Originally Posted by
Nagasaki Joe
I'm pretty certain this wouldn't qualify as a legitimate cell phone account for the purposes of opening a Schwab account. It didn't qualify for opening a Capital 1 credit card account because it's an account that can be opened by people that are not resident in the US. To open a Schwab account, I would need to provide a cell phone number from a provider like T-Mobile. Schwab or Capital 1 would then search the cell phone providers' customer database to verify the account. This, along with an SSN and other data would then let Schwab determine that you are both a citizen and resident of the US, something they cannot confirm with a Google Fi account.
Thanks, perhaps this would work, I'll have too look into it more carefully.
I think there was also a post on r/nocontract for a T-mobile prepaid esim where they activated it with a vpn in US. Proton offers a free US VPN
https://protonvpn.com/vpn-servers#free Their e-mail service is decently well regarded for privacy and vpn does not log or share/sell your info with third parties. reddit.com/r/digitalnomad or other "digital nomad" forums might have more info, too, as the posters usually spend an extended amounts of time working remotely/online outside their "home" country where they have a financial banking presence.
Might you be thinking of Google Voice, the virtual phone forwarding service, and not Google Fi, Google's prepaid cellular offering? Google Fi (mostly) operates on T-Mobile and roams on US Cellular. Fi used to also work with Sprint's carrier network. Fi technically had three carrier networks which might have made carrier account linking look a bit odd ("secret" phone number may not match one in details of a credit report?). T-Mobile and Sprint merged.
I believe Schwab brokerage accounts have a US residency requirement. Schwab High Yield checking is from Schwab bank and requires opening a linked brokerage account.
An EU based co-worker asked about opening a non-employee related independent E-Trade (now operated by Morgan Stanley) brokerage account and that's where I happened to see the residency requirement for opening a new account. It did seem odd to allow foreign E-Trade employee stock accounts but there's no purchasing ability for non-work (or spun off from employer's corp) stocks, just sell and transfer current holdings. Technically I think the employee (or former employee) account is mostly employer stock grants, stock options, and employee stock purchase plans?