Cooperativas

Hello Pman,
hard questions when you have had a long night but anyways...

-  individuals can joint Coops.  There are different types of Coops eg: exclusive for health professionals and their families COOMECIPAR, or for agro people so you have to own land or be a psicologist, doctor or nurse in that case.  There are Coops for graduate professionals in general too COOP UNIVERSITARIA... So apart from that you can joint any Coop proving that they have no especial requirement.  Some of the biggest ones like Medalla Milagrosa, San Cristobal, etc do not require anything especial.

-  the Coop is not for profit so if there is a "exceeding profit" it is shared among members according to how much each of them contribuited to the profit eg: those who rarely use the Coop receive almost nothing but those who have loans and pay interest on them get a bigger share.  This is distribuited every year approximately in April.  Then, there is a solidarity service that you pay monthly and every single member so that when you have a child or are disable, injured or whatever you can claim money from this fund.  It is like a small insurance scheme.  Personally, I feel like year ago Coops had competitive interest rates and less hassle than Banks.  Now, Coop San Cristobal (I am a former member) charges 27% interest rate for loans when Banks would charge 10 - 14%.  Coomecipar and Coop Universitaria charge 14% too.  So I just walked out of Coop San Cristobal because I will not use any service from them and joined Coomecipar where they offer competitive rates plus medical insurance at low cost (Coop for health people).  I was allowed as son of a member.

-  Services, less hassle... However, the Central Bank does not control Coops or provide guarantee for deposits there yet.  The institution that oversee Coops is call INCOOP and they have plans for a system to guarantee deposits in case one go bust (not yet implemented).

greets,

Jose

Is there a difference with a cuenta de ahorro from a normal bank  and one from a cooperativa? You can get a debit card with your cuenta there, but can you also tranfer money to other accounts with other (foreign) banks?

In Coops they dont issue checkbooks... but you talk about saving accounts anyway.

There are no difference between banks or Coops saving accounts.  You would get a debit card with both of them and probably the interest rates on your deposits would be better in a Coop.

you cannot transfer money to banks from your Coop account.  The Coop might issue a check for a fee when you want to withdraw a lot of money... otherwise debit card or counter withdrawall.

So if you want to move a large amount of money, let's say you want to transfer money from/to your foreign bank account or you want to transfer money to buy a property for example you always need a cuenta corriente?

I have been looking on the websites of some of the Paraguayan Banks and almost allof themask for some sort of proof of income, the thing is that I work online for myself and can't really provide the type of document that they are asking for. Maybe the only way is to start a S.A. (??)