According to nature, foreign exchange accounts can be divided into foreign exchange settlement accounts, capital account accounts and foreign exchange savings accounts. Foreign exchange accounts refer to accounts opened by domestic institutions, institutions in China and individuals in freely convertible currencies at banks and non bank financial institutions approved to operate foreign exchange deposit business in accordance with relevant account management regulations.
Foreign exchange accounts are opened in banks, but the approval authority for opening foreign exchange accounts is the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. Therefore, all domestic institutions that want to open foreign exchange accounts must first go through the approval procedures at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, and open accounts at the bank with the approval document for opening foreign exchange accounts under current account or capital account issued by the Administration of Foreign Exchange.
Extended data
It should be pointed out here that if there is only occasional small amount of current account foreign exchange income, foreign exchange accounts cannot be opened. Such income can only be settled and sold to banks. The SAFE will check and ratify a maximum limit for the settlement account according to the current account foreign exchange income of different units. The foreign exchange retained in the account cannot exceed this limit, and the excess part must also be settled. The limitation on the capital account is that the accumulated income of the account cannot exceed the total amount of foreign investment or foreign borrowing.