What bank should we use?

criswell · 1 year

Personally, I've been using HSBC and have been very pleased. I've been working remote contracts which require me to travel a lot and they have unique features that make it very helpful for me:

Because they are essentially virtual (I'm not even sure they have any physical branches anywhere), they have no ATMs. Because they have no ATMs, you can use ATMs anywhere and they will eat the ATM fees. I assume there are similar features with bank transfer fees and other associated fees.
They don't throw tantrums when cards associated with the accounts go unused for a bit, and then have flurries of activities in various states (which, I guess would be bad if the card was stolen, but is great when you travel a lot- which I do). It really bugs me when my day-to-day activities trigger fraud-detection routines and automatically shut down my cards, HSBC, by default, doesn't seem to do that.
IIRC, HSBC is actually HQ'd in London, and they have some other unique features that make international travel easier (similar to the ones I mentioned above).
Since they are largely virtual, their web interface is the primary way in which you interact with your account(s). So it has to be solid. I wouldn't say it's the best bank web interface I've ever used, but it certainly is among the better ones.

Now, I can't say if my personal experiences will translate to positive ones for an incorporated entity as I'm just using them as a personal bank. YMMV...

Also, politically, I don't know what their stance is on NN (or other issues we may be interested in in the future), so I don't know what problems lurk there.

Edit: Alright, I've checked Sunlight Lab's Influence Checker for HSBC to see what they may be contributing to to see if there's any issues there. Here's the top level results. Let me parse the data a bit more and then re-edit my post with more detail...

Edit 2: Okay, wow, that was a long reddit downtime... I posted this stuff in IRC a bit ago... I may be lazy and just copy-pasta in a new post rather than re-type it all: (see follow-up post)

citizen_k · 1 year

Credit Union - there are thousands of them and while they usually restrict membership to (city, group, whatever) there are so many that you can certainly find at least who will take you. They largely didn't get into the crazy lending pyramid schemes, are more conservative lenders, and as a kicker, there is a national agreement between just about every credit union which lets you use the ATMs and facilities of other credit unions beside your own free of charge.

If you're serious about being anti-corporatist, you can't make deals with the beast itself.

BCHarvey · 1 year

lol you guys got incorporated sweeeeeeet

i think there are some nasty cables about boa next to be released by wikileaks so exclude them

citibank is super massive machine of pain so lets not give them our dollars

hsbc seems OK but what about a credit union of some sort instead? there are lots of big credit unions that can do everything a bank can but without all the pain and suffering of patronizing the evil financial giants.

my $.02. congrats rpac

endari · 1 year

I heard there are some Cables in the Wikileaks that BofA might be involved with something...

I might avoid BofA

Sloloem · 1 year

Sovereign seems to be all over the place in MA. Just throwing the name into the fray...I have BoA and know nothing about Sovereign, just that I see it all the time since moving here.

biblianthrope · 1 year

I've enjoyed my limited (personal savings account) dealings with ING. Was able to track down their commercial banking site, but it appears as though they are more of an international payment processor than a full-fledged commercial banking outfit. Anyone else have experience with them?

[edit] Also, happy reddit-birthday, Jay!

WaterofLife · 1 year

[deleted my previous comment]

This is something that should be decided by the Finance person. Thats why he is the finance person...

My personal thought is that credit unions are not where you want to have your non-profit banking done, based on the requirements of credit unions and their limitations due to their size. Also, you'll need anyone to be able to become a member since board members/corporate officers change.

Also, the arguments against BoA are invalid. First, nothing has been released. Second, not going with a corporation because they did a mistake/did something wrong in the past is like moving out of the United States because a president committed an illegal act. Because of President Nixon, you should move. At least in the analogy I created there was evidence that a law was actually broken.

pardonmyfranton · 1 year

[deleted]

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login