international banking

I think forget about Vietnam company paying your salary in your home country - very difficult for them to do. If you are employed in Vietnam, your salary will be paid into a Vietnamese bank account, and upon each net payment to you the company has to confirm to the Bank the amount of income tax the company will be paying to the authorities before the bank accepts the money. When you have received the net salary into your Vietnamese account you are legally free to transfer it out of the country.  Contrary to your expectations, you may find a local bank transfers cheaper to your home country than an international bank - I would check on-line to see (note - check the buying rate, not transfer or selling). In my experience local banks don't have the same annoying charges that 'western' banks do. I don't think having the same group bank (i.e HSBC in both countries) has any advantages. Happy to receive contradictions on any issue from anyone! (it is quite possible for different people to have different experiences even with the same bank!)

Following this. Been searching for this magical banking experience. I havent checked out HSBC but I did check out citibank and another US bank I forget which one. With my experience with citibank they said even though its the same name they are completely separate branches and dont share accounts with US branches even though they pretty much advertised it this way. All the transfer, conversion fees still applied. Maybe HSBC is different though. I doubt it though considering the tight regulations moving money from Vietnam to the US.

Following this. Been searching for this magical banking experience. I havent checked out HSBC but I did check out citibank and another US bank I forget which one. With my experience with citibank they said even though its the same name they are completely separate branches and dont share accounts with US branches even though they pretty much advertised it this way. All the transfer, conversion fees still applied. Maybe HSBC is different though. I doubt it though considering the tight regulations moving money from Vietnam to the US.
-@jrharvey

You got that right.

Rick

With my experience with citibank they said even though its the same name they are completely separate branches and dont share accounts with US branches even though they pretty much advertised it this way. All the transfer, conversion fees still applied.
-@jrharvey

Citibank used to have something called Citi Global Transfer (CGT) which allowed free transfers (US to VN).   This was true even though apparently ownership is different.   I think Citi VN may be only a licensee.   The problem I experienced was that occasionally the system would stop working for Vietnam and then come back a few months later with no explanation.  I never knew if the problem was on the banking side or the government side.   It was usually better to transfer dollars to a dollar denominated account in Vietnam and then switch to VND but the last time I made a transfer it would not let me do that and I had to go direct $$--->VND which had a noticeably worse exchange rate than the other way.   Citi used to have, and still could have a good system for incoming transfers but I don't think that is true any longer.   In fact I am planning to close our CITI VN account and use Schwab if we get over there this summer.   If anyone is presently successfully using the CGT system I would be interested to know.

...I am planning to close our CITI VN account and use Schwab if we get over there this summer. -@THIGV

Welcome to the club 😉