LEGAL NOTICE : never open your personal offshore bank account with your Italian or European residence. Before requesting to open an offshore account in a personal capacity, please apply for a foreign residence to be used to open such an account and thus avoid the exchange of information between Europe-Italy and the offshore bank. The best second residences are residency in Panama and Paraguay

Opening an offshore account is important when you decide to transfer your business abroad or to open a foreign company. Opening and trading through an offshore account is essentially the lifeblood of any successful international business or transaction. Bank secrecy is the hallmark of offshore bank accounts. Offshore banking secrecy is carried out when the offshore bank account is opened by either a private citizen with a specific tax residence in a country with territorial taxation such as Paraguay or Panama < therefore by opening a personal offshore bank account, or by an offshore company or foundation of interest offshore private individual, who opens a corporate or legal offshore bank account. Having a tax residency or owning an offshore company without an offshore bank account, be it personal or corporate, excludes anyone from being able to benefit from the features and functions of the instruments mentioned. A tax residency would in effect be unused and meaningless just as an offshore company would be useless without an offshore bank account. It is also perfectly useless to open a personal offshore account without having first obtained a tax residence in a country with territorial taxation and without exchanging information. Which is easily explained, an offshore bank of a foreign country that provides for territorial taxation upon providing an offshore bank account to the tax residency holder guarantees the residency holder non-automatic exchange of information, on the basis that a country issues tax information only when the customer's tax residence belongs to a country that provides for the exchange and always and in any case when a treaty of mutual exchange of tax information has been signed between the two countries. This also explains the reason why today we travel briefly to Panama and Paraguay for only 3 or 5 days, to obtain a valid, rapid, legal tax residency; which opens the door to offshore bank accounts that can be legally used, without breaking the law, and transacted transparently without alarming the banks and above all without the new banking institution sending reports or exchanging information with the Italian or European tax authorities .

Features of the offshore bank account

You need to know the key points of the operation relating to the opening of an offshore bank account:

• Only law firms operating outside the EU and OECD can open an offshore account, so don't do it with operators from Italy.
• All documents and information processed to open an offshore bank account enjoy the privilege of anonymity and lawyer/client professional secrecy only when processed by firms physically operating outside the European and OECD territory
• Legally there are no statutory and juridical clauses which provide for the circumvention of the privacy rules and guarantee of professional secrecy in the treatment of confidential data when opening an offshore account, when these are exchanged directly between the customer (you) and the service provider (we), which is in a jurisdiction that does not investigate, does not provide for rules and does not exchange the data processed between professionals and foreign customers.
• The above does not apply to intermediaries present on European and OECD soil, so while making use of an accountant, tax consultant or lawyer friend, he is required by law to keep your data on a cloud, PC and database accessible by the authorities European and Italian for which your name and service obtained and the sums involved will always be legally public domain.
• Even the mere communication via email, fax, whatsapp, telephone or verbal physical or in the office, with a European or Italian intermediary, tax consultant, accountant, lawyer or professional present in any European or OECD country, automatically voids any minimum guarantee of professional secrecy client / professional.
• When paying a professional to open an offshore account or provide you with any other means, please always check the account where you pay. The account must be corporate / corporate, therefore in the name of a company and not in a personal name (never), it must be in a non-European and non-OECD offshore or foreign account. Ask yourself if you would entrust your fiscal and legal future, your assets and your most secret information to a professional who has an account in Europe and, worse, a personal account.

We open offshore bank accounts with these features: Multicurrency, Swift, Visanet, Mt103+, Ach, International Wire Transfer, credit card, debit card, banking secrecy and smartphone app. For corporations we also have bank accounts with KTT transfer. An offshore bank account is an account in a foreign bank that offers all the banking and financial services you are used to with your bank. In fact there is no difference in this aspect. You will have an online account and physical branches, debit (ATM) and credit cards, checks, physical tokens or via app to make transactions, multi-currency accounts, reception and sending of national and international bank transfers.

Offshore accounts can have more or less services depending on whether they are:

• Personal offshore accounts
• Corporate/Corporate Offshore Accounts
• Wealth Management Accounts

Personal Offshore accounts and their main features

Personal offshore accounts are accounts in your name and surname. These accounts are never opened without first having a tax residency or in the process of obtaining a tax residency. The best accounts open in Panama and Paraguay. Both countries guarantee:

• No exchange of Information
• Anonymity and Secrecy
• Security and stability
• Operation 24/24

Corporate offshore accounts and their main features

Corporate/Corporate Offshore accounts are accounts opened with offshore companies. In this case, the shareholder of the company must have a tax residence, as for banks the company is transparent for tax purposes and will in any case transmit the tax, financial and banking data to the tax authorities of belonging if you have not changed your tax residence in Panama or Paraguay.

In this case, the corporate offshore account, in addition to the characteristics of the personal account, also includes:

• Forex and Precious Metals Trading Accounts
• Receive and send wire transfers for free
• Credit cards
• Special payroll and billing services
• Interbank currency exchange

Wealth Management offshore accounts and their main features

Wealth Management offshore accounts are wealth management accounts. In general, a Wealth Management account is opened only when these characteristics exist:

• Amount to be deposited exceeding 2 million USD
• You have an appropriate tax residency
• It is only open to Private Interest Foundations or Offshore Trusts

Clarified the most important aspects before you prepare to open an offshore account or ask for any other type of offshore service, let's clarify what an offshore bank account is.

An offshore bank account is an account in a foreign bank licensed and operating under the laws of the country in which it carries out its operations. It is legal to open an offshore bank account, it is a transparent operation from a legal point of view, always and when, far from the online advertising of hucksters and "gurus", one understands that to do it legally one must take up residence in Panama or Paraguay .

The reason is called AEOI .

What is AEOI in offshore account opening

AEOI stands for Automatic Exchange of Information, i.e. the automatic exchange of information now expected even by the most anonymous and obscure country in the world. The AEOI is global and there is only one sure way to avoid it 100%, residency in Panama or residency in Paraguay

To open an offshore account you must essentially contact us to immediately obtain a tax residence. Mind you, there will always be those who will offer you to open an account without residency. Whoever does it besides being incorrect takes advantage of your natural ignorance on the tax issue to finish a sale. In general, those who do this work from Italy or Europe and are normally only an intermediary of someone else who they have probably never even met. With all the risks and limits of the case.

Once you have completed your tax residency, you will easily have an account with any bank without a thousand documents and unnecessary bureaucracy. The only documents will be personal and corporate ones in case you have an offshore company

▶︎ The 4 documents to open an offshore account are:

(1) Proof of tax residence (if you want it can also be Italian if you decide that you do not want or cannot take up a tax residence in Panama or Paraguay),

(2) a bank reference,

(3) a final year tax return,

(4) a Curriculum Vitae.

To these must be added apostilled copies of the passport, identity card and driving licence.

In addition to opening your offshore account, you will probably be interested in creating a life insurance policy on your taxation, taking up a second tax residence, in a country with territorial taxation, such as a residence in Panama or a residence in Paraguay

You can also live in a non-offshore country like Brazil or Mexico but leverage your offshore bank account for operations off that country's tax radar

An offshore bank account has basic banking secrecy. This is the most important feature that users think of when they want to open an offshore bank account. In reality it is not the most important feature especially today that the laws require that you deal with the opening of an offshore bank account with due and correct tax residence in an offshore country with territorial taxation such as Panama.

There is no ranking of the best offshore banks in the strict sense. The Offshore Bank by definition operates like any bank and therefore offers services ranging from those of any normal bank to those of superlative international banks. There are a number of offshore banks that offer excellent offshore banking services, but as with corporations, the type of offshore bank and therefore the type of service you seek is highly individual. It is necessary to carefully evaluate which characteristics you want, how to use them, the more or less ease of using them, the limits, the currencies that can or must be used, the exchange rates, any costs of operations and maintenance, their headquarters, the operating time zone, whether or not it offers cash deposits, credit cards, debit cards, checks, online trading platforms, etc. It is also necessary to know which activities they accept or which foreign companies and from which country in the world they admit. Many people search the web for example for an "anonymous current account Switzerland" as a search phrase to find a foreign account that is anonymous and is in Switzerland.

But Switzerland does not have anonymous accounts for Italians, accounts in Switzerland are as transparent as those in Italy and in Europe, in fact today it is very easy to open an account in Switzerland online for Italians. There are numerous Swiss banks specialized for Italians. Opening an account in Switzerland offers security. Opening an account in Switzerland offers guarantees of bank security and liquidity. But opening an account in Switzerland is no guarantee of privacy. Switzerland has been exchanging information with all of Europe for some time now, so opening an account in Switzerland is like opening an account in Europe, very secure but not anonymous. The same goes for opening an account in Dubai. Accounts in Dubai are often thought of as a fortress of anonymity. Opening an account in Dubai instead means opening an account in a country that uses the IBAN, relies on all European banks when it comes to sending or receiving foreign transfers and has already started a partial financial disclosure with OECD countries. Opening an offshore account in Dubai or Qatar doesn't make your life easier but it makes it worse. But it couldn't be worse for those who still today think of opening an account in Malta. Maltese accounts are European accounts. Opening an account in Malta for Italians is like opening it at the savings bank near the house. There is no worse idea than transferring your account to Malta. In full Europe. To be offshore accounts, foreign accounts must be opened outside Europe.

Which are the offshore banks where to open an account

Opening an account in offshore banks therefore means evaluating the opening of an account in Panama, an account in Paraguay, an account in the Caymans or even an account in the USA. But among all the possible options to date there is no better account than the other. The choice for an offshore account is essentially based on the clear preference of certain countries and legislations and the advantages that derive from them and on the type of services and currencies you are looking for. To open an offshore bank account, contact us and we will be able to guarantee you an excellent service in finding the right offshore current account for your needs.

WISE : Why you don't have to open a WISE account for your LLC company

WISE has become a great way to quickly get a quick online bank account to start a business. Although true, and we have no objections to this, WISE, after the business has run in and begins to collect more often and with greater volumes, inadvertently closes the accounts by referring to non-compliance with its terms and conditions of service provision. This is because WISE is not an offshore bank account. We receive multiple requests for help to redeem the values ​​blocked on WISE as well as subsequent requests for specific consultancy to open a bank or quasi-bank account for their companies "burned" by WISE. In general, for businesses of digital nomads, expatriates and start-ups we strongly recommend not opening a corporate account with WISE, and limiting yourself to having a personal account with WISE (very practical and should not cause you problems if you do not use it to receive compensation or commissions ) . Generally speaking, WISE offers a good service on a personal basis and a mediocre/poor service on a corporate/corporate basis (where the requirements of reliability, speed and security of collections must be maximum).

Here we can observe some fresh reviews of WISE on Trustpilot

Opening a Revolut account as if it were an offshore bank account is one of the many options you come across online. Revolut is an easy option for those looking to transact online, and send or receive transfers online without opening a bank account. Opening a Revolut account is convenient when it comes to a personal account and you open it with your passport and Italian residence to receive money or send money on which there is immaculate traceability. Revolut is not good for those who want to operate offshore. It is also impossible to open a Revolut corporate account with a US LLC company, in which case Revolut will require you to be a legal citizen/resident of the United States of America. Like Wise, Revolut also has its own clauses and operational articles that must be respected otherwise they will block your account, and then close it. All fintech emoneys such as Revolut or Wise are good for those who start operating and need to receive payments "quickly", however they are not the definitive remedy for those who now decide to operate offshore. The definitive line to open a Revolut account is not suitable for everyone but only to those who actually live in Italy or in their country of residence. Revolut is not an offshore bank account.

We also generally recommend avoiding poor security services such as paysera. While we guarantee a perfect use of Paypal, especially for LLC USA, when the latter companies are open compliant with the requests of Paypal Business USA and with the insertion of personal ITIN ( Mandatory ) and corporate EIN ( Mandatory ) . For more information, ask for specific advice from our service.

Opening an offshore account is not a simple practice, let alone a daily one, for ordinary citizens. Having access to these institutions requires patience and clearly knowing what type of product, in what condition, in what currency to request it. It is extremely important to understand that key concepts and specific due diligence are used by the Offshore Banking institution and above all:

• Tax residency
• Royal residence
• Domicile
• UBO (Ultimate Beneficiary Owner)
• CP (Controlling Persons)
• PSC (Person With Significant Control)
• PEP (Politically Exposed Person)
• If company: registered shares / membership certificates
• State of Incorporation
• CRS
• AEOI extension
• Currencies available
• costs
• Interest on deposits
• Best and Worst country to open

To open the offshore bank account of real interest and usefulness and to find out based on the institution chosen which is the simplest procedure and how to overcome the bank's requests, it is essential to start the process through a specific telephone consultation. The cost of this consultancy is 350 EUR payable via Paypal to our email info@studiopanamaitalia.com

The offshore bank account allows you to carry out all the normal transactions you are used to. Local transfers, when it comes to transfers within the country to which the Bank belongs. For example in Panama they are called ACH and they are instant. Then there are international bank transfers, these rely on the SWIFT system. Therefore, to send a transfer to another country from your offshore bank, you will need the SWIFT data of the Receiving Bank and the beneficiary's account number. The same applies to receiving a bank transfer from abroad, even from Italy, you will have to provide your SWIFT number and the beneficiary account number. There are also special transfers such as KTT (KEY TESTED TELEX).

We have therefore clarified that there are both SWIFT and KTT transfers when it comes to international transfers. But what differences are there and can all banks do both and in which offshore banks are they available?

Similarities between SWIFT and KTT:

Purpose: Both KTT and SWIFT transfer instructions are used to send payment orders between financial institutions across borders.
They facilitate the exchange of information and instructions necessary to complete international transactions through corresponding bank accounts. Standardization: Both systems rely on standardized message formats to ensure that financial institutions can accurately interpret and process the information transmitted.

Differences:

Technology: KTT transfer instructions are based on telex technology, which is an older communications system that uses actual old teleprinters to send text messages that then have to be hand-processed by a person into a wire order.
SWIFT transfer instructions, on the other hand, use a modern, secure and efficient, automated digital messaging system. Security: SWIFT instructions are considered much more secure than KTT instructions due to the use of advanced encryption methods and secure protocols. KTTs, being based on older telex technology, are more vulnerable to potential security risks.
Speed: SWIFT messages are much faster than KTT messages.
The digital nature of SWIFT messaging allows for faster transmission and processing of payment instructions within 24 hours, whilst KTT instructions can be slower due to the limitations of telex technology, often within 4/7 days of the request. Adoption: SWIFT is the dominant financial messaging system globally, with more than 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories participating in its network.
KTT transfers, meanwhile, are less commonly used today, having been largely replaced by the SWIFT system. Normally only a few old off-grid banks, some in Africa and once an institution in Saint Vincent And The Grenadines. SWIFT is now present in 100% of offshore banking institutions globally. KTT is no longer adopted by any offshore institution, but only by a few onshore institutions in the world (Africa and one institution in Hong Kong) Message types: SWIFT supports a wide range of message types, including those related to payments, securities , business services and foreign exchange, among others. KTT transfers, on the other hand, are more limited in scope and focus primarily on payment instructions.

We understand our customers' requests about how important it is to have access to an institution that receives transfers via KTT. We often find ourselves with customers who have accounts that, without their knowledge, do not send money via Swift but only with the archaic KTT method. Today all the banks that issue KTT rarely use it and therefore hardly prepare it for the use and consumption of a new customer unless there is an obvious impossibility of using a sum and not being able to have access to that sum immediately for emergencies. We arrange for all customers in these situations who need to use their own money and to do so must receive the sum via KTT to pay for our consultancy to receive via call the names of the banks in the USA, Panama and Asia that allow reception of KTT without problems. The cost is EUR 450 to be sent via PayPal to info@studiopanamaitalia.com or via bank transfer to our CHASE Bank account.

Many ask us about having to transfer securities, funds, investments, ETFs, shares from one institution to another institution, in this case offshore. It is entirely possible, but only in very few countries and not necessarily tax havens in the strict sense. The Offshore bank is harshly and severely managed and governed by very strict laws on asset management, to the point that in no country defined as an offshore tax haven do banks allow the transfer of securities, ETFs and any financial instrument that can be freely purchased from your home banking. We currently manage securities and ETFs worth more than $1 billion in Panama at specially licensed banks, as not all banks allow these instruments, and freely at any institution in Mexico, as well as Singapore. In Hong Kong, for AML reasons, since 2019 we have not already operated with banks that allow the transfer of wallets.

Mexico, USA, Panama also allow you to receive your salary in Restricted Stock Units (RSU). Contact us for more information and to receive specialized paid consultancy.

Many people ask us to open an offshore bank account in Dubai. Banks in Dubai unfortunately as previously mentioned offer only problems and many headaches. Let's try with this guide on offshore accounts in Dubai to dissuade those who have unfortunately stumbled upon the false news that having an account in Dubai means having an offshore account with banking secrecy. So let's analyze the cons of having a bank account in Dubai.

Muslim religion controls accounts in Dubai

The worst that can happen is to combine financial operations with the laws of a Muslim religion. In Dubai, a simple credit not honored in time leads to prison and the payment of very high fines. Not honoring a debt means losing all rights including freedom and residence in the country. You would not be able to escape the country and you could spend a large period of your life in prison.

Customer care unlikely in Dubai

By now everyone knows that all the banks in Dubai subcontract customer service with kids from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh who receive calls from their countries of origin on VoIP. Imagine giving your details to kids from countries far away from the location of your bank. In fact, it is well known that in addition to the inability to solve problems, they often cause others such as theft of privileged information.

Zero banking secrecy in Dubai

Dubai uses IBAN, no offshore bank does. But Dubai does, allowing the European Central Bank and the new anti-money laundering agency opened in Frankfurt to control banking operations carried out via IBAN. You had escaped from Europe for this reason and you will find yourself in Dubai with the same cumbersome presence. A real offshore bank account has banking secrecy, those in Dubai do not.