A friend of mine who is crazy about her carefully collected Legendary Pokémon took the leap last week and downloaded the Pokébank app, along with the Poké Transfer app. Now I’ve known for a long time that the Pokébank existed, but I hadn’t bothered to check it out until now. I can see if you’re nuts about catching them all and have been for years, the bank will be the safest place to store your precious Pokémon. Problem is that should you want to put all of them in the Bank (it can hold 3.000 ‘Mon) that you are in for a lot of organizing and transferring.
So, how does it work? You can find both the Pokébank and the Transfer app in the eShop. First download the Pokébank, and it will prompt you to download the Transfer app needed to bring Pokémon over from Black/White or Black 2/White 2. Storing your Pokémon isn’t free, but for a fee of $ 5,- you rent space in the bank for 1 year. The money is deducted from your balance in the eShop, so make sure you have enough credit.
First of all, launch the copy of B/W or B2/W2, if you want to bring your older Pokémon over to the bank or to Pokemon X/Y or ORAS. The Transporter app only picks up Pokémon that are in Box 1 in your game, so if you have a lot of them, you are in for a challenge. You can’t transfer items to the Bank, so every item that the Pokémon carry will go to your bag in your current game. After you have put the ones you want transferred in Box 1, save your game, and start the Transporter.
Launch the Poke Transporter with B/W still physically inserted in your system, and you’ll be asked to transfer those Pokemon to the Bank’s Transport Box temporarily. Taking it from there you decide whether you want to put the Pokémon in a box in the Bank for safekeeping, allowing you some nice features to organize and admire them, or you can choose to send them out of the temporary box to your current game. I was wondering what happens if a year from now I decide not to buy a new annual pass for $ 5,-. I checked it out, and you will 
have a certain period of time to take your Pokémon out of the Bank. Another word of warning: once you have transferred your Pokémon from B/W or B2/W2, you cannot put them back into that game.
So, that was the theory. Of course I couldn’t resist giving it a try myself, but I had an extra obstacle: all of my previous Pokémon games are European and X even resides on my European system. While I have ORAS on my American system, so the PokéBank was to be connected to the American system as well. Though I expected all kinds of trouble and frustration, it really went smoothly. The American 3DS read my European old DS games without any problem, so I was able to transfer into the Bank using my White and White 2. The Bank recognized Omega Sapphire and worked together with it to give my precious Pokémon a nice new home.
I do shudder away at the huge task before me: I would have to bring my favorite Pokémon over from X to Omega Ruby. Plus if I want to transfer from games before White, I would have to first bring them over from Platinum and Heart Gold to White, and then from White to the Bank. I checked out how to do that, and found some info on Serebii:
“Pokemon Black & White have a feature which allows you to transfer Pokemon over from games of the previous generation. This is done in Black & White through the PokeTransfer feature. Located within Route 15, there is a building similar to Pal Park of Sinnoh & Kanto where you can connect to past games for the Pokemon after you have obtained the National Pokedex. When you enter the PokeTransfer Lab, you’ll get an explanation. You can then access the transferring program from this area whenever you want, allowing you to bring over 6 Pokémon at a time. there are some restrictions though, like a Pokémon can not be transferred when it knows Hidden Moves.”
Oh boy, I might have to take some time off from work to organize all that!