Can an International student of F1 VISA accept money in her US bank account on behalf of someone else?
There might be a problem. Some reporting paperwork will have to be done for the IRS, obviously, but technically it will be business income zeroed out by business expense. Withholding requirements will shift to your friend, which is a mess. Talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA) about these. But the immigration may consider this arrangement as employment, which is in violation of the visa conditions. You need to talk to an immigration attorney.
Many European countires allow you to an account for non-residents. You have to appear in the bank personally to open it, some of them even to get your own tax number for non-residents from the local government.  I'm not sure if you get a Visa (Electron) chip card immediatelly or you have to wait for like 3 months before being issued one. I've heard that getting a tax number for non-residents and opening a bank account is easily done in one day in Brezice, Republic of Slovenia. They seem to have agile local bureaucracy and banks, since many pople from neighbouring (non-EU) countries (used to) come there to open an EU bank account. Funds can be transfered via Internet banking - US banks have that, do they? SWIFT and IBAN codes are used for international money transfer. But it takes some time (days!) for it to arrive to destination. Tansfers below $20000 per month or per transaction are considered normal, but for amouts above that the destination bank might ask you to explain the purpose, to prove it is not illegal. Some of them accept the explanaiton in writing (they forward it to the regulator that tracks such large transfers), some of them ask you to appear there in person for an interview and to sign a statement. Can't believe US banks are still issuing paing magnet stripe cards like it's still 1980s. I'd expect Europe to be 10 years behind USA in technology, but this seems to be a weird reverse. I've beed using Internet banking with one-time passwd tokens and TAN lists for almost 10 years, and chip cards exclusivley for over 5y. Can't remeber the last time I've seen mag stripe card only. American Express (event the regular green one) got the chip at least 5 years ago. And it is accepted regularly in Europe. Alegedly it's more popular in Europe (although Mastercard is a definite #1, with Visa close to that) that in USA. They represent two distict payment processing mechanisms that just happen to be available on one product. Rather like having dvi and hdmi on you laptop. Your account number and sort code relates to the bank account. Your long number, expiry and ccv relate to the card. It is perfectly possible and not uncommon to have two different cards on the same account, which would have their own card numbers etc. The BACS, CHAPS, DirectDebit and FasterPayments systems use the account numbers.  These transactions are practically irreversible and work through the interbank transfer system and should be considered 'direct money transfers' - electronic cash. The long digits are used by Mastercard, Visa, AmEx etc and go through their own payment systems.  These payments are 'indirect' and may or may not be reversible as the private payment network (visa etc) has some accountability. They work like electronic cheques. This is why debit card transactions can cause you to go overdrawn - you are writing a promise to pay from an account.  It is up to the bank to block the card if you have no money, vs a CHAPS payment that checks the money is there before moving it. It is easier (but still hard) to recover money lost through Visa fraud than BACS. Credit cards have only the long number etc. While savings accounts (non-checking accounts) have only account numbers. Depending on where you are different laws will likely cover debit card vs money transfer payments.  In the UK Direct debit guarantee is the most common protection on the BACS system, while standing orders and faster payments give you little legal power.  Debit cards will give you some protection because the payment system stands between you and the bank account, so if you didn't make the transaction you should be able to reclaim the money ('card not present fraud').  If you did make the transaction but the vendor failed to supply or goods were faulty then a Chargeback system exists where you may also be able to reclaim.  A bank transfer you make is irrecoverable and refund can only be claimed through court for faulty goods. If the check is made out to him, he will have to endorse it. Which means that at some point he will have to physically have the check in his hands. At which point, he could probably just deposit it himself. If there's some problem getting the check to him for him to sign it, you could call the bank and ask if they'll accept it for deposit to his account without a signature. I understand some banks will do this. I would be very surprised if they would let you deposit a check made out to your son to your account. They'd have no way of knowing if your son was agreeable to this or if you were stealing his money. Traditionally, the person the check was made out to could endorse it, give the check to someone else, and then the second person could endorse it and deposit it to their (the second person's) account. That is, the endorsement would have your son's signature, and below that, your signature. But I understand some banks won't accept this any more, so you'd be best to check before trying it. "This model would work fine under a couple of assumptions: that market interest rates never change, and that the borrower will surely make all the payments as agreed.  But neither of those assumptions are realistic. Suppose Alice loans $1,000,000 to Bob at 4% under the terms you describe.  Bob chooses to make interest-only payments of $40,000 per year. Some time later, prevailing interest rates go up to 10%.  Now Alice would really like Bob to repay the entire principal as quickly as possible, because that money could be earning her $100,000 per year instead of only $40,000, but under the contract she has no way to force Bob to do so.  And Bob has no incentive to repay any of the principal, because he can earn more interest on it than he has to pay to Alice.  So Alice is not going to be very happy about this. You might say, but at least Alice is only losing ""potential"" money; she's still turning a profit of $10,000 per year, since her bank only charges her 3% interest.  Ah, but you're assuming that Alice can get a bank loan with a rate of 3% fixed forever.  The bank doesn't want to make such a loan either, for exactly the same reasons. So in practice, any loan like this would be expected to have a variable interest rate. There's a flip side, too.  Suppose instead that market rates drop to 1%.  Now Alice would like Bob to repay the principal as slowly as possible, because she's earning 4% on that money, which is better than any other options available to her.  But Bob now has every incentive to repay it as fast as he can - or even to refinance by taking out another loan at, say, 2%, and using the proceeds to repay the entire principal to Alice.  (This risk still applies with most traditional loans, since the borrower usually always has the right to pay early, but some loans include a ""prepayment penalty"" in such cases to help compensate the lender.) Thus, when Bob has all the power to decide when to pay, Alice is sure to lose no matter which way interest rates move.  A loan with a fixed term helps insulate Alice against this risk.  She may be able to make a guess about the likelihood of interest rates going up to 10% in the next 15 or 30 years, and increase Bob's fixed rate to account for this; that's much easier than trying to account for the possibility of interest rates going up to 10% ever.  (And if she does have to try to account for this, she's probably going to have to set the interest rate extremely high; so Bob might accept a fixed term of repayment in exchange for a more reasonable rate.) Even if we suppose that Alice has done the best possible credit check and that Bob is a perfectly trustworthy fellow who would never dream of defaulting on his loan, catastrophes do happen.  Maybe Bob is robbed of all his money by an evil accountant, or has a mid-life crisis and spends it all on opera tickets.  Whatever, Bob is now bankrupt and Alice is never going to get her principal back, nor any further interest payments either.  Even if the loan is secured by some collateral, there's still a risk since the collateral might lose value.  Alice has some chance of estimating the risk of this happening in the next 15 or 30 years, and can set the interest rate to compensate for it.  But it is harder for her to estimate the risk of this happening ever, and if she tries, she'll have to set the rate so high that Bob might prefer a fixed term and a lower rate. (There's a side issue as to what happens if Bob dies with the loan still outstanding.  If it's an unsecured loan, typically Alice can try to collect the principal from Bob's estate, but if there isn't enough, too bad for Alice; she can't force Bob's heirs to continue making payments.  If it's a secured loan, Alice may be able to have Bob's heirs continue paying or else she seizes the collateral; but she still has the risk of the collateral losing value.)" Of course its possible. Under what terms and with what fees depends on your bank/country regulations, but generally speaking - loaning is the major source of income for banks, especially short-term account overdrafts (which is essentially a loan, usually at a high rate). In the US you can (now, since the new regulations kicked in) instruct the bank not to pay checks/decline debit card purchases if you don't have sufficient funds on the account. Otherwise you can instruct them to pay (at their discretion) to avoid bouncing checks, and accept NSF fees (usually pretty high). Some banks provide overdraft lines of credit (then you won't have NSF fees, and will just pay interest when tapping into that line), others provide option to automatically withdraw the missing amount from a linked account (checking or credit card). I'm going to give the checkmark to Joe, but I wanted to convey my personal experience. I bank with TD in New Jersey and was informed by the teller that I simply needed to endorse the check myself and indicate Parent of Minor. I cannot attest if other banks will accept this, but it at least works for TD and my situation in particular. "Don't listen to the retarded ""do-gooder"" idiots on this site who think she shouldn't reneg because of some honor or morality bullshit.  You have a contract between two people.  It states what will happen when you pay (keep car) and what will happen when you don't (they take car). Defaulting isn't an inherent bad thing. There are consequences for it.  If you decide to default or to not pay a loan and you're ok with the consequences then do it. The person writing the loan knows the risk they're getting into and they're ok with it. So do what is best for you.  As for your original question, sorry I don't have an answer.  I don't think anything will happen to her in the U.S. but she might have trouble later on if she decides to move back to Japan or even visit Japan.  Or her family may be held accountable for it.  No idea.  I don't know how Japanese laws works. Hopefully someone here will help but the best thing would be to talk to a lawyer in both the U.S. and in Japan." My understanding is that the only tax implication is that any interest income earned on foreign accounts is still taxable in the US if held by a US citizen. If the total across foreign accounts totals more than $10,000 you'll have to report those accounts to the Treasury via FinCEN Form 114, this doesn't create any additional tax obligations, it's just a regulatory measure to stop people from hiding money overseas and not paying tax on those earnings. If the US account is only in your husband's name, and the Australian account is only in your name, there may not be any reporting requirement to the Treasury. Money transferred between spouses is not subjected to gift-tax.