Georgian Bank Account — Opened Remotely

From the day you are a Georgian tax resident and no residency remains in your home country — not from the day you arrive. Georgia establishes residency after 183 days in any 12-month period or through the HNWI programme; from then on, private crypto gains on foreign exchanges are taxed at 0% and are outside VAT (Art. 82 Tax Code). Selling in the window between the move and residency means selling under the old regime. Important for Austrians: departure itself already triggers 27.5% on unrealised gains under § 27 para. 6 EStG, because non-assessment is available only on departure within the EU/EEA. And for Germans: coins leave untaxed, privately held fund and ETF units do not — since 1.1.2025 § 19 para. 3 InvStG applies from EUR 500,000 acquisition cost per fund or from 1% of the units issued.

Yes. Georgian banks do not query a German credit bureau — a negative credit-agency entry or proceedings in Germany play no part in opening an account; what is examined is identity and source of funds. After discharge of residual debt has been granted, that is the most common reason, and the route is straightforward. If your proceedings are still running, we will open the account as well — here is specifically what you should know. Under section 97 InsO you owe the insolvency court, the administrator and the creditors committee disclosure of every circumstance relevant to the proceedings; accounts held abroad are included, and under the case law of the Federal Court of Justice anything obviously material to the proceedings must be disclosed unprompted. The same applies to a statement of assets under section 802c ZPO, there additionally on oath. Fully declared, the Georgian account is unproblematic — whether a balance on it forms part of the insolvency estate follows from section 35 InsO and from what is paid in: the estate covers your assets at the opening of proceedings plus what you acquire during them, not the country the account sits in; income below the attachment threshold stays exempt. Left undeclared, it becomes a problem larger than the account is worth: concealing assets is punishable as bankruptcy under section 283 StGB by up to five years, expressly including transfers abroad, and a creditor can apply under section 290(1) no. 5 InsO to have the discharge of residual debt refused. What you declare is your decision; we tell you what applies. One more piece of context, so that you do not expect the wrong thing: an account outside the EU sits outside the direct reach of the European Account Preservation Order, and that is a statement about jurisdiction, not about invisibility. Georgia has participated in CRS since 2024; balance and income go to your home authority regardless.

The bank examines the chain without gaps: documented original acquisition, complete exchange statements, wallet addresses and transaction history. Accepted are on- and off-ramps via licensed exchanges such as Binance, Kraken or Bitstamp, and transfers via licensed custodians. Not accepted are direct transfers from wallets without a KYC trail and coins with mixer history. We notify the institution of larger credits in advance — a notified payment is reviewed, an unannounced one is held. The review repeats periodically, not only at onboarding.

Yes — unlike most EU banks. TBC and BasisBank regularly work with clients using on/off-ramps via Binance, Kraken or Bitstamp. The prerequisites are clean source-of-funds documentation and that the activity is anchored in your LLC’s registered business purpose. HashBank goes one step further and offers crypto trading inside the bank account itself — regulated by the National Bank of Georgia.

HashBank is Georgia’s first fully digital bank — holding a digital banking licence from the National Bank of Georgia since 2024, with no branch network and everything running through the app and business internet banking. Three differences matter in practice: (1) HashBank is the only one of the four banks with video ident; our packages nonetheless work consistently via power of attorney, because that route works at every bank and for every profile. (2) Crypto is built into the bank account: buying, selling and swapping the common assets (BTC, ETH, USDT, SOL, XRP and others) works without a separate exchange and without your own wallet, with the bank acting as custodian. (3) Opening and running the account are free of charge — personal and business alike. Limits: currently one account per person, account currencies restricted to GEL, USD and EUR, and the business account is not opened purely digitally — we coordinate the in-person onboarding step with the bank representative for you (1–3 business days). For high-volume on/off-ramps via external exchanges, TBC and BasisBank remain the first choice.

Georgia implemented the CRS in 2023; automatic exchange has run annually since 2024, extended from 2026 by CRS 2.0 (e-money, crypto-related products). Accounts of foreign tax residents are reported to their home tax authority. This is NOT a tax loophole — it is a transparent setup with a low local tax burden. Reporting changes nothing about your obligation to declare and tax correctly at home. For US persons, reporting runs through FATCA rather than CRS — see “Will my personal account in Georgia be reported to my home tax authority?” below for details.

A standard account with a debit card costs around 10 GEL a month — roughly EUR 3.30. The premium packages in the Professional tier cost more, but less than is often assumed: Bank of Georgia charges non-residents 35 to 80 GEL a month for SOLO depending on tier (350 to 800 GEL billed annually), TBC 25 to 40 GEL a month for Concept (250 to 400 GEL annually) — as at 28 August 2026, checked against both banks' published terms. In return you get the premium card, lounge access, markedly cheaper payments and — depending on the product — a personal contact. On top of that: 25–60 GEL a year for the card, and 0.2% on outbound international transfers plus a possible correspondent fee. Incoming payments are free. These amounts go to the bank, not to us. The tiers in detail are set out in [Premium banking in Georgia](/en/knowledge/banking/georgia-premium-banking/).

At TBC: 0 GEL. At Bank of Georgia: 100 GEL. At BasisBank: 0 GEL. At HashBank: 0 GEL — opening, running and closing the account are entirely free there. There are no minimum balances required to keep the account active. An inactivity fee only applies after 12 months without movement. For the VIP account in the Professional tier something else applies: there a threshold is a condition of the package, not of opening the account. Bank of Georgia publishes it for non-residents — any one of three criteria is enough: income of 3,000 GEL a month, a deposit of 30,000 GEL or a loan above 100,000 GEL for SOLO X and SOLO Premium; for SOLO Club 8,000 GEL, 100,000 GEL or 250,000 GEL (as at 28 August 2026). TBC publishes no criteria for Concept and decides case by case. Which of the three routes is realistic for you is set out in [Premium banking in Georgia](/en/knowledge/banking/georgia-premium-banking/).

Yes. You open a personal account at TBC, BasisBank or HashBank with your passport and the self-declaration in the KYC form — no Georgian residence needed, no business connection required, and as a rule no documentary proof of address either. Conditions are identical to the business account. Useful as banking diversification, a crypto reserve or an operational cushion outside your home banking zone. Setup from €590.

No — in two senses. Georgian residence is not required to open the account, and as a rule the bank asks for no documentary proof of address from your home country either: neither a utility bill nor a residence registration. The institutions record your address from what you state in the KYC form — that self-declaration is the evidence Georgian anti-money-laundering rules foresee for the ordinary case. The bank can request documents in individual cases, for instance with an elevated risk profile, an unusual structure or larger volumes; that is the exception, not the starting point. We then ship the card to a delivery address of your choice, which can be in your home country too.

Yes. Georgia implemented the Common Reporting Standard in 2023; the first automatic exchange ran in 2024 and continues annually. Accounts of foreign tax residents are reported to their home authority — balances, interest, dividends. Only if you genuinely move your centre of life to Georgia and become tax-resident there will your Georgian accounts not be reported abroad — CRS covers accounts of people who are tax-resident in another country. US persons are reported through a different route: the United States does not participate in CRS and runs its own regime, FATCA, instead. Georgia has a FATCA agreement with the United States — Georgian banks identify US persons during KYC (you complete a W-9 or equivalent self-certification for this) and report them to the US tax authorities rather than to an EU authority. The practical outcome is the same: a US person’s account is not hidden from their home tax authority either. Because FATCA raises the bank’s compliance burden, some banks are more reluctant to take on US persons — which of the four banks fits you best is something we clarify in the initial consultation. This is NOT a backdoor and NOT a tax loophole. It is transparent banking diversification outside your home country’s direct enforcement reach — fully declared, fully clean.

Allowed: on/off-ramps via licensed exchanges (Binance, Kraken, Bitstamp, Bitfinex), receiving trading profits, direct transfers from crypto wallets via licensed custodians. Not allowed: direct transfers from unknown wallets without a KYC trace, mixer coins (Tornado Cash etc.), business activity without the corresponding registration. The bank runs periodic source-of-funds reviews — clean documentation is mandatory.

Should a bank close the account — rare with properly prepared KYC — we open an account for you at one of the three other banks. Free of charge for existing clients, since we already hold the setup knowledge and KYC documentation. That is exactly why we recommend multi-banking as risk diversification.

Our fee is €200 per additional bank. What matters more is what comes on top in your home country: without the online notary, each bank requires its own power of attorney plus a certified copy of your passport in original, which stays on file there. Three banks then mean three notary appointments and three apostilles on your end. With the online-notary add-on for €200, all of that disappears — a single video notarisation covers every account. From two banks onward, the add-on almost always pays for itself.

Your Georgian account carries an IBAN, but Georgia is not connected to the SEPA scheme. In practice that means a transfer from your home bank does not run as a SEPA domestic transfer but as an international transfer via correspondent banks. Three things change for you. First, the runtime: 1–2 business days instead of seconds. Second, the cost: 0.2% plus a possible correspondent fee instead of free. Third, the form: your bank will ask for a SWIFT/BIC code and sometimes a payment reference. SEPA direct debits do not work — for recurring EU payments, an EU account stays the more convenient option. If you use the account as a multi-currency and reserve account, you will notice little of this day to day.

PayPal: not for companies — in Georgia PayPal is available to individuals only. Stripe: companies registered in Georgia are turned away; the route runs through a US LLC as an intermediate structure, which we build on request as part of our US expansion service. The one payment provider with global reach that takes the Georgian entity itself is Wise Business — for both IE and LLC. Only the Wise card is unavailable in Georgia; that comes from TBC or Bank of Georgia.

Yes — and most guides skip this. Georgian banks tie SMS approvals, app login and password resets to a Georgian mobile number; a German or Austrian number is not reliably accepted by those systems. That is why a prepaid SIM is included in every one of our packages. We activate roaming so the number stays reachable outside Georgia, and we ship the card together with your bank card. You then top it up online from your bank app — no local shop visit and no second contract required.

That follows the approval method, not the account type. With SMS approval, transfer limits are markedly lower — fine for day-to-day use, not for larger single transfers. If you need higher limits you will generally need a Digipass: a small TAN generator issued by the bank that detaches approval from the mobile network. The device is the bank own hardware and is charged by the bank, not by us; we coordinate its issue during onboarding. Which method suits you is settled against your expected payment sizes — that is part of the 30-minute online-banking briefing.