Corporate account — other banks and alternatives

GMO Aozora Bank is considered "gaijin-startup friendly" but has issued real refusals to foreigners (including a message recommending "another financial institution to receive funds"), sometimes without explanation. It has reportedly started allowing corporate-account applications before company registration is complete, though this has led to refusals for several users in practice. It supports transfers to only a limited list of countries (unlike Wise) — it works well paired with Wise as a "real bank" for local transfers (including at night), while foreign operations need Wise separately. Late salary payments don't carry serious consequences here, unlike at some other banks. Free furikomi (transfers) on business accounts are limited: for example, GMO Aozora gives 20 free transfers per month in the first year, often only within the same branch (or branch + head office); beyond that, a fee of about 145 yen per transfer applies. It offers a corporate foreign-currency account (外貨預金法人口座). Japan Post Bank (Yucho) requires a lot of documentation, and review can take about a month (per a 2014 experience). It can open a corporate account for businesses that don't need international transfers; it has done so for at least one chat member. Small branches (e.g., in Kyoto) are often "nervous" about large incoming transfers and block accounts "pending clarification"; larger branches (e.g., Azabu in Tokyo) are calmer. The limit for incoming SWIFT transfers to a corporate account is about 1 million yen/day (the same limit applies to students and to companies), so a large capital transfer has to be split into several ~1-million-yen transactions on different days. Social-insurance/pension bills can be paid via QR/PayEasy codes from the invoice entered into another bank's online banking; if an organization isn't supported by a particular bank's system, payment can be made in cash at the bank/convenience store, or via a Yucho counter, which accepts the bill and forwards it to the labor insurance office itself. Other banks for a corporate account: PayPay Bank, based on chat data, has not opened a corporate (法人) account for anyone, though it opens accounts for sole proprietors (個人事業主) relatively easily, requiring a copy of ID and a copy of the business-opening notification (開業届), with paperwork still needing to be mailed in. Rakuten Bank has almost never opened business accounts per user experience (a few exceptions after about 1.5 months of negotiation and providing visa documents). SBI Shinsei is unfriendly to any business-related operations, including incorporation prep, and has bounced incoming SWIFT transfers (one case involved a freeze of almost six months). MUFG and regular GMO (not Aozora) both had failed registration attempts in the chat. Mizuho is considered one of the worst banks "even 20 years ago" (unstable online banking, downtime), though some got an account and it works well with crypto exchanges; for online banking, Mizuho requires the representative's name to be entered exactly as given at account opening (full-width characters, first letter capitalized, rest lowercase) or the system rejects the application. Shinkin (信用金庫, local credit cooperatives) can block online transfers if there is a high transaction count and the passbook hasn't been updated at an ATM. Daiichi Bank (第一銀行) branches are open until 20:00, including weekends; it's a Seven Eleven subsidiary offering free ATM withdrawals with a salary account, though according to one report it doesn't operate in all regions. Using a virtual office or having no physical office at all is a red flag for some banks; banks may detect the use of a virtual office/coworking space even without it being explicitly stated, which can complicate the process (e.g., extra questions in an SMBC Trunk interview). If opening a corporate account proves impossible, an alternative path is to buy an existing company that already has a bank account — a fairly common market practice, though it carries the risk of buying a "problematic" firm without proper due diligence by a notary. Source: https://www.freee.co.jp/kb/kb-launch/houjin-kouza/#content2-2 — freee article on opening a corporate bank account. Source: https://standardtax.jp/topics/corporate-account/ — standardtax.jp article on opening a corporate bank account.