Offshore and onshore banks offer similar services, including current and saving accounts, foreign exchange, lending facilities, debit and credit cards.

Many offshore centres follows the internationals rules for inter-country cooperation, adopting laws and regulations and well as introduces procedures similar to onshore countries. It includes a due diligence and know your customer procedures in order to ensure the legitimate group of clients. However, it still allows the banks ensure a high level of privacy and confidentiality, as banks within diverse jurisdictions do not cooperate in terms of information exchange on rejected clients, there is also no a precise definition accepted by all countries that would state what a legitimate and illegitimate source of money is. In addition, the lack of exchange control regulations in major part of offshore countries is another benefit integrated into offshore banking daily activities.

Some offshore centres offer an opportunity to open a bank account by distance, without the necessity to travel and visit a bank, providing the whole set of notarized documents in order to let a bank make the due diligence on a future customer. Fast services of offshore banks, that in most cases are cost-effective for the same quality in relation to onshore banks, determine the banking partner of a private person and a corporate entity.