Oberbank Bank Account all set up

There are quite a few bank choices in Salzburg — big international names like Raiffeisen, Bank of Austria (UniCredit), and Erste Bank / Sparkasse, plus smaller regional banks like Volksbank.

We were originally just going to open up with the most obvious choice - Bank of Austria but after speaking to a real estate agent who gave glowing feedback about her experience with Oberbank, we decided to go with her recommendation. It’s not the biggest, but is more of a mid sized independent regional bank but still has around 200 branches across Europe .

The staff at the bank were really helpful, especially considering our situation as new residents and they took the time to walk us through everything, and Daniel our bank manager spoke fabulous English and was just so very pleasant to deal with.

So now our new bank account is all set up at Oberbank! After updating our registration forms to list our address as our primary residence the bank accepted all the documents and approved the account. The account is only in Ben’s name, which is a bit tough for me since I’m usually the one who manages everything and likes to have control but because the bank needs me to have my Visa first we can only open the account in Bens name. Furthermore they are only allowing one card on the account so I can’t even have a secondary card. Ben says he is going to go digital on his phone and I can have the card or we can both go digital and have the card as back up for ATM’s if we need cash so that works for me. I’m just really grateful we’ve gotten the account set up as now we can link our Drei mobile phone accounts, set up health insurance, arrange kids school fees, provide the account details to Bens potential new employer etc and transfer our Australian money over to the bank.

There’s something about it that makes everything feel more official and grounded. It’s like a little anchor point that says, yes, we actually live here now.