Bringing Your Money to Canada (Part II)

This post originally appeared on: https://tropicstorockies.wordpress.com/

In our last post, we talked about the different ways you can bring your money into Canada as a first time immigrant. In that post, we mentioned that we will be going with a wire/telegraphic transfer between BPI here in the Philippines and their partner bank in Canada, Scotiabank.

This will be done through the Scotiabank StartRight Program for newcomers to Canada. It is basically a bank account that you can open before landing in Canada which gives you some benefits including being able to do a one-time wire/transfer of up $50,000 to Canada without any fees.

In this post, we go through the really simple process for signing up for the Scotiabank StartRight Program.

First, go to to the Scotiabank StartRight page and answer the two questions found on the page. You will then be led to this page.

Click “open your account online” and go through the next few pages which will ask you to select your region and country. At this point, be sure that you have your passport, Certificate of Permanent Residence and estimated date of arrival in Canada on hand. After that, just fill up the short forms and complete the application.

Once finished, you will be informed that they will be emailing you further instructions within 24 hours. We actually got our email within 20 minutes and it will be a message directing you to Scotiabank’s secure email service.

After registering, you will then be given the instructions on how to do the initial wire/transfer of up to $50,000 from the Philippines to your Scotiabank account in Canada.

Pretty simple right? It really is! But just take note of a few things.

1. A BPI account is not required to open a Scotiabank StartRight account and transfer money. However, since these two banks are partners, there will be inherent benefits like less fees for future transfers.
2. You are only allowed ONE transaction with your StartRight account before landing in Canada, so better make sure that you make that one transaction count.
3. Your StartRight account will technically be open, but it will be inactive until you physically go to a Scotiabank branch in Canada and prove your identity to them.
4. You will be able to use the transfer receipt that will be issued to you as your proof of funds when you first land in Canada.

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We hope that the last two posts helped give you a clearer picture on how to initially transfer your money from the Philippines to Canada. As always, if there’s anything you want to ask, feel free to leave a comment below and we’ll get back to you as soon as I can! We’ve also set up a Twitter account, so we can also talk there. We’re also on Instagram! We post lighter content there if you wanted to check in out.