Day-to-Day Account Operations and Currency Control

SMBC Trust Bank ran a triple check with a series of phone calls when a personal account received a transfer from the account holder's parents, just to confirm it was not a business transaction. When a residence card expires, banks (Mizuho, MUFG) require the account holder's personal presence to close the account and refuse to act via power of attorney even through a Japanese company representative, citing anti-money-laundering policy and police guidance. A company's corporate account is usually not automatically closed when one access holder's residence status expires — that person simply loses their credentials, while the corporate (houjin) account remains active as long as a director with valid status or citizenship exists; one confirmed exception, reported via LinkedIn, involved a bank closing an account specifically because immigration delayed a decision on the director's visa, through no fault of the company. When a personal residence card is renewed, banks usually send a notice on their own for a personal account; for a corporate account, a director's residence-card status is generally not checked at all. On technical limits, SBI Neo Bank (Sumishin SBI Net Bank) could not set up automatic debit (kouza furikae) from a business account because the paper form caps the katakana company name at 15 full-width characters; the likely fix is shortening the registered name to fit. The pension office (nenkin jimusho) stated outright that this bank cannot be used for automatic debit of insurance and pension contributions. SMBC often offers free transfers for corporate (houjin) accounts only within the same branch, meaning fee-free payroll requires employees to bank at that specific branch, though some setups do offer free transfers between all SMBC branches. One misleading bank email advertised a discounted transfer fee (87 yen instead of 145) that in practice required transferring to five accounts, at least two of which had to be at SMBC itself, or the full discount would not apply; business loan and cashback offers from SMBC typically bury tough conditions (specific card plus specific store plus a narrow time window) in fine print. On capital handling, a company's initial capital must actually be paid into the company and not spent before the corporate account is opened — there are references to criminal liability or fines for misusing declared capital, though participants disagree on the exact rules ("if it sits in a personal account, how do you prove it wasn't spent?"). Mixing personal and corporate funds is not directly banned by law but is strongly discouraged — funds should be earmarked for company needs and traceable. According to one participant's accountant, what matters is that the company's books match reality, regardless of whether the money physically sits in the corporate account, in a safe as cash, or in the director's personal account — as long as it is properly documented and taxed, this is not itself a violation, though a large stash of corporate cash ("cutlets in a safe") can raise suspicion in a tax audit. One participant structures transfers to themselves as a "loan from the founder to the company" (the director lends the company money at interest instead of taking a salary), though the legal soundness of this scheme is unconfirmed. For setting up automatic debit for an ETC card for business use, a separate personal account is used, which the accountant files with the tax office as a "second corporate account" — this works as long as it is not mixed with ordinary personal transactions. On sanctions compliance more broadly, banks such as the Bank of Taiwan's Japan branch carefully screen beneficiaries for sanctions exposure. Exchanging crypto for fiat via P2P and using it to pay murky counterparties without invoices is legally risky and can be treated as money laundering; to keep crypto income clean, a full trail is recommended, from purchase on a verified official Japanese exchange through to cashing out on the same exchange. Individuals can receive SWIFT transfers to a personal account (for example at MUFJ) without special registration, but large recurring deposits can draw tax-office attention, requiring proof of the income source or risking a profit-tax assessment. Leaving the founders' registry of a foreign (for example Russian) company upon renouncing Russian citizenship is legally ambiguous and is better handled via a notarized power of attorney (obtainable at an embassy); such a power of attorney does not automatically lose force when citizenship ends.