How to Open a Bank Account in 50 countries

There’s a theory I’ve come to believe: banks created Bitcoin. Not intentionally, but by making something as simple as opening a checking account feel impossible.

To test that idea, I decided to see what ordinary people face when they try to open a bank account. I’ve been to every country in the world, and I’ve lived in nine of them — in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. That gave me a head start. But this time, there were no special arrangements. The bankers didn’t visit my office, and my assistant didn’t fill out any forms. I stood in line, waited for my number to be called, and filled in each document by hand.

Halfway through the experiment, I made a small discovery. When I looked up banks on Google Maps, I found that the largest, most powerful global banks in New York City had something in common: a chorus of unhappy customers. Two stars. Sometimes three. Review after review filled with frustration.

With a team of graduate students at NYU, I expanded the test. Together, we opened accounts in dozens of countries to compare what it actually takes — not what the brochures promise, but what happens when you walk through the door as:

A citizen or resident of that country
An international student
A tourist

And for entrepreneurs: we also studied how to open a business account.

Our work is grounded in experience, not sponsorship. No one pays us. No one edits the results. What you read here is simply what we found — a map of how banking really works around the world.