BANK

BANK ACCOUNTS

Philippa will take you to the bank to get you set up with a bank account. You will first need to have visited the registration office to obtain your residence permit or Anmeldungsbestätigung. You will need to bring a copy of it with you as well as your passport identification and a copy of your contract.

There are two main banks. Deutsche Bank (which has a monthly payment and has English speaking online access) and Sparkasse (which is free, has many more ATMs and if you run your online banking through Google Chrome set to translate German, you will access everything in English anyway ). We recommend beginning with Sparkasse so that is where Philippa will take you to open an account initially.

Most restaurants and shops do not take credit cards and some do not take debit cards either.  We recommend you carry ample cash with you in your wallet for all your expected daily purchases from day one until you get your debit card.

If you choose to get a credit card here in Germany through your bank then payment is usually an automatic direct debit from your checking account each month thus for purchases there is no interest accrued. The advantage is that many online purchases cannot be made with a debit card.

It is usual to find that payment for many recurring bills requires you to set up a transfer from your account to theirs. They will provide you with their bank details.  This is also true for some one off payments of bills. Amazon.de will take credit cards as payment online and will store your bank details for direct purchase as well as your debit card details.