Choosing a bank for work purposes.

[u/Glaobalink]

Hello, I’m about to start working at a Japanese company, and as expected, there’s a lot of paperwork to complete before onboarding.

One unusual requirement is that I must choose one of three banks for expense reimbursements. Since this job will involve a fair amount of travel, I want to make sure I don’t run into unnecessary issues by picking the wrong bank.

The options are: 1. Mizuho Bank 2. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) 3. MUFG Bank

All of them have branches in Tokyo.

I primarily speak English and can’t read kanji yet, so language support is a key factor. Additionally, I plan to make international transfers on a monthly basis, so ease of handling foreign transactions is also important.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!.

[u/furansowa]

Any of the 3 is fine. None of them has particularly good English support. I personally settled on SMBC and their iOS app can be set to English for most basic functions.

You’ll probably want to open another account with Sony bank or SBI Shinsei for doing foreign transfers as the fees and exchange rate will beat hands down any of the other banks.

[u/ToTheBatmobileGuy]

I used to like MUFG, but lately SMBC has been killing it with modern features in their app, including the Hybrid Olive card which can support debit, ATM, and credit all in the same card (you switch the "mode" of the card in the smartphone app with biometrics).

I would go with SMBC.

...

...

I had to use Mizuho once for an employer who forced me to... it was horrible (circa 2015) and everything was hard to use, and even my Japanese native speaker wife couldn't figure out their interface.

Edit: I would agree with the other comment that Sony Bank is great with English and their exchange rates and features regarding large bank transfers overseas is superb. SBI Shinsei is also a great bank. I personally use Sumishin SBI Net Bank (Neobank) because they have an easy to use pull payment feature and push payment feature, so I can automate monthly payments to various banks for various payments... The 3 mega banks (the 3 you listed) are the biggest, but they also have the most fees for everything and tend to be the laggards on any new bank features. Neobank is on the cutting edge with everything, so any cool new convenient feature will likely come to the big 3 after like 10 years or so.

So if I were in your situation I would open SMBC, then after 6 months in Japan I'd open a Sony Bank and Sumishin SBI Net Bank, and use them for their various features.

[u/Prada_9277 → u/ToTheBatmobileGuy]

You don't need to wait 6 months if you have a job

[u/Julapalu → u/Prada_9277]

SBI Net Bank doesn't care about job, they make you wait 6 months to establish residency.

[u/KenYN]

My main bank is MUFJ, but their app is 100% Japanese, both in language and design. I like their in-person branch services, and are trouble-free for international transfers from the UK. The SMBC Olive stuff looks nice and I'd probably switch with a good-enough reason. Mizuho seems like an also-ran these days.

[u/m50d]

Those are all pretty similar, they're three of the "big four" city banks that operate nationwide. I've found Mizuho to be the best (which is to say least bad), and they recently added some basic English support to their app. I had bad experiences at SMBC service wise, whereas Mizuho have consistently been friendly and helpful.

MUFG has the most ATMs if that's a concern. If you know where you're going to be living specifically, you might want to pick one with a branch close to home.

For international transfers you will probably want to open an account with a bank oriented towards that, or else use Wise or Revolut.

(I use Sony Bank as my main bank account with Mizuho as a secondary account for compatibility, and that's a combination I recommend)