The hardest part about opening a bank account is getting in the door, at least in TBC bank. To prevent people rushing in with guns and staging a hold up, you are handicapped by having to enter what looks like a small revolving door allowing one (or perhaps two friendly people) to enter. The outside door has to close before the inside one will open. Not sure it checks your guns while you are in there, but you would certainly be hard pushed to make a quick getaway.
That done, all you have to do to open an account is to present your passport. You don't need an address, (I think I might have given Betsy's Hotel) and you don't need a utility bill to prove you live there either. No one asks you to pay your salary in, and you can immediately deposit money and operate internet banking. Two days later you get a Visa Elektron card. Also none of that nonsense about having completely separate account numbers for different currencies. They are happy to take in any money without opening a separate account every time.
In December my firm managed to send the first transfer with half the account number missing, but instead of sitting on the money for a week or so, the bank rang me on my mobile and sorted it out immediately, so that money was transferred in less than 48 hours. That was quite impressive.
By early February we had decided that it would be better if I opened another account for my personal cash so off we went to do this. Again no fuss! What bank in the UK would let you open another bank account without asking all sorts of nosy questions about where the money was coming from and how they needed to charge you all sorts of bank charges for what must be a business account. Of course when you get your statement from your Georgian bank, you see all your charges, which are not small especially if you use another bank's ATM, but they never pretended that they were not going to charge.
This time (after 2 months) I was obviously more creditworthy as I was offered a normal VISA card, which had several designs I could choose from. They didn't have any of the swish black and gold ones I liked, so I reluctantly accepted the pink girly card labelled Cosmopolitan, which apparently offered all sorts of discounts at girly designer shops in Tbilisi. I can't say I have seen many, but then I would normally be hard-pushed, since I am not normally looking for them.
I can confirm this works, as when I had been to Goodwill, the big (but not overstocked) supermarket, I found I got an sms telling me I had got a discount.
You can also arrange to pay your (Georgian) income tax, (currently just risen to a flat 25%) by designating the incoming payments as salary and then having the bank pay it direct to the tax office.
I also signed* up for the direct debit scheme for the gas and electricity payments being a trusting sort of soul and assuming it would work like in the UK. More fool me, as you can see from the story of getting the bill here. Far from warning you on your bill about a direct payment coming due on a date in two weeks, within a couple of days I got an sms saying the gas bill had already been paid. It did say "thank you" but I wasn't pleased. So we made a trip to the bank later in the week by which time I had got the gas bill. Although it might save a lot of time and be quite accurate, I would prefer if KazTransGaz paid more attention to delivering the bill than to grabbing the money from my account. The guy in the bank looked a bit miffed, so I had to explain it wasn't the bank's fault.
Apart from that mishap, everything else has gone fine, and while you can't do very much on the internet yet, you can work in English (Abanka in Slovenia, please note you are years behind the times) you can find out where your money has gone.
*I couldn't read any of the documents I signed up with, as there were no English versions offered. But I have found you can either accept bank conditions or not have a bank account, so it doesn't make much difference in practice.
