which means: you still have to pay the stamp tax.
If you have single stocks or VT ETF there are no management fees. The accounts are then free, aside from the Fr 90 p.a.
Stamp tax is a tax, so yes separate from any trading credits one may have.
However OP is interested in USD and thus I assume USD trades, so probably not at SIX, so that’d not involve swiss stamp tax.
That’s 7.5 Fr/month. Standard account package (incl any combination of CHF/EUR/USD accounts) is only 5 Fr/month.
Costs for USD transfers can be somewhat “non-transparent” (to say the least), as far as I intermediary banks and costs of receiving banks go. Unless they are US-domestic, they will virtually always go through the SWIFT network - which is much more expensive than “domestic” payment systems (Swiss Interbank clearing, SEPA etc.).
SEPA transfers on the other hand are guaranteed to be free of intermediary fees - what you send is what the recipient is going to receive (less his own bank fees for incoming fees, though hardly any bank has them for personal clients).
I’ve heard of a few cases of EU banks charging for incoming SEPA transfers from non-EU countries such as CH. It’s rare but apparently there are loopholes making it non 100% guaranteed
AFAIK SEPA itself actually doesn’t even mandate that transfers should be free of charge, just that the charge should be the same for all eligible destinations. Some swiss banks do charge a fee for SEPA
That aren’t AFAIK intermediaries’ bank fees. It’s rather the receiving bank exhausting …well, not really “loopholes” but rather the intricacies of the scope of the EU regulations.
- They are obliged to charge the same fees for domestic and cross-border transfers among EEA countries on a non-discriminatory basis. This is due to EU/EEA legislation on pricing/fees.
- The SEPA system however transcends the EU/EEA member states and has a few non-EEA member states participating (United Kingdom, Switzerland, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco, Vatican)
- For payments to/from (basically: involving) a non-EEA SEPA state, banks are free to set different fees. EU/EEA legislation on fees doesn’t apply.
Perfectly legal and not a loophole - though personally I consider it quite a d*ck move for a bank to do. It’s really confusing to the average payer and very customer-unfriendly. Especially since it will most probably only apply to a very diminutive share of all SEPA payments anyway. So it’s not as if they’d be making much money from it.
…all EEA destinations (and/or originating countries), that is.
That’s true.
The following is not correct, please ignore.
“Without E-Trading it’s Fr 5 per month per account, so if one just open a USD account it’d be Fr 60 p.a.
Of course if one decides on a CHF account account too, that doubles to CHF 120 p.a. though.”
We’re still talking of PF, right? Do you have a source for this? (“5 CHF per account”)
At PF, I have a few CHF accounts (regular & “saving”), EUR accounts (regular & “saving”) and a USD account - and I pay: 5 CHF per month in total (not using e-Trading nor do I have PF funds)
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Your experience beats my assumtion. My assumption was wrong.
I have over 25k Anlagevermögen, so read the T&C where it said Kontoführung=Fr5. I was extrapolating my experience at other banks where that means per account. At Postfinance it’s not per account but per client.
“Wie wird die Gebühr verrechnet?
Die Kontoführungsgebühr wird pro Kundenbeziehung verrechnet. Kunden mit mehreren Einzelkonten zahlen im Normalfall monatlich nur eine Kontoführungsgebühr.”
I will edit the wrong bit.
I have to disagree here, you will most certainly pay more than CHF 5.- for any USD tranfer. Let me show you an example.
I have a USD account for my company and I used ibani and TransferWise to exchange USD with CHF
Ibani offers IBANs in various currencies. They act as converting proxies to your own account. IBANs are provided by Banque du Léman, and start with CHxx, hence local accounts. But, and this is important, clearing USD happens in the US and there is little control, let alone information, that you can have on the subject. To give you figures, I transferred $51’000 from PostFinance and $50’939 arrived at ibani.
This means correspondent banks (either of PostFinance or Banque du Léman) charged $61 for the transfer. PostFinance provides a fixed price transfer (“our cost” or something) but that only applies to transfers to non Swiss accounts (IBAN not starting with CHxx).
A subsequent transfer of about twice the amount cost the same $61.
I tried using TransferWise for another transfer, this time to a USD account I have there. It’s a local US account and I transferred $3’000 using the “our cost” thing: CHF 20.- for the fixed price, and an additional CHF 2.- for the actual transfer cost (GIRO international). The result was, $3’000 transferred in full to my TransferWise account.
It’s unfortunately a cost that you cannot always predict, but if it’s a recurring one it’s probably better to try to optimise it.
BTW, I did not mention it, but the USD account costs CHF 2.- per month, in addition to the CHF 5.- per month for the main CHF account.
@tex91 btw there’s bunch of discussion in the thread, but you still really haven’t clarified why you’d want an (uninsured) USD account in Switzerland. The only case where it might make sense to me is if you’d want to spend the cash with a credit/debit card, but do Swiss bank even offer those? (revolut or transferwise might be the best option for that, or schwab debit card).
In constrast, your cash balance at IB is both insured and will earn interests (afaict unlike USD accounts in swiss banks).
This thread is getting a bit unwieldy (not you).
I have transferred between 2 Swiss banks, USD account to USD account and it cost 5 to 7 Fr. (CS to Postfin, Migrosbank to Postfin).
I have transferred USD to IB’s account at Citibank NY from Swiss bank. This cost Postfin to IB (Fr 2 + $15) and Migrosbank to IB (Fr 5 + $15).
These were similar amounts to your transfer 30 to 100k.
I think your example is an outlier cost-wise and one of the involved banks (could also be an intermediary) is being a d*ck.
I know this is “starting another topic”, but are you sure of this? Is an account at a Swiss bank in USD not “guaranteed up to CHF 100k” just because it’s in USD? What about Euro? I was understanding this the Einlagensicherung Esisuisse would “protect” any “money” at a Swiss bank, be it CHF, EUR, USD or Gold/Silver in a Metallkonto.
You make it sound like it’s not insured cos it’s USD. Or am I misunderstanding?
I did not eat that much at Christmas 
There might be a d*ck in the process, I agree, though talking to each bank separately only taught me that they all say they have the best service/prices.
Have you tried receiving USD with PF? I should try with another bank to compare, or maybe using TransferWise but with the shared costs option.
Pretty sure some do. UBS does offer USD currency cards on their web site.
I think the OP is quite clear. He has incoming USD (proceeds from sale of company stock) that he wants to holds in USD for a while, without converting. Reason: costs of currency exchange and maybe (though only presumably) exchange rate risk.
Now, personally I tend to agree with you and question if the set-up really makes sense, since we’ve only read about the OP wanting to avoid costs of currency conversion and looking for a “free” account. All the information doesn’t sound as if we’re talking larger amounts here.
I am going out and say it:
There is no such thing.
There will always be costs in some form. Be it higher transfer fees for non-domestic currency, lower interest rates than other USD account, additional products bundled in, opportunity costs of keeping a minimum balance required for fee waivers.
Since I don’t think a truly free and costless account and way of transfer does not exist, I think one should compare the costs of alternatives…
What amounts are we talking here?
…at a current rate of 0% p.a. 
I think it is true though that IBKR used to offer generally higher interest on USD than Swiss banks on foreign currency cash balances. The current 0% rates have just reduced this differential temporarily.
Are deposits denominated in a currency other than the CHF also classed as preferential?
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Good to know, tho it’s not as good as the up to 2.5M USD that IB offers with FDIC insurance (with the sweep program).
And they also say that they already have an IB account, which is why it’s puzzling for me, for this use case (holding before investing), I don’t see any disadvantages to holding USD at IB instead of a swiss bank.
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Unless it’s been previously mentioned (I didn’t find it looking shortly through the thread) - for the OP’s use case:
Why not simply transfer those stocks from your company’s platform (whatever it is they use to assign the stocks to you) to IB?
Then you can sell them there (for 2 USD) and keep the USD there too until you purchase further ETFs or whatever else?
My company shares sit with Equatex and I managed to transfer them to IB (even CHF-based shares).
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This afaik incurs a 40 USD fee last time I checked. Don’t remember if on IB or Stock Platform side.
If you have broker choice you can pick one with no fees 
(I have no wire fees with Schwab)