Move to Madeira
Opening a Portuguese account, first as a non-resident and then as a resident
The short answer
Opening a Portuguese bank account is governed by Lei n.º 83/2017, the anti-money-laundering law, which fixes the identification elements a bank must collect: name, date of birth, nationality, identity document details and a tax number. A non-resident is asked in practice for a passport, a Portuguese NIF, proof of address and evidence of source of funds.
Two people can walk into two Portuguese banks with the same passport and be asked for different documents, and both banks can be complying with the same law. That is not disorganisation. It is what a risk-based identification duty produces, and understanding it is the difference between finding the process arbitrary and finding it predictable.
The statute is Lei n.º 83/2017, de 18 de agosto, on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing. It sets what a bank must establish about a customer. It does not set a document checklist, which is why no two checklists match.
What the law actually requires
For a natural person, the statutory identification elements include the full name, the date of birth, the nationality, the type, number, validity and issuing authority of the identity document, and the tax identification number or its foreign equivalent.
Read that list again and note what is absent from it. There is no residence requirement in it. The duty is written around identifying a customer, not around establishing that the customer lives in Portugal.
What a non-resident is asked for in practice
In practice a non-resident is asked for a valid passport, a Portuguese NIF, proof of address, typically in the home country and dated within the previous three months, and evidence of income or source of funds.
The first two come straight from the statutory list. The last two do not. They are produced by the risk-based due-diligence obligation, which requires the bank to satisfy itself in proportion to the risk it perceives rather than to collect a fixed set of papers. That is why the source-of-funds duty falls on the bank, and what satisfies it depends on where the money came from rather than on who is asking, and why arguing that another bank did not ask for it does not help.
The tax number comes first in the sequence, which makes the NIF and the fiscal-representative rule the step before this one rather than a parallel errand.
What changes once a person is resident
The statutory list does not change. What changes is which address is being evidenced, and which documents exist to evidence it.
A Union citizen who has registered residence holds a Certificado de Registo de Cidadão da União Europeia, issued by the câmara municipal of the area of residence. A third-country national holds a residence permit card. A rental contract or a utility bill in the person's own name at a Madeira address does the work that the home-country address proof did before.
What this page does not claim is that a bank is legally obliged to see any of those specific documents. The statute names identification elements, not instruments, and the instruments are what practice has settled on.
What this guide deliberately does not cite
The detailed customer-identification and due-diligence rules sit in a Banco de Portugal aviso that supplements the statute. That instrument was not identified at source for this page, so it is not cited here by number.
Every English-language guide to Portuguese banking cites something at this point. Citing the wrong notice confidently is worse than naming the gap, and a reader who needs the detail is better served knowing exactly which document is missing from this account than by a plausible-looking reference that does not check out.
Nothing about this one is regional
Most subjects on this site turn out to be regional. This one does not. The anti-money-laundering law is national, the supervisor is national, and a branch in Funchal opens an account under the same instrument as a branch in Braga.
The regional differences show up in what the account is then used for — the rate table applied to a resident of the Autonomous Region, the utility bills that arrive from the regional operators rather than the mainland ones. Those are set out in what living here costs against the published rates. The account itself is a national product, and a page that promises Madeira-specific banking rules is selling a difference that is not there.
An account is also not the first thing a purchase needs. The order of the steps, and which of them genuinely have to be completed before the deed, is set out in how a purchase actually runs.
Questions people actually ask
Can a non-resident open a Portuguese bank account?
Yes. The identification duty in Lei n.º 83/2017 is built around identifying a customer, not around where the customer lives. A non-resident is identified with a passport, a tax number, an address proof and, depending on the bank's risk assessment, evidence of the source of funds.
Is a Portuguese NIF needed before opening an account?
The statutory element is the tax identification number or its foreign equivalent. In practice a Portuguese NIF is what is asked for, which puts the tax number ahead of the account in the sequence.
Why does the bank want proof of income or savings?
Because the due-diligence obligation is risk-based rather than list-based. The bank decides what satisfies it in proportion to the risk it perceives, so the request varies between institutions and between applicants without either bank breaching the law.
Do banks in Madeira have different rules?
No. The anti-money-laundering law and its supervisor are national. A Madeira branch applies the same instrument as a mainland branch, and any guide describing a separate regional account-opening regime has invented it.
Where this came from
- Diário da República: Lei n.º 83/2017, de 18 de agosto — prevenção e combate ao branqueamento de capitais e ao financiamento do terrorismo. diariodarepublica.pt/dr/detalhe/lei/83-2017-108021178 Read August 26, 2026.
- AIMA: Certificado de registo para nacionais da União Europeia. aima.gov.pt/pt/nacionais-ue-e-familiares/nacionais-ue Read August 26, 2026.