I want to explain the situation. First, there is no internet banking for international transactions, so we have to physically go to the bank to process the withdrawals. Then for one week straight we were being told that something was missing each time we did the transfer paperwork: The company seal, authorisation form to convert into foreign exchange (DOP/USD) and depositing form for the USD account.
We even had the bank come to our offices on the 2nd week and do the paperwork at our side, but that did not work either. The las message from the bank was yesterday, that all the transactions to China and Japan, needed an intermediary bank. So fine, we were going to try again, but guess what? we needed an authorisation letter from the company to be able to put the money back into the account! Money that was coming from our account needed our authorisation so that it would not stay in Limbo. This is insane.
Lesson learned though. Banking will be done in Hong Kong until we find more reliable partner here. This is exactly what is wrong with the current banking system, there is too much red tape when you want to deal with your own money. Free to deposit but not so free to take out. Unfortunately, some of our clients are feeling the same about us at the moment. I assure you this is not the case. We will resolve this matter this week. We have sent funds to Hong Kong and will process withdrawals from there. We did not do this before, because of fear that we would end up sending the same transaction twice, from the Dominican bank and from Hong Kong. But now that we know the money is in Limbo and on the way back to our account in the Dominican Republic, we can go ahead and submit from Hong Kong.
Maybe this is a good time to bring this up: The Free Banking Initiative.
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