Received a Text From Bank of China? Here's What It's About

原创 Katie Coy theBeijinger

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If you have a Bank of China (BOC) account, you may have received the below message on your phone inviting you to visit the “Mini Program BOC launched for foreigners” with a link. So what is this message all about?

Well, if you follow the link it will take you to a poster which explains how you can access the “BOC Compass Mini Program”. This latest initiative by BOC is meant to give foreigners in China “easy access to professional and financial information and handle various businesses effortlessly.”

After reading the poster, I was still pretty confused by what exactly this meant, but I was hopeful that perhaps the mini program would be a foreign-friendly alternative to the BOC app…spoiler alert, it’s not!

Upon entering the mini program you are greeted at the top of the page with a section titled “Financial Services Guide” which has subheadings such as “Cross-border remittance”, “Debit card” and “Foreign exchange”. If you click onto one of these, you'll then be taken to a page with information on that topic, answering questions like, “What do we offer?”, “What do you need to prepare?” and “Tips”.

The next sections are “BOC Exchange Rate”, pretty explanatory, followed by “Tax refund services upon departure”, which only applies to foreigners who’ve resided in China less than 183 days, so isn’t possible for the majority of us who’ve been stuck here since the pandemic. The next section is “FAQs”, and the last section is “Domestic Branches” with the address and contact details for the head branch in each Chinese province.

Now, after the initial disappointment of realizing this was not an English version of the BOC app, I was intrigued by the “Cross-border remittance”, as according to the information given it appeared that I would be able to send money to an account abroad using the app.

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I’ve never actually sent money abroad before from my Chinese bank account, always hearing that it's very mafan. But I've always wanted to find an easy way to do it. So, if the information proved to be true, then this looked like it could be the perfect solution.

Well, after more investigation and attempting a transfer through the BOC app to my English bank account I found, drum roll please…that it was not possible!

At least, it’s not possible to send RMB directly from your Chinese account to another one abroad. It instead appears like you can send foreign currency from your BOC account. Exactly how you get foreign currency into your account, I’m not sure, but perhaps this is something possible to do at a BOC branch – if any of you readers have done this, please let us know!

After looking into all aspect of the mini program, I was left wondering what the point of it was. Yes, it does have some handy information for setting up an account with BOC, though if you received this text you should already have one. The mini program does also contain some helpful guidance on sending transfers and using the BOC QR code payment system, however this is already possible through WeChat Pay or Alipay, so isn’t exactly ground breaking stuff.

Basically, if you want to have read of all possible options for BOC accounts, have a look at the mini program, otherwise there isn’t any real need for it.