Just a few years ago, at USD1 = RM3.8, life was great. However, since the Malaysian Ringgit was un-pegged from the US dollar, Internet marketers like me have been losing out. This got even worse recently as the US Dollar started to depreciate drastically, and at the moment for each US dollar I can only get about RM3.10. That sucks.
So what if you made money in US Dollars, and you want to keep that money in US Dollars until the exchange rate was favorable enough? Is there a bank that allows you to do this?
The answer is yes: HSBC Bank of Malaysia.
As long as you have RM10,000 to open an account, and your company is at least a Sdn. Bhd. with a one year operating history, you can get a US Dollar HSBC bank account easily. Just visit any HSBC bank and tell them that Gobala Krishnan sent you.
(Just kidding..)
Anyways, with your HSBC bank account you actually get two separate but connected accounts – one is in US dollars and the other is a regular business account in Ringgit Malaysia. Plus, you also get access to their online banking system that is user-friendly and makes your life much easier.
Here’s the catch – Your US dollar bank account cannot be used to make payments in US dollars. It’s just an account where you can store your cash in US currency, but it’s not an account that you can issue checks from. You can however, transfer from the US account to the Ringgit account easily.
But in any case, this is useful if you want to hedge the damn currency market and get a better return for your online business.
Although many Malaysians use Maybank2u for personal banking, the truth is Maybank’s business banking sucks big time. You have no way to check your balance except via phone banking, and no way to make a payment except via check. Plus the people in Maybank are so lazy that they will always tell you to go back to your home branch for almost anything related to your account.
(They do have a Maybank2e.net service which I use, but that’s just expensive, bulky and very frustrating.)
With the HSBC bank account however, you get two accounts, and online banking interface, phone banking and even a business ATM card that you can use in any local ATM machine to withdraw cash.
I got this account by applying for a POS (credit card swipe machine), so if you apply only for the account the rules may be different. In fact, they may have stopped the US Dollar bank account by the time you’re reading this, so please ask them for details.
If you’re from Malaysia and want to learn how to use PayPal, here’s the best place to get video tutorials: PayPal Malaysia
Just curious, still holding onto your US Dollar? Now it is 2.9 liao.
hi,
if i’m not mistaken, through Malaysian regulation from year 2004, any income from oversea is not taxable
as an affiliate, you are receiving payments in dollar, could you elaborate on how you manage your tax filling
tq
Any money you bring into your Malaysian bank account is taxable. If you think otherwise, you’re just lying to yourself and the government.
It is hard to ignore the financial turmoil or meltdown or whatever you want to call it, and it’s effects on everyone. Yes, it sucks for sure, and that’s why we need to get educated on these issues because bigger forces are at play here than most of us realize, and can impact everything in the world, literally.
Oh and yes, I am an Internet Marketer for the past few years as well, but I can see everything going on like a slow motion movie, and it doesn’t look very bright. This USD falling down I can liken it to the Titanic sinking, and it takes everyone with it.
And maybe that is why of late, my email is flooded with tons of cheap promotions from IMers I once respected, who are stooping low now and losing their standards, because they are finding it tougher to upkeep their lavish lifestyles, I presume.
I think keeping money in US dollars OR keeping it in Paypal until the exchange rate goes up is a bad idea.
The US dollar has been on a decline for twenty years ever since it became a fiat currency.
Now with the debt their government has piled up, it’s on the point of no return.
They have flooded more US dollars into the market in the last two years than in the last few decades. That’s inflation in waiting.
It’s at the point of no return and I think even the authorities know that. China has reduced their holdings of US dollar reserves and they and India have started buying more gold.
What will happen is that a new reserve currency will be used throughout the world to replace the US dollar.
Couldn’t agree more. The only way for US to regain its big brother position is none other than war.
If there is a world war, US will definitely win again due to their military superiority. Only then can the dollar be saved, and all debt canceled, while other nations’ factories are burned to the ground like Germany and Japan. That is why Ford was the #1 car after world war 2 with no competitors.
US being US, somehow they will dig their way out of this mess. Gold on the other than is a risky investment, if you observe the trend carefully, the price fluctuates more when the markets for US opens for trading whereas it is rater quiet during Asia and Europe’s trading hour, seemed to me Americans are the only doing the buying waiting for Asia to catch up with the hype and then dump all these ‘paper’ gold.
I think it has become more feasible to accept cash in USD and get a US debit card from Payoneer.com when dealing with US customers, even foreign, since they also have Western Union facilities and use them as a USD account to deposit and pay. Fiat currencies are getting to be not even worth the paper they are printed on. My argument is USD cash can be converted into RM anytime without leaving a paper trail. And your Payoneer account is located in the US.
How do i get in touch with you on a project that we are working on?
You can use the Contact Me link at the top
US debt is ballooning, from what I read, the US government has no choice but to devalue their currency and print even more money (Quantitative easing).
Rumors has it that they intend to devalue their currency by 50%, and the short cut to achieve a high income country is by increasing the value of the ringgit, which is what Najib and gang is doing, maybe I am wrong.
Our per capita is about $14K, if the dollar devalues by 50%, it means our per capita is now $28K. 2020 target is right on, only with lots of inflation.
that sounds good but also bad, so is it good or bad to achieve high value income and inflation?
thank for this infomation bro …. good article