gsw_76 wroteHi Peter,
I've only been living in/on Bali 3 months so have recently gone through the transferring money challenge from Oz and opening up a bank account here as a newbie. I don't have a kitas and I'm here on a business visa. I walked into every bank in Ubud and Permata was the only bank that let me open up an account without at least a reference from an Indonesian who is an account holder at the relevant bank. The bank manager at Permata was my reference.
BII bank was also very helpful and said they would let me open up accounts with a reference from an account holder, when I said i don't know anyone is there something you can do, they said if you have an Indonesian friend we can open up an account for them and then they can be your reference. Then they would just close my friends account.
Permata opened up 2 accounts for me on the spot, in rupiah and AUD and I've been really happy with the service. Much better than any Aussie bank I've been involved with.
I transfer the max daily limit from ANZ in Australia to the Permata AUD account and it's here no more than 2 days later, I even get an automatic text message saying the money is there. Permata charges $17 AUD for receiving the money in AUD.
Then when I need to or when the exchange rate is good I go to customer service and I get the "special" rate for the day, then they transfer the money across to the rupiah account. They call someone in Jakarta i think but who knows. The rate has always been within 100 IDR of what is displayed at various money changers on the street around Ubud.
For me it's working really well.
Hope this helps.
Gareth
Hope this helps me one day
