These instructions are specific to Shinsei but should work with any Japanese account. Replace U000000 with your IB account number.
When you notify interactive brokers (IB) that you would like to deposit Japanese Yen, the only option is to do a wire transfer. As of February 2019, IB gives you the following instructions:
Visit your bank and request the Wire transfer to your IB account.
You must provide the following information to your bank to initiate the Wire transfer.
ROUTING DETAILS
Bank Name Citibank Japan Ltd.
Bank Address Shin-Marunouchi Building, 5-1, Marunouchi 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-6520, Japan
SWIFT BIC Code CITIJPJT
Bank Account Name Interactive Brokers LLC.
Bank Account Address Two Pickwick Plaza, Greenwich, CT 06830 USA
Bank Account Number 0159170403
For further benefit to U000000 / Your Account Name
Since wire transfers are generally not free and/or not easy to initiate from your online banking, I have discovered that you can do a domestic transfer to IB instead. Following is the information on how to do it from shinsei online banking.
Remitter's Information* (Optional): U000000
Before remitter's name: YES
Note, on the confirmation page, the Remitter information for me was "U000000MyNameInHalfSizeKatakana". I could not put in the " / " between my IB account number and my IB Account Name (or even a space). In addition, MyNameInHalfSizeKatakana does not match my IB Account Name, however the transfer was still accepted and went into my IB account.
Create a New transfer and select the Beneficiary Bank. Citibank is not one of the common ones, so you will need to type it. You can use their onscreen keyboard to type the first two characters "ｼﾃ" (which is "shi" and "te") and when you search there will only be one option, "シティバンク、エヌ・エイ".
For the branch name, in the search box, enter "ﾄ" ("to") and then select the only result, "東京支店". Note that this does not match the information IB provides, nor does it match the branch number (015) at the start of the bank account number, however it worked for me.
Keep the Beneficiary Account Type as フ=普通:Savings Account. The 7 digit Beneficiary Account Number is 9170403 (i.e. the last 7 digits of IB bank account number). For the Beneficiary name I entered "ｲﾝﾀﾗｸﾃｲﾌﾞﾌﾞﾛ-ｶ-ｽﾞｴﾙｴﾙｼ-".
When I did a transfer before the 14:30 cut off, IB sent me an email to say they had received the money before 16:00 the same day. Of course all this is YMMV - I recommend testing with a small amount of money first!
When you notify interactive brokers (IB) that you would like to deposit Japanese Yen, the only option is to do a wire transfer. As of February 2019, IB gives you the following instructions:
Visit your bank and request the Wire transfer to your IB account.
You must provide the following information to your bank to initiate the Wire transfer.
ROUTING DETAILS
Bank Name Citibank Japan Ltd.
Bank Address Shin-Marunouchi Building, 5-1, Marunouchi 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-6520, Japan
SWIFT BIC Code CITIJPJT
Bank Account Name Interactive Brokers LLC.
Bank Account Address Two Pickwick Plaza, Greenwich, CT 06830 USA
Bank Account Number 0159170403
For further benefit to U000000 / Your Account Name
Since wire transfers are generally not free and/or not easy to initiate from your online banking, I have discovered that you can do a domestic transfer to IB instead. Following is the information on how to do it from shinsei online banking.
Remitter's Information* (Optional): U000000
Before remitter's name: YES
Note, on the confirmation page, the Remitter information for me was "U000000MyNameInHalfSizeKatakana". I could not put in the " / " between my IB account number and my IB Account Name (or even a space). In addition, MyNameInHalfSizeKatakana does not match my IB Account Name, however the transfer was still accepted and went into my IB account.
Create a New transfer and select the Beneficiary Bank. Citibank is not one of the common ones, so you will need to type it. You can use their onscreen keyboard to type the first two characters "ｼﾃ" (which is "shi" and "te") and when you search there will only be one option, "シティバンク、エヌ・エイ".
For the branch name, in the search box, enter "ﾄ" ("to") and then select the only result, "東京支店". Note that this does not match the information IB provides, nor does it match the branch number (015) at the start of the bank account number, however it worked for me.
Keep the Beneficiary Account Type as フ=普通:Savings Account. The 7 digit Beneficiary Account Number is 9170403 (i.e. the last 7 digits of IB bank account number). For the Beneficiary name I entered "ｲﾝﾀﾗｸﾃｲﾌﾞﾌﾞﾛ-ｶ-ｽﾞｴﾙｴﾙｼ-".
When I did a transfer before the 14:30 cut off, IB sent me an email to say they had received the money before 16:00 the same day. Of course all this is YMMV - I recommend testing with a small amount of money first!
Thank you for your informative post, I followed the above steps but when I entered the account number (i.e. 9170403) I received error:
"The designated account does not exist. Please confirm the bank transfer account information."
Do you have any advice?