Opening a Corporate Bank Account for a PMA Company in Indonesia: Who Has to Be There, and What the Bank Will Ask

Updated 13 October 2026 · Okusi Associates · All guides

Of all the steps in establishing a foreign-owned company (Penanaman Modal Asing, PMA) in Indonesia, the bank account is the one the state does not control. Notaries, the Ministry of Law and the OSS licensing system work to published rules and, mostly, to published timetables. Banks work to their own compliance manuals, which they do not publish, and which treat the foreigner signing for a new company as the risk to be managed. The three questions clients ask most, in roughly this order, are whether the account can be opened while the director is in Indonesia on a visa on arrival, whether it can be opened from abroad, and which bank will actually do it. The short answers are no, only through a resident proxy, and the branch matters more than the bank.

The company exists before the account does

A common misreading of the process has the capital deposited first and the company incorporated second. It runs the other way. The Ministry of Law’s current establishment regulation (Permenkum 49/2025, Art 6) lists what the notary attaches to the application, and for capital paid in money it accepts any one of three things: a copy of a deposit slip, a copy of a bank letter in the name of the company or of a joint account in the founders’ names, or an original statement that the capital has been paid in, signed by every director, every founder and every commissioner. The third form is what nearly every new PMA company uses, because a company that does not yet exist cannot hold an account. The government regulation on company capital (PP 8/2021, Art 4) then gives 60 days from the deed for the proof to reach the Ministry electronically, which the notary handles.

Licensing follows the same logic. When the company obtains its business identification number (NIB) through OSS, the minimum paid-up capital of Rp 2.5 billion required of a PMA company under Perka BKPM 5/2025 is evidenced by a self-declaration stored with the NIB, with a commitment that the money, once in, stays in the company’s account for twelve months except as used for the business. No bank statement is asked for at that point. The capital requirements guide covers the arithmetic.

The practical sequence for a PMA company is therefore: deed, Ministry approval, tax number, NIB, then the account, then the capital remittance into it. The account is step five of six. What the sequence does not remove is the need for the money to arrive eventually, in the company’s name, from the shareholders, with a transfer narrative that says what it is. A shareholder who pays the capital into a director’s personal account to save time has created an accounting problem and a tax problem at the same time, and both surface at the first audit or tax query.

What the bank asks for

The document list varies by bank but the core is fixed by the anti-money-laundering rules the Financial Services Authority (OJK) imposes on every bank (POJK 8/2023), which require the bank to identify the company, its officers and its beneficial owners before opening anything. For a PMA company the list runs to:

the deed of establishment and every amending deed, each with its Ministry of Law approval or notification receipt;
the NIB and any business licence the company’s classification requires;
the company’s tax number (NPWP);
proof of the registered address: a lease, a building-management letter, or the domicile documentation from a serviced office;
for every director and commissioner, identity documents and personal tax numbers; for foreigners, the passport and the stay permit (KITAS or KITAP);
for a corporate shareholder abroad, its certificate of incorporation, constitution and current register of directors and shareholders, legalised for use in Indonesia and translated by a sworn translator;
a board resolution or power of attorney, on the bank’s own form, naming the signatories and their limits;
a beneficial-owner declaration, which should agree with the one the notary filed with the Ministry under Perpres 13/2018;
the FATCA and CRS self-certification forms, and for American shareholders or signatories, the W-9 or W-8 forms behind them;
signature specimens from each signatory, given in person;
the company stamp.

Two of these items generate most of the delay. Legalisation of foreign corporate documents takes two to six weeks in the home country, and since Indonesia’s accession to the Apostille Convention took effect on 4 June 2022 an apostille should be enough, though at least one international bank’s published checklist still describes the older consular route and branch staff do not always know the difference. And the beneficial-owner question, which seems trivial for a company with two individual shareholders, becomes a chain of documents when the shareholder is a holding company owned by a trust. The bank will follow the chain to a natural person or decline the account.

The signatory is the problem, not the company

The company is the customer, but the bank onboards the people who sign for it as if they were individual customers, and it is here that the three questions clients ask are answered.

On a visa on arrival. A foreign director present in Indonesia as a visitor can sign the deed before a notary, can attend the OSS registration, and can sit in the bank’s meeting room. What the bank wants from that director, as a signatory, is the identity set it would want from any foreign individual customer: a passport, a tax number and a stay permit. BCA’s published terms for corporate current accounts state it plainly: the officer representing the company registers as an individual customer, and a foreign officer provides a passport, a KITAS or KITAP, and an NPWP. A visa on arrival is not a stay permit, and a visitor has no tax number. Some banks, DBS among them on its published checklist, will take a reference letter from the customer’s existing bank in place of the KITAS. That route exists, and the compliance officer at the branch decides whether it applies in the case in front of them. A client who plans on it is planning on a discretion.

From abroad. A bank account cannot be opened by post. The signatures the bank keeps on file are given in front of its staff, and the forms are the bank’s own. What can be done from abroad is to authorise someone in Indonesia. BCA’s terms allow a corporate account to be opened under a power of attorney from the company’s authorised officers; the attorney then goes through the individual onboarding in the officer’s place. The attorney therefore has to be someone who passes it, which in practice means an Indonesian resident with a tax number: a locally resident director, a company secretary, or a professional director engaged for the purpose. The director abroad signs a notarised and apostilled power of attorney, and the account is opened in Indonesia without them.

The three routes, in the order most PMA companies take them. The first is to appoint a resident director from the outset, Indonesian or foreign with a KITAS, who is the bank signatory and the Coretax person-in-charge from day one. The second is to obtain the foreign director’s investor KITAS first and open the account afterwards; the KITAS is sponsored by the newly established company, takes some weeks after the NIB issues, and the director visits the bank once it is in hand. The third is the proxy route above. Which fits depends on who the shareholders are and how often anyone will be in the country; a holding structure with no intention of posting anyone to Jakarta takes the first or third, a founder relocating takes the second. What does not work, at any bank that handles PMA business, is a foreign director with no stay permit and no resident proxy, however complete the company’s own paperwork.

Which bank

Foreign-owned companies mostly bank with the large domestic banks: BCA, Mandiri, BNI, CIMB Niaga, with Permata and OCBC also common, and with the Singapore and international banks (UOB, DBS, HSBC, Standard Chartered) favoured by groups whose treasury already sits with them. Any of these is a foreign-exchange bank (bank devisa) and so able to receive the inbound capital in foreign currency and hold foreign-currency accounts alongside the rupiah one. The differences lie in the internet-banking platform, the fee schedule, how well the branch knows PMA onboarding, and the size of balance the relationship manager considers worth the compliance work. A branch in Thamrin or Kuningan that opens PMA accounts every week is a different institution from the same bank’s branch in a suburb that has never seen a foreign deed, and the choice of branch is in most cases the choice that matters.

Published figures for a rupiah corporate current account (giro) at BCA, as a benchmark:

Item	BCA, rupiah giro
Initial deposit	Rp 1,000,000
Minimum balance	Rp 1,000,000
Monthly administration	Rp 30,000
Currencies available	13, including USD, SGD, EUR, AUD, GBP, CNH and MYR

Other banks set their own, generally in the same range for rupiah and around USD 1,000 for a dollar account. The minimum opening balance is in every case trivial beside the Rp 2.5 billion that will follow it. The bank cares about the signatory and the beneficial owner; it does not care much about the first deposit.

The timeline

Step	Who	Typical duration
Legalisation of foreign shareholder documents	Home-country notary and apostille authority	2 to 6 weeks, in parallel with establishment
Deed, Ministry approval, NPWP, NIB	Notary, Ministry of Law, tax office, OSS	2 to 4 weeks
Investor KITAS for the signing director, if that route is taken	Immigration, sponsored by the company	2 to 4 weeks after the NIB
Bank application and compliance review	Bank branch and its compliance unit	3 to 15 working days once documents are complete
Internet-banking tokens and corporate cards	Bank	1 to 2 weeks after opening
Capital remittance and conversion	Shareholders and bank	Days, once the account is live

The realistic total from first instruction to a funded, operable account is six to ten weeks for a company whose director is resident or becomes so, and the long pole is never the bank’s own processing. It is the legalisation abroad and the stay permit.

After the account is open

Four rules govern how the account is then used, and all four are enforced by the bank rather than by anyone the company will ever meet.

Rupiah at home. Bank Indonesia requires every transaction within Indonesia to be settled in rupiah (PBI 17/3/2015): rent, salaries, local suppliers, domestic sales. The exemptions are international trade, foreign-currency deposits and certain cross-border financing. The sanction for a non-cash breach is a written warning, then a fine of 1% of the transaction up to Rp 1 billion. A dollar invoice to a local customer is the commonest way a new PMA company breaks this rule without noticing.

Documents for money going out. Bank Indonesia’s foreign-exchange monitoring rules have tightened twice in 2026. Since 1 July 2026 (PADG 13/2026, following a cut to USD 50,000 in April) an outward transfer in foreign currency above USD 25,000 needs an underlying document showing a real obligation: a supplier invoice, a loan agreement, a licence or royalty agreement, an employment contract, or the shareholders’ resolution declaring the dividend. Purchases of foreign currency against rupiah without such documents are limited, since the same date, to the equivalent of USD 10,000 a month. These figures are taken from bank circulars and Bank Indonesia’s announcements rather than from the regulation text, and Bank Indonesia has shown in 2026 that it will move them at short notice; the bank’s current circular, not an adviser’s memory, is the reference on the day of the transfer.

The tax office sees the account. The company’s main account is registered in Coretax, and nothing comes back from the tax office (a refund of overpaid tax, for instance) without it. Corporate account balances are reported to the Directorate General of Taxes each year under the financial-information access law (UU 9/2017), with no minimum balance for companies, and account information on foreign-controlled companies is exchanged with other tax authorities under CRS. The account and the books kept for the monthly returns should agree, because they will be compared.

Keep the register current. A bank that discovers from its own periodic review that the directors or shareholders on its file are not the ones on the Ministry’s register freezes the account until the paperwork catches up. Every change at the notary (a new director, a share transfer, a capital increase) is a change at the bank, with a new resolution and new specimens, and companies that forget this learn it when a payment bounces.

Where Okusi fits

Okusi Associates has established PMA companies since 1997, from Jakarta, Bali and Batam, and the Indonesian PMA Company package, at US$ 1,759, includes assistance with the corporate account: choosing a branch that handles PMA onboarding, preparing the document set in the bank’s order, and attending with the signatory. For shareholders who will not have a resident director, the Professional Director Services service, at US$ 929 per year, provides one who carries the legal duties properly and acts as bank signatory and Coretax person-in-charge. For a founder who will relocate, the Investor’s KITAS Complete package, at US$ 1,312 for a two-year permit, delivers the investor KITAS the bank will ask to see. Foreign corporate documents are translated through Indonesian-English Sworn Translations, and companies that would rather not manage the bank relationship at all place it, with the rest of the corporate calendar, under Company Secretary - Corporate Secretary.