Long Stay Residence Visa

Hi George and Kris!

Welcome to Expat.com.

Hope that you'll soon find a solution to this issue.

Harmonie.

Dear George and Kris,

I have good experience with BPI and most of my friends from abroad have accounts there. Do you really need to have the account while you are still in California? Because once you are here you don't need any specifis papers etc to create a portugese account.
But if you would need it before you arrive to Portugal for me it takes nothing to walk in one of the banks and ask how it works!

Best regards,
Zsofia

Thank you so much for offering to help, that is very kind of you! We do need to have the account
established there, in order to get our long stay visas while we are here. If you wouldn't mind, could you please ask your bank what we would have to do to set up an account from here. Maybe they can email the forms?
Thanks again,
George and Kristy

The ability to create a Portuguese bank account appears to be the limiting factor for starting D7 Visa... My travel April 15th was cancelled due to Covid and they didn't have enough customers (AzoresGetaways).   So, if there is anyway to get a Portuguese bank account, lets document it. I have already tried to get a Santander account outside of PT, and discovered that it won't help because PT is different company and still needs to start from scratch.
How to get PT bank account from outside of PT?