Corporate account — major banks (general rules, SBI Sumishin, SMBC, SMBC Trunk)

A personal account and a corporate account are usually opened at different banks with different functionality and support; the bank that opened a personal account will not necessarily open a corporate one, and no bank will open a corporate account without the director holding a valid visa. A common practice after refusals is to apply in parallel to every available bank (SBI, GMO, etc.); until an account is open, the business can run through a personal account without mixing in personal spending. There are known cases of running a business in Japan for more than 2-3 years entirely without a corporate bank account (cash settlement), with the business visa still successfully renewed. SBI Sumishin Net Bank (住信SBIネット銀行, netbk.co.jp) is the most commonly recommended first choice for foreign startups; a chat poll (July-August 2025) found it had opened accounts for roughly half of respondents. In May 2025 it announced a takeover by NTT Docomo (tender offer); the expected new name is "NTT Docomo Sumishin SBI Net NeoBank." Opening takes from about 28 days (paper mail, if the applicant has no Japanese driver's license) to a few weeks online. It is considered one of the more usable banks among those discussed, despite some complaints, and recently added 2FA via an in-app QR scan. It issues a combined corporate debit+cash card, which not all banks offer to companies, and freee integrates with it reasonably well for cloud accounting. SBI Sumishin has no direct SWIFT support — it recommends using Wise for international transfers instead. Receiving incoming international SWIFT transfers requires a separate "foreign remittances service" application: a one-time fee of about 55,000 yen plus a $25 fee per incoming SWIFT transfer, plus a document package (including a ledger certified by a tax accountant, which takes 3 days to prepare); review of the application takes about a month; even after approval, the bank can still bounce a transfer back without explanation, keeping the fee. A separate foreign-currency account for receiving transfers in a foreign currency requires its own setup, with review taking about 3 weeks and requiring a stated account purpose and payer information (ideally with contracts); no separate foreign-currency account is needed if the transfer currency is yen. Payments at SBI Sumishin are only processed until 15:00, after which they roll to the next business day; the bank does not work with the UAE, staff are Japanese-speaking only, and support is slow (responses can take up to 5 business days — in one example a GitHub payment was blocked for 2 weeks as "suspicious activity"). Its antifraud system restricts transfers to new ("specified") recipients for roughly the first month after account opening — the recipient must first be registered and then selected from a list, or the transfer fails. The bank offers loans to corporate clients (one example: 2 million yen at 6% annual interest, though the lending feature is sometimes not technically enabled even when formally offered, requiring a personal offer by email); another user got 1 million yen at 12% "in a couple of clicks" automatically; loans to sole proprietors also appear (one example: 2.1 million yen at 5.949% annual interest). Regular SMBC (三井住友銀行) can only be opened offline at a branch, with Japanese-speaking staff and a strict client-screening process ("like an interview"), but it works well for incorporation and holding capital. Account registration is described as cumbersome and bureaucratic; it started accepting corporate account applications online from May 26, 2025. Official review time is about 2 days but in practice takes longer (weeks to get an interview slot, then about a week to a month for review). Unverified chat information suggests Japanese acquaintances were advised to look elsewhere if registered capital was under 100 million yen (1 oku). SMBC Trunk is a new, fully online digital sub-brand of SMBC (launched May 2025) with no physical branches, aimed at small business and startups, reportedly opening over 10,000 accounts in its first two months; participants rate it as a top option among the banks they tried, and it has been opened by at least two chat members. Opening is fully online but requires a mandatory ~15-30 minute online interview in Japanese, held over an external video platform called ROOMS with the camera required on and the session recorded, covering identity, address, My Number, showing your face, source of the company's income, foreign transfers, contracts, the director's experience, accounts at other banks, communication with the bank, and the cash card. Newly formed companies without contracts can submit a business plan instead of supply contracts — the plan needs to be in Japanese and cover the company overview, product/service strategy, market and competitive analysis, business model, go-to-market plan, team, roadmap, financial projections, and risks; interviewers may ask about the numbers in it, so it helps to have them memorized rather than just written down. Building a company website early is considered one of the most effective ways to establish legitimacy for a brand-new company with no revenue or contracts yet, and a Japanese cover letter with submitted documents also helps create a professional impression. Monthly service fees are almost nonexistent (a dormant-account fee applies after 12+ months of inactivity). The chat recommendation is to skip SBI and GMO and go straight to SMBC Trunk, which reportedly handles capital transfers from abroad better for foreign company owners. A realistic timeline from application to a usable account runs 1-2 weeks: about a day for the initial application and document upload, a few days waiting for an interview slot, the interview itself, 1-5 business days for the approval decision, then about a week for mail to arrive — the account can't send transfers until an OTP-activation postcard (sent by non-forwardable registered mail) is received and used to activate the OTP app; a separate cash card (ATM-only, no Visa/Mastercard) also arrives by mail and needs the company seal to fully activate. After approval for SMBC Trunk's international "global e-trade" service (approval wait was 20+ days), limits are roughly 10,000,000 yen/day outgoing (increasable) and 20,000,000 USD/day incoming; incoming international transfers were fee-free in one user's experience — it's worth applying for this separately after the account itself is open, since bundling it into the initial application can slow down approval. The internal transfer/account-management interface switches, once you go deep enough, to the old-style ValueDoor interface from the 1990s/2000s, requiring a separate certificate registration (works only on older macOS, 1-3 week wait); Google Translate doesn't work in the e-trade section. The password may be capped at 8 characters (letters+digits), though 2FA is available despite the weak password rule. Online registration: a postcard arrives by mail to sign applications and get a QR code for the 2FA app; the ID and password come by email at registration. Reviewers praise it as a convenient corporate tool: payment scheduling, batch payments, saved transaction details for reuse, multi-user access control, and fast, competent phone support.