Opening an Account: What the Law Says a Foreigner May Show
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Honduras on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
81 exceptions recorded across 33 countries · none match Honduras to El Salvador · Opening a bank account
El Salvador is one of the few countries in this set where the documents a foreigner may present to open an account are written into a statute rather than left to each bank's compliance desk. The Ley para Facilitar la Inclusión Financiera created a simplified savings account and an electronic money record, and for both it says the same thing: the Salvadoran identity document, or, for foreigners, a passport or a temporary or permanent resident card. A passport is enough, which means the simplified account does not require residence. The price of that is a ceiling - accumulated transactions in a month may not exceed four monthly urban minimum wages for commerce and services, and no single transaction may exceed one - and three further limits: one such account per person per institution, electronic use only, and a balance untouched for five years passing to the State. Neither account needs a Salvadoran tax number. What none of this settles is the ordinary current account, whose conditions each bank sets, and we read no instrument governing those.
At a glance
- Documents a foreigner may show
- Passport, or temporary or permanent resident card
- Residence required for the simplified account
- No
- Tax number required
- No
- Monthly transaction ceiling
- 4 monthly urban minimum wages (commerce and services)
- That ceiling in dollars
- USD 1,635.20 a monthCALC (calculated by us, not published)as of 2025-06-01
Our arithmetic from the $408.80 commerce-and-services monthly wage in force from 1 June 2025. The statute states the multiple only, and requires the Banco Central to revisit the limits every two years.
- Ceiling per transaction
- 1 monthly urban minimum wage
- Accounts per institution
- 1
- Dormancy
- 5 years, then the balance passes to the State
- Ordinary current accounts
- No instrument read
The conditions for a full bank account are set by each bank under its own anti-money-laundering programme. We found and read no statute or Banco Central norm fixing them for foreigners.
Figures marked CALC are our arithmetic, not a figure in any instrument. Where the law states a threshold as a multiple of something else, the amount shown is that multiple applied - and it moves when the underlying figure does.
Requirements
- For the simplified savings account: the original Documento Único de Identidad, or for foreigners a passport or a temporary or permanent resident card
- A client profile form with name, document number, address, economic activity, source of monthly income, and beneficiaries' names and addresses
- Only one holder per account, and only a natural person
- Only one such account per person at each financial institution
- Use through electronic means only
- No Salvadoran tax identification number
- For an electronic money record: the same documents, and no other record with the same provider
Country-level policy
El Salvador adopted the United States dollar as legal tender by a decree of November 2000, and the statutes written since then state money in dollars with no national unit behind it: a thousand dollars of duty-free goods, fifteen thousand dollars CIF of household effects, a seven-hundred-dollar naturalisation fee, a six-thousand-six-hundred-dollar exempt band. Nothing on this country's pages needs converting, and a figure that looks converted has been mishandled. Two residues are worth knowing about. The Social Security Law of 1953 still fixes the State's annual contribution in colones, a currency that no longer circulates, because nobody has amended that sentence. And since 2021 bitcoin has also been legal tender - amended in January 2025 so that acceptance is voluntary and only private persons may accept it, with the obligation to accept, the state conversion mechanism and payment of taxes in bitcoin all repealed.
El Salvador writes its qualifying incomes as multiples of the monthly minimum wage for the commerce and services sector, not as sums. Three wages for a pensioner, four for a rentista, six for a rentista with two or more people in tow, and four again as the monthly ceiling on a simplified bank account. The sector named is the highest-paid of the published rates, which matters: the same multiple of the agricultural rate would be a third lower. Nothing has to be amended when the Ministry of Labour reissues the wage decree, so every dollar figure on these pages is arithmetic rather than law, and it moves on a date no migration instrument announces. The rate in force since 1 June 2025 is $408.80 a month. The fees are the opposite case: the migration law's own schedule states them in dollars and they change only when the law does.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Honduras
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«Deberán presentar el original del documento único de identidad y en el caso de extranjeros, pasaporte o carnet de extranjero residente temporal o definitivo.»Our translation - not official
They must present the original of the Single Identity Document and, in the case of foreigners, a passport or a temporary or permanent foreign resident card.
The disjunction is what matters: 'pasaporte o carnet', so a non-resident with a passport is inside the rule.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
El Salvador's financial supervisor, whose library republishes the financial statutes including the law on simplified accounts.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency: its editions carry **no reform legend at all**, unlike the judicial repository's, so a text published here cannot be shown to include later amendments - and the article our banking record rests on is reported to have been reformed since. It also must not be cited for what an ordinary current account requires: the statute it publishes covers only the simplified savings account and the electronic-money record, and what a bank asks for beyond that is set by each bank's own programme.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«El monto máximo de transacciones acumuladas en un mes, no deberá superar los cuatro salarios mínimos urbanos mensuales del sector comercio y servicios, y el límite máximo por transacción no podrá ser superior al equivalente a un salario mínimo urbano mensual del sector comercio y servicios.»Our translation - not official
The maximum amount of transactions accumulated in a month may not exceed four monthly urban minimum wages for the commerce and services sector, and the maximum limit per transaction may not exceed the equivalent of one monthly urban minimum wage for the commerce and services sector.
The same unit the migration law uses for the rentista threshold, which is why the two move together whenever the wage decree is reissued.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
El Salvador's financial supervisor, whose library republishes the financial statutes including the law on simplified accounts.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency: its editions carry **no reform legend at all**, unlike the judicial repository's, so a text published here cannot be shown to include later amendments - and the article our banking record rests on is reported to have been reformed since. It also must not be cited for what an ordinary current account requires: the statute it publishes covers only the simplified savings account and the electronic-money record, and what a bank asks for beyond that is set by each bank's own programme.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«Los saldos de depósitos en estas cuentas que hayan permanecido inactivas por cinco años, prescribirán a favor del Estado.»Our translation - not official
Balances of deposits in these accounts that have remained inactive for five years shall pass by prescription to the State.
An account opened on a passport and then forgotten is not merely dormant. The same paragraph obliges the banks to take steps to prevent it, but the consequence is in the statute.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
El Salvador's financial supervisor, whose library republishes the financial statutes including the law on simplified accounts.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency: its editions carry **no reform legend at all**, unlike the judicial repository's, so a text published here cannot be shown to include later amendments - and the article our banking record rests on is reported to have been reformed since. It also must not be cited for what an ordinary current account requires: the statute it publishes covers only the simplified savings account and the electronic-money record, and what a bank asks for beyond that is set by each bank's own programme.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«Presentar en original el documento único de identidad, y en el caso de extranjeros, pasaporte o carnet de extranjero residente temporal o definitivo.»Our translation - not official
To present the original Single Identity Document and, in the case of foreigners, a passport or a temporary or permanent foreign resident card.
The same rule for an electronic money record as for the savings account, which is how the two instruments were meant to work together.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
El Salvador's financial supervisor, whose library republishes the financial statutes including the law on simplified accounts.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency: its editions carry **no reform legend at all**, unlike the judicial repository's, so a text published here cannot be shown to include later amendments - and the article our banking record rests on is reported to have been reformed since. It also must not be cited for what an ordinary current account requires: the statute it publishes covers only the simplified savings account and the electronic-money record, and what a bank asks for beyond that is set by each bank's own programme.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«las entidades indicadas en el presente artículo no estarán obligadas a exigir a sus clientes el número de identificación tributaria requerido en el artículo 148 del Código Tributario.»Our translation - not official
the entities referred to in this article shall not be obliged to require from their clients the tax identification number required by article 148 of the Tax Code.
The tax number is the usual obstacle for a newly arrived foreigner, and the statute removes it for this class of account only.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
El Salvador's financial supervisor, whose library republishes the financial statutes including the law on simplified accounts.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency: its editions carry **no reform legend at all**, unlike the judicial repository's, so a text published here cannot be shown to include later amendments - and the article our banking record rests on is reported to have been reformed since. It also must not be cited for what an ordinary current account requires: the statute it publishes covers only the simplified savings account and the electronic-money record, and what a bank asks for beyond that is set by each bank's own programme.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The edition read here is the Superintendencia del Sistema Financiero's own library copy. Unlike the consolidated texts on the judicial repository it carries no reform legend, so it cannot be relied on to show amendments made since 2015 - and article 20 is reported to have been amended in 2022. We state what this edition says and flag that it may not be the current text.
This record is about the simplified account and the electronic money record, because those are the only two whose documentary requirements are in a statute. For an ordinary current account the requirements are each bank's, set under its own money-laundering programme, and we read no bank's conditions and no supervisory norm fixing them.
The dollar ceiling is ours, from the multiple in the statute and the wage in the Ministry of Labour's decree. The statute itself also requires the Banco Central to adjust the limits every two years in the light of market development and the consumer price index, so the multiple is a floor on how often this figure can move.
- administersLey para facilitar la Inclusión Financiera
Superintendencia del Sistema Financiero (El Salvador)
About this source
El Salvador's financial supervisor, whose library republishes the financial statutes including the law on simplified accounts.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency: its editions carry **no reform legend at all**, unlike the judicial repository's, so a text published here cannot be shown to include later amendments - and the article our banking record rests on is reported to have been reformed since. It also must not be cited for what an ordinary current account requires: the statute it publishes covers only the simplified savings account and the electronic-money record, and what a bank asks for beyond that is set by each bank's own programme.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
- consolidatesTarifas de Salarios Mínimos para la República de El Salvador, in force from 1 June 2025
Centro de Documentacion Judicial, Corte Suprema de Justicia (El Salvador)
About this source
The judiciary's legislative repository, and the only place that publishes Salvadoran statutes as consolidated texts with a numbered reform legend naming every amending decree by number, date, Diario Oficial issue and volume. Article-level markers tie each amended paragraph to the decree that changed it, which is what makes an amended article citable here at all.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Its /R/ branch holds **amending acts, not amended laws**, and they read convincingly like the law they reform - a search for the financial inclusion law returns a decree that merely reforms it. Check the opening for Refórmase before quoting anything from that branch. File paths are opaque content hashes with no title and are filed under the decade and month of the **original** act, so a 2026 reform lives under a 2019 path and a document has to be identified from its own text. It also carries no statement of currency: the reform legend is the only evidence of how recently a text was rebuilt.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source