Mexico’s disastrously broken banks. What you need to know.

Since I live in Mexico as well as the United States I thought it important to open a Mexican bank account so I could pay utility bills such as CFE electricity, Izzy internet and other expenses which typically must be paid electronically. With the exception of Banco Azteca, you must have a residence card. You may be able to setup a corporation and open an account in that name and use it for personal purposes.

So far I have opened and closed accounts at three different banks, with uniformly bad experiences. I hope that somehow, the next local bank will actually work as they claim they do. My experience is that the bank employees are uniformly lazy and/or incompetent. They are happy to set up an account for a new customer, but only at a bare minimum level… sign some papers, be fingerprinted and photographed, be given a debit card and told to make a teller deposit and go away. That’s it.

That means the account may be incomplete or not working, require multiple trips to the bank (with long lines of people trying to resolve issues) to rectify the problems. In that way, the lazy employees can get away with it, wasting customers’ time and eventually get it right… if the customer is lucky, or just gives up.

Even more of an issue, is that the banks I have visited do not provide easy to understand statements to check on deposits and withdrawals but complex online documents designed to confuse, or at least require a long time to understand the banking information.

Fraud is rampant. Mexico is a wonderful country, with very friendly people but the financial institutions are still stuck in the 1960s so be aware or your money may vanish. And the bank people will shrug.

In the United States. it takes just a few minutes to open a bank account, be given a debit card with online access and everything works. In Mexico, my experience is everything doesn’t work as described.

For example, I opened up an account with BBVA that I now think of as “Banco de Mierda” where the bank officer did not even understand how many digits a Mexican phone number had! He said it had too many digits in the Mexican phone number! I had him call my phone, as it had a dual SIM from his office phone and, guess what… my phone rang.

Amazing.

I even have a witness who heard the discussion, and agrees that he was incompetent. That doesn’t inspire confidence, and led to never ending problems just trying to get PC and Android app access to the account.

However after it was all set up that the problems began, notably getting online access, as the original bank officer failed to give me the necessary hardware “token” passcode generating device. The bank officer “forgot” to give it to me to provide online access. They eventually FedEx’d me one in the US at a significant expense to the bank.

I also had an account with HSBC that set me up as a “preferred customer.” When I couldn’t access the account online (surprise) to check the balances and make utility payments, they refused to help without visiting a branch. Even the bank manager who I had set up the account with couldn’t be bothered to assist with the account. HSBC insisted that they would hold my initial deposit until I had passed a background check since they had paid a large fine to the US government for laundering money. So they were cautious with foreign owned accounts.

The Mexican banks’ ultimate resolution to any problem seems to be – visit a branch.

Goodbye to HSBC.

Banco Azteca was attractive because the accounts are free, that the offer gringos’ a restricted bank account without being a resident and the banks are open 7 days a week! As usual, the problem was, that access to the account through a debit card only worked briefly in Mexico but not at all in the US.

I found that if you put spend an hour or two on the phone or texting with them, they will give you a 15-day window to access your account from outside of Mexico. To renew, you need to call or text them twice a month to reauthorize access to your bank account. More wasted time and effort.

I just got off the texting system with Banco Azteca after 1.5 hours as not being able to log in from the US, without any success or even the representative offering any assistance except for… visit a branch when you are back in Mexico!

Note that in the 15:06 message I’m asking for an email address and the Banco Azteca rep. doesn’t understand the question. Perhaps too complex?

So here’s the workaround. Open a free checking account with Charles Schwab brokerage so you can use its debit card at any ATM and Schwab will refund the fees. The problem using ATMs in Mexico is they have very long lines, since Mexico is to a large extent a cash economy. As I think that any Mexican ATM will work, you don’t have to stand in line at your specific bank so will save you time and effort.

The other part of the puzzle, I think, is to open up a an online only Mexican bank account (hoping that it will work) and will only take a few minutes to set up with the aid of the app on your phone, or using a PC, probably photographing your passport and your face.

You will be able to electronically ACH  or transfer money into the account using a service such as Wise via your unique CLABE account number. CLABE is a Mexican identification number for a specific bank account. You can then pay your bills through that internet bank. Since these companies DO NOT have branches, they must fix problems without the classic – “visit a branch” story.

And if you open up a bank account in person, and hopefully not any of these three, keep your fingers crossed that you have a banker that knows what they’re doing and is competent. So far I’ve haven’t found one!

Perhaps, I never will.