RBC Access USA

I paid a visit down to my local RBC branch, carrying my driver's license, SIN card and my passport. Thanks to Sam and Nancy I was able to quickly enroll in their RBC Access USA program. They set me up with an RBC Day to Day Savings Account, which has no monthly charges, the fees are transaction based, with one free transaction a month at their branch. Then we fired off an application for the RBC Access USA program. I opted for the basic level service, which let's you have a few free transactions, write cheques etc, there is a premier level service that has some more fees, but more included. Everything seemed to go fairly easily because I had all my ID and such. They faxed the application off to RBC Centura who are then supposed to go ahead and set me up an account and mail me the information. So step one completed, hopefully all goes ahead with no issues. If everything goes ahead, I should be able to log into both accounts through the RBC canadian account and move funds into the US account.

The RBC Access USA program appears to be set up primarily for Canadian snowbirds, for the unfamiliar, snowbirds is the nickname for Canadian retirees who spend 6 months or so over winter each year in Florida. The program looks like it will work for folks like me as well who require a bank account physically located in the US. In this day and age, this looks like one of the last viable options for US banking for canadians without traveling to the US.