How to open a bank account in Cyprus

Most guides on this subject list documents. The more useful fact is that you have a right here, and that the bank is working to a deadline.

Cyprus law N.64(I)/2017, published on 16 June 2017, transposed the European Payment Accounts Directive into Cypriot law. Among other things it sets the framework under which consumers are guaranteed a right to open and use a payment account with basic features. The Central Bank of Cyprus is the designated competent authority for making sure that happens.

That changes the conversation. Opening an account is not purely a commercial favour a bank grants to customers it likes the look of.

The deadline nobody mentions

Under this framework a bank must open the account or refuse the application, and the answer comes no later than ten working days after it receives a complete application.

Read the last two words carefully, because they are where most of the waiting actually happens. A file missing a proof of address, or with a source-of-funds question unanswered, is not a slow application — it is an application that has not started. People sit for six weeks believing the clock is running when it never began.

Getting the file genuinely complete on day one is worth more than any amount of chasing afterwards.

What a bank will actually ask you for

For a personal account, in practice:

• Passport or identity card.
• Proof of your address — a tenancy agreement, a utility account, a municipal certificate. Our guide to tenant and landlord rights covers making the lease do this job as well as its own.
• Your Cypriot tax number. If you are unsure which of the several numbers you hold is the one being asked for, TIN, TIC and SIN untangles them.
• Evidence of where your money comes from. Payslips, a contract, an accountant's letter, sale documents.

The last is the one that stalls applications. Source of funds is an anti-money-laundering requirement, not curiosity, and it is satisfied with documents rather than with a verbal explanation, however reasonable the explanation. A newcomer with savings and no local income history is not suspicious — but the file has to say so on paper.

The basic account, and what it is for

A payment account with basic features is an account in the name of one or more consumers, used for the ordinary payment transactions of daily life.

It is deliberately unglamorous. Its purpose is that holding a bank account — receiving a salary, paying rent, being paid at all — does not depend on being a profitable customer. If a full-service account has been refused, this is a different question to ask, and it is the question the law is actually about.

The fees are not entirely the bank's to decide. On 23 October 2020 the Minister of Finance, adopting the Central Bank's proposal, issued decrees under section 19 of the law setting reasonable fees (Κ.Δ.Π. 488/2020, 489/2020 and 490/2020). A quote that looks nothing like reasonable for a basic account is worth querying rather than accepting.

Banks must also give you an Informative Leaflet for payment accounts with basic features, developed by the Consumer Protection Service together with the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank. The 2021 amending law exists partly to make that obligation explicit. If nobody has offered you one, ask.

If you are refused

A refusal is a decision, and decisions can be looked at.

• The Central Bank of Cyprus is the competent authority for the implementation of the law, and it operates a route to report an alleged infringement.
• The amending laws N.124(I)/2020 and N.76(I)/2021 gave consumers a right to alternative dispute resolution.

Before escalating, establish plainly why the application failed. A great many refusals are a file problem wearing the clothes of a policy problem — an unevidenced source of funds, an address the bank could not accept, a document in a language nobody had translated. Those are fixable, and fixing them is faster than a complaint.

Where the refusal really is about the bank's appetite rather than your paperwork, the basic-account route and the reporting route both exist.

Comparing what banks charge

Consumers have free access to a fee comparison website for payment accounts, which the Ministry of Finance is responsible for operating. Banks must also give you a fee information document and a glossary, and a statement of all fees at least once a year free of charge, under the Central Bank's directive Κ.Δ.Π. 225/2017.

One honest caveat: much of this material, including the comparison website and the law itself, is published in Greek only. That is a real barrier for a newcomer, and it is worth knowing before you go looking rather than after.

Switching later

If the first account turns out to be the wrong one, switching is a defined process rather than a favour. The Central Bank issued a Switching Services Directive (Κ.Δ.Π. 38/2018), and approved the Association of Cyprus Banks to issue a Code of practice on Switching Personal Accounts between Banks.

Refugees and temporary protection

The European Banking Authority has addressed this directly more than once: an opinion on customer due diligence on asylum seekers in April 2016, an opinion on de-risking in January 2022, and in March 2022 a call on financial institutions to facilitate access to basic payment accounts for refugees.

Due diligence still applies. But not holding a conventional document set is not, by itself, a reason to be left without a bank account.

Where it goes wrong

• Submitting an incomplete file and then waiting. The ten working days run from a complete application, not from your first visit.
• Explaining source of funds instead of evidencing it. It needs documents.
• Accepting a refusal as final. There is a basic-account right, a competent authority and a dispute-resolution route.
• Assuming a corporate account works the same way. It does not — that is a different process, and usually a slower one. See opening a corporate bank account.
• Not asking for the Informative Leaflet or the fee information document. Both are things the bank owes you.

How we can help

We prepare the file so that it is complete on the day it is handed in — which is the single thing that decides whether the ten working days start or not. Proof of address in a form the bank accepts, the right tax number, and source of funds evidenced with documents rather than described. Where a personal account has already been refused we look first at whether it was really a paperwork failure, because that is usually faster to fix than to appeal, and where it was not, we take it down the basic-account route instead.