US expat banking, solved both ways.

"US expat" describes two structurally different cohorts and they have almost nothing in common at the bank-account level. Inbound means non-Americans who have just arrived or are about to arrive — H1B and H4 dependents, L1 intracompany transferees, F1 students transitioning to OPT, J1 exchange visitors, and the lawful permanent residents who hold a green card but were not born in the US. The week-one problem for this cohort is onboarding before an SSN card arrives: most US fintechs hard-block on SSN, the bank branch wants a US address you do not yet have, and the foreign salary or relocation grant needs a USD account to land in. ITIN-friendly fintechs and a Wise multi-currency account are the standard answer.

Outbound means Americans abroad — US citizens and lawful permanent residents living anywhere outside the US, plus the "accidental Americans" who hold a US passport by birth but have lived their whole adult lives in the EU, UK, or Asia. The structural problem this cohort faces is the opposite: foreign banks decline US persons because of the FATCA reporting overhead, the IRS expects a Form 1040 every year regardless of residence, and the FBAR threshold of USD 10,000 in aggregate foreign-account balances catches almost everyone with a salary. The standard answer is to keep a Schwab High Yield Investor Checking account open as the US base, use Wise multi-currency on the foreign side to receive USD without an international wire fee, and file the FATCA / FBAR forms every spring.

Wise — Mid-market FX, no monthly fee, and local-account details in 9 currencies including USD ACH/wire — the only product on this list that solves both inbound (an account you can open before payroll lands) and outbound (a USD-denominated account you can keep after you leave the country).

Revolut USA — Operates under the US state money-transmitter framework rather than a full bank charter — deposits sit at FDIC-insured partner banks. 30+ currencies in-app at competitive FX. SSN required at signup, which rules it out for the first weeks of an H1B/L1 transfer but works once your SSN card arrives.

Charles Schwab Bank — Not a neobank — it is the High Yield Investor Checking account attached to a Schwab brokerage. Reimburses 100% of foreign ATM fees, no foreign-transaction fee on the debit card, and accepts a non-US address for existing US persons. The default recommendation in every "Americans abroad" forum for a reason. We do not run a Schwab review on this site; link is to schwab.com.

Mercury — For the C-corp or single-member LLC an immigrant founder spins up to invoice US clients. Mercury onboards on EIN + formation docs, accepts non-resident-alien beneficial owners, and runs the IntraFi Sweep network past the $250K FDIC ceiling. Personal account is separate — Mercury does not bank individuals.

Wise Business — The Wise multi-currency account in business form. Accepts ITIN-only sole proprietors, issues local USD/EUR/GBP/AUD account details for invoicing, and integrates W-8/W-9 collection on the receivables side. The natural counterpart to a personal Wise account when you outgrow the freelancer-on-personal-account stage.

The ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) is a nine-digit IRS-issued number that starts with 9 and looks like a Social Security Number on most KYC forms. The IRS issues it to non-resident aliens, dependents on a US visa, and foreign nationals with US tax-filing obligations who cannot get an SSN. Wise (personal and business) and Wise's main competitor tier (Brex, Mercury for businesses) accept ITIN-only signup. Revolut USA, Chime, Cash App, SoFi, Varo, and most chartered consumer banks require an SSN — their partner banks impose it as a condition of the BaaS contract. The pragmatic week-one path for an inbound H1B or L1: open Wise on ITIN before the move, fund it from your origin-country account, then add a US fintech once your SSN card arrives in weeks 4-8.

The United States taxes by citizenship, not residence. A US citizen or lawful permanent resident living anywhere in the world must file a Form 1040 every year, must file the FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR) annually if the aggregate balance of all foreign accounts exceeded USD 10,000 at any point in the calendar year, and may need to file Form 8938 (FATCA) on top of the FBAR for accounts above higher thresholds. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE, Form 2555) and the Foreign Tax Credit (FTC, Form 1116) prevent double taxation in practice for most expats with normal salaries, but the filing obligation does not go away. Penalties for missed FBARs are wildly disproportionate to most readers' intuitions — USD 10,000 per missed filing for non-wilful, up to USD 100,000 or 50 percent of account balance for wilful — so the conservative path is to file even if you owe nothing.

The other half of the FATCA story is the foreign bank side. Non-US banks must identify US persons, collect a W-9, and report account balances and income to the IRS via the local tax authority (or to the IRS directly for "Model 2" jurisdictions). The compliance overhead is large enough that smaller European and APAC banks routinely decline US-person signups to avoid building the infrastructure — N26, Trade Republic, several Swiss private banks are documented examples. The compliance-mature challengers (Wise, Revolut Europe, Lloyds, HSBC's expat arm) do accept US persons and issue the necessary tax documentation. If a bank refuses you on the grounds that you hold a US passport, that is FATCA — not discrimination — and the answer is to use a provider that has built the compliance stack.

The five picks above are scored on the four dimensions that decide expat-banking value: multi-currency support (number of currencies held in-app at mid-market FX), KYC route (ITIN-acceptable vs SSN-only), inbound and outbound USD wire/ACH fees, and FATCA / W-8 / W-9 readiness on the receivables side. Underlying regulatory and fee data is the same data feed used in our worldwide ranking; the affiliate-disclosure ledger is at /disclosure/. Charles Schwab Bank is included even though we do not run a Schwab review on this site — it is a brokerage with a checking account rather than a neobank, but the "Americans-abroad zero-foreign-ATM-fee" use case has no neobank equivalent and we will not omit it for taxonomic neatness. Treat the Schwab entry as a pointer, not a review.

For the inbound visa-holder cohort, the right answer is Wise on ITIN before the move, with Revolut USA or a chartered US consumer bank (SoFi, Chime) added once the SSN card arrives. For the Americans-abroad cohort, the right answer is Charles Schwab Bank as the US base account, Wise on the foreign side, and a US-licensed CPA who handles expat returns to keep the FATCA and FBAR filings clean. For the founder cohort spinning up a US C-corp or LLC, Mercury is the only realistic option that onboards non-resident-alien beneficial owners. Wise Business is the natural step up from a Wise personal account once you cross the line into invoicing US clients regularly. Read the per-product reviews linked above before opening any account, and verify your US-tax filing obligations with a qualified professional — none of the above is tax advice.