The Bank of Israel is reforming bank fees. Will that cut what I pay on my Israeli account from abroad?

Non-residents tend to look at an Israeli bank statement and see two different problems mixed together. One is the drip of small current-account charges, a few shekels for a transfer instruction, a few more for a paper notice. The other is the ninety or hundred and fifty shekels that vanishes every time money actually crosses a border, plus a conversion rate that is not the one on your screen. The Bank of Israel's reform deals with the first problem properly and leaves the second almost entirely alone.

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Detailed Answer

The Supervisor of Banks is replacing a fee schedule that had been in place for more than a decade with a single bundled service that banks must offer, called payment account management. It covers the ordinary running of a current account: crediting and debiting the account, depositing and withdrawing cash, transferring to another account, and cheque services. The price is capped. The standard rate is up to NIS 10 a month for 100 transactions, an account with between zero and two transactions a month pays NIS 5, and each transaction beyond the hundred costs no more than NIS 1. A debit card is capped separately at NIS 7 a month. Customers are enrolled automatically rather than having to ask, which matters for an account holder abroad who would never see the offer. The timetable runs in stages: the debit card cap applies from October 2026, and the full payment account management framework becomes mandatory by July 2027, with banks permitted to bring it in earlier. Alongside this the Supervisor has been extending the definition of who counts as a service recipient for parts of the retail framework to include individuals who are not Israeli residents, subject to their country of residence not falling in a restricted category, which is the direction of travel rather than a completed reform.

What this does not touch is the part of an Israeli banking relationship that costs a non-resident real money. Outgoing foreign currency transfers, incoming SWIFT credits, the handling fee on a foreign currency deposit, the annual charge some banks levy specifically on a non-resident account, and above all the spread between the bank's conversion rate and the representative rate, all sit outside the capped basket and remain a matter of negotiation with the branch. So does the compliance overhead: the periodic source-of-funds review that a foreign-address account attracts, and the cost of the certified translations and apostilles the bank asks for, which no directive caps. Two practical points follow. If your Israeli account is close to dormant and you are keeping it open only to receive rent or a pension, the reform genuinely helps, because the NIS 5 low-activity tier is designed for exactly that account. If your account is a conduit for transfers abroad, the reform will barely register, and the more productive conversation is a written fee arrangement with the branch covering the transfer commission and the conversion margin. Where the branch simply refuses to engage, the escalation route runs through the bank's own ombudsman and then the Bank of Israel, which is set out in our answer on how to complain about an Israeli bank from abroad.

In Practice: The Supervisor of Banks at the Bank of Israel is introducing a mandatory bundled payment account management service capped at NIS 10 per month for 100 transactions, NIS 5 for an account with up to two monthly transactions, and NIS 1 per transaction above 100, with a NIS 7 monthly ceiling on a debit card. Enrolment is automatic. The debit card cap takes effect in October 2026 and the full basket becomes mandatory by July 2027. Foreign currency transfer commissions and the conversion spread are outside the cap, and a bank's refusal to deal fairly on account terms is challengeable under Section 2 of the Banking (Service to Customer) Law 5741-1981.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• Your bank is charging a fee that has no counterpart in the published schedule. An unlisted or misdescribed charge on a non-resident account is not merely a service complaint; recovering it usually means a civil claim, because the Supervisor of Banks can direct a bank to correct a practice but does not award you money back.
• The branch has conditioned continued service on terms you cannot meet from abroad. Attaching unreasonable conditions to an account is treated as a refusal under Section 2(b) of the Banking (Service to Customer) Law, and that is a different and stronger argument than complaining about the price.
• You are being charged non-resident pricing although your status has changed. Banks frequently fail to reclassify an account after aliyah or after a return abroad, and years of the wrong tariff plus the wrong tax withholding usually surface only when someone reads the statements properly.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

We review Israeli bank charges on non-resident accounts against the published tariff and the new capped basket, negotiate written fee arrangements on transfers and conversion, and pursue recovery where the overcharging is historic.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.