Opening a bank account in the US from the UK

We're filing the I-130 form this week for DH.  I'm looking ahead at the visa application (mainly the sponsor bit, I864) and what I can do to show that I plan to move to the US.  I want to open a bank account with a US bank which I move money into over the next 6 months or so before we get to that point.

I've contacted Chase and they said I can open an international bank account as long as I have the embassy do an authenticated copy of my passport.  Am I correct in thinking that this goes under the notary services of the embassy?  It's the only thing on the website I could find which was even close.

Does anyone know what I'm supposed to do here?

Hi Chloe, this is correct, for an authentication you would need to go to the notary section of the embassy or a lawyer (I think this is how they do in the UK). When we were moving to the UK we opened an UK account from the US with HSBC, maybe you can do the same, don't remember them asking us for an authenticated copy of passports or anything.

Hope it helps.

Unfortunately, I can't help you with how to obtain that from the embassy, but I did recently open an international (Canadian and UK) account with HSBC. A lot of documents were required, but not an authenticated copy of a passport. They have the same requirements to open an account in the US as they do in Canada, so with HSBC, you wouldn't have to have that. It did take about 2 hours to set everything up in the branch, but it was really easy to do, and they seem to be the best bank for people who need international accounts.

If you want to keep an account in the UK and be able to easily and cheaply move money back and forth, I'd recommend HSBC. I linked my accounts and can look at them both online at the same time and make instant transfers between the accounts. I'm not sure if there are HSBC branches where you're moving, but if there are, you should look into it, because they also transfer your UK credit to your US account, which really helps.