Malta company bank account: the foreign owner's price, and the file behind it

Malta's banks don't hide this. Their tariffs have a line for local companies and a line for companies with foreign shareholders or a foreign parent, and the gap is wide. Set your structure to see what three published price lists charge.

Two definitions matter. HSBC's "International Company" rate applies to a company registered outside Malta or 50% or more owned by a parent company outside Malta. The wording names a parent company, not a person, so if you hold the shares yourself, ask which rate you pay before you apply. BNF doesn't define its "International Corporate Customers" in the tariff at all.

The small lines add up too. HSBC charges €10 a quarter when balances stay under €200, from the seventh month. Lombard adds €25 a month, and BNF €50, when a document the bank asked for is two months or 30 days late.

Malta's Companies Act asks for at least 20% of each share to be paid when the memorandum is signed. On the minimum authorised capital of €1,164.69, that is €232.94. Most owners set the capital at the minimum, and many pay it in full.

The Malta Business Registry's notice sets one condition on the evidence: the receipt must show the name of the company in formation. It doesn't name a bank or a country, and we found no rule that the capital must sit in a Maltese bank. In practice we arrange the deposit with you as part of the formation, so the capital is never the reason the operating account waits.

Every Maltese bank works from the same text: the FIAU's Implementing Procedures, Part I, last amended on 27 April 2026. Section 4.3.2 lists what a bank gathers about a company. Tick what you already have.

Directors who aren't owners or signatories only need to be named; the bank isn't required to prove their identity. A bank may look you up in the owner register, which banks can search for customer checks, but the rulebook says that is no substitute for its own checks.

The rulebook is clearer on this than most people expect. Section 4.3.1.2 says a bank "may also remotely verify" your identity through video conference facilities, and section 3.2.4 says a relationship opened at a distance need not be treated as high risk when the bank has controls against impersonation.

Permission isn't obligation. Each bank chooses whether it offers video identification, and none of the tariffs we read promises a fully remote opening for a foreign-owned company. Ask at the start; if a bank wants a branch visit, it usually says so in the first reply.

The rulebook lists what makes a bank rate a customer as higher risk (section 3.5.1). Each item is a reason for more questions, and unanswered questions are the usual way a Malta file dies.

If the bank still can't complete its checks, section 4.7 leaves it no choice: it must not open the account, or must close it, and money already received goes back "to the original source using the same channels". That is why we send a file complete on day one rather than in instalments.

Malta had 19 licensed banks and 68 payment and e-money firms at the end of 2025, by the MFSA's count. The company can use either kind, in Malta or anywhere in the EU. Nothing in Maltese company law makes it bank at home.

A payment firm's IBAN works for invoices and salaries. It is not a deposit: the firm keeps client money apart from its own, and the depositor scheme in the next chapter doesn't apply to it.

All of the company's deposits at one bank count together toward the €100,000. A higher temporary limit, up to €500,000 extra, exists for listed life events such as selling a home, and almost all of them are personal. If you hold a pure holding company, ask the bank whether the scheme treats it as a financial institution; the scheme's answers don't say.

Malta exchanges financial account information with other tax offices under the OECD's Common Reporting Standard and its EU twin, DAC 2, which also carries the US FATCA agreement. On opening, the company signs a tax self-certification.

And you live in pick it?

The public sees the company file: directors, secretary and shareholders, for a small fee. The register of beneficial owners has been closed to general search since 2022. Banks and authorities can read it.

It almost always goes through. If one bank's price or answer doesn't suit, we take the file to another bank or an EU payment account. Everything we include is on our Malta company page; the 35% and the refund are in the Malta tax guide, and the yearly bills in Malta annual fees.