Protect your financial privacy: 7 reasons why you need a Georgian bank account

At Liberation.Travel, we will open it for you remotely!

·        Do you want a bank account in a country that still respects the privacy of its clients?

·        Do you want a bank account in a “crypto-friendly” bank?

Georgia is not only a country with excellent food, the best Borjomi mineral water, beautiful mountains (and people), but it is also the most capitalistic country in Europe at the moment (although most Europeans don’t know about it) with “free trade” zones, where there are minimal taxes for defined types of business (e.g. IT services, 0% tax on crypto) and where banks are “crypto-friendly”, unlike most of the rest of the world.

1. Airline lounges, virtual assistants, many benefits

Bank of Georgia offers the best and most widely used airline lounges (Dragon Pass). Your Visa Platinum card gets you six complimentary visits yearly, and your Visa Signature card (SOLO Club) gets you 10 complimentary visits yearly. You will have unlimited visits if you make payment transactions in the last 35 days for a minimum of 5000 GEL (approximately 1685 EUR/month).

The SOLO Premium and SOLO Club packages offer virtual personal concierge assistants. You are entitled to additional virtual Personal Concierge assistants with your premium Visa card.

The SOLO program also offers a wide variety of discounts and benefits. A list of them is available here.

2. Bank accounts are automatically held in USD, EUR, GBP, and GEL (Georgian Lari)

Unlike Paraguayan or Panamanian bank accounts, you automatically have an account in Georgia in euros, dollars, and pounds. So, if you use a Georgian credit card to pay within the Eurozone, the exact amounts are debited from your Euro account, and you will pay no conversion fees. You only pay 15 GEL per month for account maintenance. Of course, this also applies to a USD account if you pay with a payment card in the USA, Panama, Ecuador, or other countries whose official currency is the US dollar. Euros or dollars can be sent directly from your EUR/USD Georgian account (regular international transfer). However, if you can pay for everything by credit card (where payments are free), then bank transfers from Georgia to the EU/US usually don’t make sense. They are expensive and slow.

3. Speed of bank transactions, speed of bank card issuance, virtual Visa or Mastercard debit cards.

Georgian bank accounts make one realize how slow and outdated banking is in the EU. Georgian transfers within the country are virtually instantaneous. Also, issuing bank cards is often a one-day operation. Bank of Georgia also allows you (like Revolut) to create virtual Visa or Mastercard debit cards, which you can pair straight with your Apple or Google Pay and literally pay anywhere. Maintaining a bank account with the Bank of Georgia costs 10 GEL/month.

4. Georgian banks are crypto-friendly, and the tax on crypto is 0

Right off the bat, it should be noted that even though the crypto tax in Georgia is 0% for residents of Georgia (which means that changing fiat to crypto/crypt to fiat is not a tax event for the Georgian tax authorities), it doesn’t mean that it won’t be of interest to your tax authority in the country where you have tax residency.

Therefore, it should be noted that the obligation to pay taxes on cryptos depends on your tax residency—not on the country where you have a bank account!

The fact that Georgian banks are “crypto-friendly” means that they won’t automatically block your bank account (such as when you send money from any crypto exchange to Revolut).

5. Georgia’s largest crypto exchange supports the Bank of Georgia

Georgia’s largest exchange, Cryptal.com, supports both of Georgia’s top banks (Bank of Georgia and TBC Bank).

Withdrawing money from the Georgian exchange (“fiat withdrawal”) is practically instant – as soon as you withdraw money from the crypto exchange, it will immediately be in your Georgian bank account. The fees for changing crypto to fiat (or vice versa) are nice – 0.25%. While there is a 2% fee for withdrawing to your bank account, this fee can be avoided if you can withdraw from the crypto exchange directly to your Bank of Georgia debit card. In this case, the cost is 0% + 1.20 GEL (0.33 EUR). However, you need to verify this card on Cryptal.com specifically. At the Bank of Georgia, it is possible to apply directly for a physical VISA Platinum and Mastercard World Elite card or create a virtual Visa/Mastercard in the Bank of Georgia mobile app (and directly bundle it with, for example, Apple/Google Pay).

6. Possibility of secure login via DIGIPASS

You don’t need a Georgia mobile number to open a Bank of Georgia account. For more secure use, I recommend activating DIGIPASS (a 2FA app directly from the Bank of Georgia) instead of regular text messaging.

For Bank of Georgia, you install the BOG Digipass app for Android or iPhone. Once installed, you select “activate app,” enter your Internet Banking username (which you received via SMS when you opened your bank account), log into your Bank of Georgia Internet Banking profile, click on “DIGIPASS / Send Digipass Activation code,” and an activation code will be sent to your mobile phone, which you will then use as an additional parameter in the BOG Digipass app.

7. Option to open a bank account in Georgia completely remotely

At Liberation.Travel, we have fine-tuned the process of remotely opening a bank account in Georgia (currently Bank of Georgia)! You don’t have to leave your home country to open it.

The whole process looks like this:

1. You complete and sign the Power of Attorney (PoA) at the notary, stating that we can open your bank account. At the same time, you will complete the Bank of Georgia electronic KYC document (this does not need to be notary verified). If you are physically in your home/citizenship country, you make a notary-verified copy of your passport. If not, you must complete the declaration of your passport’s authenticity and sign it at the notary.
2. You do appostillization of both these documents (a notary verified the Power of Attorney and the copy of your passport or the declaration about the authenticity of your passport). The apostles of these two documents are required to recognize them in Georgia.
3. You will send both these documents to our assistant to Georgia by the DHL.
4. We will translate the above documents into Georgian as soon as we receive them. Then, we will open a SOLO bank account for you.
5. You will provide us with your mobile number (which you want to link to your bank account) and the address to send your Visa Platinum and Mastercard World Elite card.
6. A few days later, you will receive the payment cards from the bank by courier.
7. The whole process is secure. All key transactions need to be confirmed by SMS from your mobile number so we don’t have access to your bank account.
8. You then run two-factor authentication through the Bank of Georgia Digipass mobile app as needed.
9. For more information, please contact us via email at Liberation.Travel.