RetireJapan

Just a quick question.

I applied to open up an account with SBI online (took me ages) only to receive a letter a week later saying foreigners are not allowed to open accounts online.

Has anyone else been told the same?

Are the other companies going to be the same (Rakuten, Monex etc)? If so I will save myself the effort of going through the online forms and just get them to send me the forms via post.

I think I had to do it by mail because the online forms didn't recognise foreign names (or maybe it was there wasn't enough space for more than about 4 characters!). Anyway, it was very, very frustrating and took ages, but do it by regular mail and stick with it and you'll get there in the end. I even had to do some sort of name change at my bank to make sure everything matched up correctly.

For SBI in particular, their online form says if you need your name to be non-kanji you can't do it online.
Rakuten, when I signed up, was able to do my name in katakana (it's relatively short though, just five kana for my surname).

Basically your mileage will vary

Thanks.

I will get the forms sent to me then to avoid any more bumps in the process.

I did it online with SBI, but that was years ago so it's probably changed since then (or my memory is wrong).

If it took you a long time to apply, keep in mind that once the account is up and running it's generally smooth, but they require you to keep up with their "important" notices in the online interface by marking each one as confirmed. If you don't keep up, they stop you trading until you confirm them all. You can just click the confirm button without reading, but sometimes there's important information there. I disagree with their classification of "important" for most of the notices though...