RetireJapan

In Oct 2023 Prestia made a change to their ATM fee policy.

Basically, keeping over 1mil yen account balance no longer gets you free ATM usage at places like 7-11 anymore.
You can use an ATM for free by using an SMBC ATM whenever they might be available, for free use, to their banking customers. (So I guess that’s 10am to 2pm alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays unless it’s a holiday or maintenance. Or lunch time..)

https://www.smbctb.co.jp/en/service/fees/atm.html

Obviously those with premium status like Prestia Gold can carry on being awesome.

There’s an actual Bank ATM near my office and a few times a month there are queues the length of which had me convinced they must be handing out free money. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good queue but not sure I can adapt as I’ve been molded by convenience(stores).

Anyway, as I’m not planning to go gold with them I’m going to gradually reduce use of Prestia. Thankfully I get several free ATM and furikomi transactions from SBI each month.

The fee free transfers have disappeared now too after gold status was withdrawn. I rarely withdraw cash but make several transfers a month and this is now irritating me.

I don’t want to sign up to any of their rip-off investments though. Starting to be tempted to open a second bank account if there are any that offer fee free transfers.

I think they were going to start charging me account maintenance fees a few years back, so I just closed my account entirely. Haven’t missed it so far, so if I ever do need to use some services I think I’ll just pay for the services.

I like to have my money invested in stuff, rather than sitting in banks to qualify for freebies.

The rates on USD time deposits aren’t too bad. Might just send over some dollars from abroad to satisfy the 3 million yen investment products balance to go back up to Gold. Kind of goes against my general philosophy of keeping as much outside of Japan as possible though!

Deep Blue wrote: ↑Sat Mar 30, 2024 5:05 am
I don’t want to sign up to any of their rip-off investments though. Starting to be tempted to open a second bank account if there are any that offer fee free transfers.

Take a look at SONY bank and AEON bank. Both have some requirements to get extra free transfers, but they are not so onerous.

https://www.aeonbank.co.jp/mystage/

https://moneykit.net/visitor/fx/fx29.html

Deep Blue wrote: ↑Sat Mar 30, 2024 5:05 am The fee free transfers have disappeared now too after gold status was withdrawn. I rarely withdraw cash but make several transfers a month and this is now irritating me.

I don’t want to sign up to any of their rip-off investments though. Starting to be tempted to open a second bank account if there are any that offer fee free transfers.

Same here. For me the loss of gold status is irritating me because transferring money abroad for free was an awesome perk. Anyone here have any tips on the cheapest way of sending money from Firstrade to Japan?

Re free transfers: SMBC Olive comes with 3 fee free transfers each month.
Like their App and multi function card approach.
Hence moved my usual operations from Prestia over.