. If you remit in Japanese Yen, even then smaller banks (if they allow it) will charge a hefty amount of it.
Technically what is needed for transferring JPY from a Japanese account to IB LLCs Japanese account is called 国内非居住者円建送金. At least SMBC and UFJ (and probably also Mizuho, but all the examples in Japanese blogs where with the former two) offer this and it has significantly lower fees: 800 JPY flat for more than 3万円.
SMBC seems to allow this through their online banking. UFJ doesn't allow it online, only through a branch and/or telebanking. As I still have an account at UFJ, I tried that today:
- Application through staff or the telebanking Booth doesn't matter, the 800 JPY are the same.
- If you let the branch do it, you have to fill all the information by yourself by hand and you need your Bank Hanko, in their telebanking booth they take your information from your bank card and input the remittance information directly. As my handwriting sucks and every form I fill out gets plastered with corrections and the confirmation by seal, I took the telebanking booth.
- It took around 10 minutes until I got connected to a person. You can request an English speaking person, but that will take probably even more time.
- After reading the bank card and some ID confirmation, they want to scan the remittance information in full English. I didn't prepared that and wrote down the city bank information in Japanese. But they scanned the note on my phone where I prepared the full information with no issues.
- They want proof of a relationship between me and the receiver, like a contract etc. Again, I didn't prepared that, but also here, they were happy with scanning the account information page on the IB app on my mobile phone.
- There was the usual amount of questions (Where did you get the money from you want to transfer? What is the purpose of the transferred money etc).
- I got disconnected for 10 minutes again so they can input the remittance information (sometimes some info flashed up on the screen).
- Finally the person appeared again and we went through the now filled out information on the screen, where finally I had to input myself the amount I wanted to transfer (everything else was done remotely).
- After confirming again everything a couple of times
, I got a print out of the remittance and it was done.
I am curious to know if other people transfer money from Japan to IB LLC and if in which way and what the costs are. For the future, my current plan is probably try it with SMBC and I don't want to spend 50 minutes at the bank...
