Opening a Saudi bank account as an expat: what the rules allow at each stage of your status

Here is what a search of the three largest Saudi retail banks produced. Al Rajhi lists nine personal account types and not one figure: no minimum balance, no salary threshold, no fee, no profit rate. Riyad Bank publishes eligibility but no pricing. Saudi National Bank’s account pages were closed to us entirely.

We could have filled the gap from comparison sites. We are not going to, for the reason set out in our exchange house comparison: a number nobody will stand behind is not information.

What follows instead comes from the Saudi Central Bank’s own rulebook, which publishes account opening rules for natural persons in English. It answers a better question than “which bank is cheapest”, namely: given your current immigration status, what are you actually allowed to open?

If you hold an iqama

This is the straightforward case. Under SAMA’s rules for expatriates holding a residence permit, the bank requires a copy of the iqama, an address in Saudi Arabia, and an address in your home country. Standard accounts with full banking services follow.

Riyad Bank, which is the one of the three that publishes its eligibility criteria, describes the same picture from the bank’s side: a valid national identity number or iqama, aged 18 or over on the Gregorian calendar, registered in the Absher system for verification through the national single sign-on, and registered in the National Address. Online opening depends on Absher and a registered national address; without both, it is a branch visit.

Those two requirements catch people out more often than the documents do. Absher registration and National Address registration are separate administrative steps from getting the iqama itself, and neither is something a bank can do for you.

If you are on a 90-day work visa and the iqama has not arrived

This is the case worth knowing about in advance, because it is the one where the account you open is not the account you think you are opening.

SAMA permits a bank to open an account for an expatriate who does not yet hold an iqama because the ninety-day period has not elapsed, on the employer’s official written request stating that, with the original passport carrying the work visa and an account opening agreement signed by the expatriate.

What you get is restricted:

• An ATM card and transfer transactions only. No chequebook. No credit card.
• Transfers capped at SAR 10,000.
• The account is frozen if the iqama is not produced within three months.
• It is classified as a high-risk account.

The SAR 10,000 transfer ceiling is the practical one. If you have arrived with a plan to send a large first remittance home — settling a deposit, covering a family cost, moving savings ahead of a move — that plan does not survive contact with this rule, and the constraint lifts when the iqama does, not before.

If you are a dependant

An account is permitted where the iqama shows dependant status and states that the holder is not authorised to work. These are classified as high-risk accounts, which in practice means more documentation and closer review rather than refusal.

The rules carve out specific cases: children of Saudi mothers and non-Saudi fathers may hold salary accounts with the appropriate official documentation; employees of educational institutions are permitted with an employment letter, a valid Ajeer notice and compliance approval; and where the holder is a minor under 15, the account is operated by the sponsoring expatriate.

If you are on a visit visa

Permitted, but narrow. A valid passport with a copy of the visit visa is required, together with a letter from the inviting entity explaining the mission and why an account is necessary. The account’s life matches the visa period, and a single-entry visa closes the account on expiry. Services are limited to an ATM card that operates only on the Saudi Payment Network, MADA. Compliance officer supervision applies.

Holders of Hajj visas are not permitted to open bank accounts.

Standing orders have a time limit

A detail that catches people who set something up once and forget it. Expatriates may establish standing orders for one year only, through electronic banking services, for domestic or international transfers, limited to monthly frequency. This was amended by circular 42078428 dated 19 June 2021.

If you are running a monthly transfer home on a standing instruction, it has an expiry date, and the expiry is a feature of the rules rather than a glitch at your bank.

On fees, and why there are no numbers here

We are not going to give you a table of Saudi banking charges, and it is worth explaining why rather than leaving it as an omission.

SAMA’s Banking Tariff has been replaced. The Financial Institutions Services Fee Guide came into force on 20 February 2026, cutting maximum fees across several retail services including administrative charges on certain financing products, MADA card reissuance, international purchases and cash withdrawals, and transfers from bank accounts and electronic wallets. It also imposes a strict prohibition on institutions exceeding the maximum fees.

The tariff still readable in the public rulebook is the older circular, dated 2017, and it is superseded. The new guide’s figures were not reachable from our side, and no report we found published the actual amounts rather than the categories.

So the honest position is: the framework is clear, the direction is downward, the caps are binding, and the current numbers live in the guide on SAMA’s site. Quoting the 2017 figures would give you a table that looks authoritative and is out of date, which is worse than no table.

What we can tell you about the older framework, and what has not changed in principle, is that certain services were required to be free of charge — opening an account, cash withdrawal at the branch using a withdrawal form, issuance of an ATM card, ATM cash withdrawal and deposit, and transfers to another account within the same bank. If you are being charged for any of those, that is a conversation to have with the bank.

How this compares with the rest of the Gulf

Something becomes visible once you look at four Gulf banking markets side by side: how much a bank tells you before you sign tracks what its regulator obliges it to disclose.

In the UAE, the Central Bank’s Consumer Protection Standards require a Key Facts Statement as the first document in the sales process, and UAE banks accordingly publish tier tables, salary thresholds, fall-below fees and dated rates. In Kuwait, as we found in our Kuwaiti comparison, one bank of three publishes a salary threshold. In Saudi Arabia, the banks publish essentially no retail pricing at all, while the regulator publishes the most detailed account-opening rules of any Gulf state.

That is not a criticism of Saudi banks, which are complying with the framework they operate in. It is a reason to change where you look. In this market the regulator’s rulebook is the reference document and the bank’s website is the marketing.

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If you are arriving in Saudi Arabia, the two things worth knowing before you land are the SAR 10,000 transfer cap during the pre-iqama window and the three-month freeze if the iqama does not arrive. Both are knowable in advance and both are the kind of constraint that ruins a plan made on the assumption that a bank account is a bank account.

Everything else — which bank, which package, what it costs — is a question you can only really answer at a branch, because that is the only place the answers are published. Ask for the fee schedule in writing, and check it against the guide that took effect in February 2026.

Common questions

Next steps

1. Establish which status category you fall into before you arrive: iqama holder, pre-iqama work visa, dependant or visitor. It determines what you can open, not the bank you choose.
2. If you are arriving on a work visa, plan around the SAR 10,000 transfer cap and do not schedule a large first remittance until the iqama is issued.
3. Register in Absher and the National Address as early as you can, since both gate the ability to open an account online.
4. Ask any bank for its current schedule of fees in writing and check it against the fee guide in force since 20 February 2026 rather than any figure published earlier.
5. If you are paying for account opening, ATM card issuance, ATM withdrawals or internal transfers, ask the bank which item in the current guide authorises the charge.

Further reading on ExpatWealthPlus

• What Kuwait's banks publish, and what they do not
• Qatar's three main banks on salary and fees
• Investment platforms in Saudi Arabia
• End of service compared: UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar
• Wage protection across the Gulf

Official sources

Every figure in this article is checked against the primary source. These are the places to verify the current position for yourself, since rates, rules and product terms change.

• SAMA Rulebook — Rules for Opening Bank Accounts →The account opening rules for natural persons, including the expatriate and visitor categories
• SAMA Rulebook — Expatriates and Visitors in Saudi Arabia →Rule 200.1.3: iqama holders, the ninety-day work visa case, dependants, visit visas and standing orders
• SAMA Rulebook — the Banking Tariff →The 2017 circular, now superseded by the Financial Institutions Services Fee Guide
• Riyad Bank — current account eligibility →The one of the three largest banks that publishes its eligibility criteria
• SAMA issues the Financial Institutions Services Fee Guide →Announced 23 December 2025; reduces maximum fees on several retail services