No, it's not akin to that. You can live without loans but you can't leave without a debit bank account.
As the parent points out there's indeed such a law in France but from personal experience I can tell that it doesn't prevent the bank from closing your account without an explanation (the explanation I was given off-record was my citizenship). The law merely forces the bank to open you an account which can later be closed. So definitely the right direction but IMO not far enough.
Given that about 10% of the US has no debit bank account and they aren't dying, that seems like an exaggeration. You can walk into a paycheck cashing service and walk out with a card that can be used anywhere a credit card is accepted without ever opening a bank account. You have to pay to do so, which seems rather regressive considering it's mostly the less affluent who end up in that situation, but it's not life-ending.
That previous comment is a "tell me you've never been declined for a financial service before without telling me" kind of thing; I had to shop for a week to find a bank that would give me a checking account.
Not sure what you mean, I got declined by a dozen of banks. And where I live (France) it's illegal for me to receive my salary in cash or to pay rent in cash: both are above the limit for cash transactions. Even if I personally was open to breaking the law,
my employer and my landlord obviously aren't.
To compensate for that there's a "right for an account" law but it doesn't work that well.
I think the US/EU distinction is the main disconnect. Anyone in the US can take a (paper) paycheck to a cashing service and, for about 2% of the value of the check, receive the cash for it. They can usually walk into the office of their landlord (or property manager) and pay in cash.
I sold an RV for nearly $10k and the buyer paid in cash.
Other than my mortgage payment, I have never paid for something via a bank transfer. Merchants take credit cards and services provided by individuals (e.g. piano teacher) take check or cash.
This article is about the US banking system, and that's where my experience is. Nobody in the US with any experience of financial precarity believes a checking account is a human right, because checking accounts are routinely denied to people without established credit. Which makes a kind of sense: they are credit products.
I have a multi-year titre de séjour, the problem is the Russian citizenship. I guess banks don't want to figure out who's sanctioned and who's not, refusing service is safer.
The first wave of account closures in 2022 was absurdly wide and even affected some French citizens. It was a scandal that got some coverage in the news [1][2][3]. I suspect the filter was the birthplace which is known to the bank, even though some media speculated it was about names. IMO names would be insane even for a bank, however I can imagine a name being one of the inputs for an opaque ML risk-scoring model.
French citizens that I know of got their accounts reinstantiated, but foreign nationals continue to struggle to this day. There's a collective lawsuit going on but it will take years to achieve anything withhin the french justice system.
Sounds like a case of being in the right is not enough. The law in theory prevents this kind of stuff, but it might not have done enough of a job here.
Since my wife is Russian and we have lots of Russian friends we're not blind to these checks, but in all cases they were resolved by submitting residence documents. Success rate was 100%.
Of folks that were not residents however or that did not manage to prove their residence, very few got their accounts re-instantiated. We also had a case of someone who was not able to keep their account until they stopped receiving a Russian salary.
Based on my network of ex-colleagues who are now scattered all across Europe the best banking experience for foreigners is in Netherlands and the worst is in France, Spain and Poland. Germany is somewhere in the middle, for other countries I don't have datapoints.
The best part about Europe is the common market that includes online banking. Revolut and Bunq seem to accept all legal residents and that's enough for 90% of basic services. Life would be much harder without them.
Austria, but we both made personal and indirect experiences through friends all over the place. For instance my wife has accounts also in the UK and Estonia (guess why) and it was all pretty much the same thing. I have no experience in the Netherlands but friends moved to Poland and Spain (among other countries) and it all was absolutely fine.
The only people that ran into issues had monetary transfers in and out of Russia or folks who did not manage to actually immigrate properly. With regards to monetary transfers in and out of Russia, I even have that as an Austrian citizen, that to me is largely an unrelated problem to citizenship.
patio11 himself has mentioned in many podcasts that the sanctions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine may have affected Ukrainian persons or businesses as they include territory currently occupied by Russia (perhaps more so than Russian persons or businesses themselves).
Many western financial institutions simply won't keep track of who holds Nikopol or Enerhodar and will close account held by Ukrainian people or business.
(and when you think about the possibility of the account holder lying, it gets worse)
> Does that apply to US citizens (legally residing in the EU) that routinely get denied bank accounts because the bank don’t want to deal with the IRS ?
Yes, it applies to every legal resident.
> Beyond that, I wonder if you really believe that the EU has no Anti-Money Laudering / Counter Finance Terrorism laws.
Because you don’t believe an EU bank can terminate an account because they’re worried it may trigger an AML/CTF regulation or similar without bothering to really check if it does.
*edit : AML/CTF and similar rules have to be exceptions to basic banking rights.
> Because you don’t believe an EU bank can terminate an account because they’re worried it may trigger an AML/CTF regulation or similar without bothering to really check if it does.
No, I questioned the particular situation given my personal experience with the Ukrainian war for account holders in Europe, the existing banking regulation around the basic account.
For the record, I have an official denial letter from LaPoste. Which, by the way, is very nice on their part: many banks refuse to put that in wringing and without a letter it's hard to exercise your droit au compte with the Bank of France.
No citizenship is a major factor. For example, Syrians are a very red flag in many countries and many banks outright denies them service. If you are from North Korea, you'd be delusional to think that you can just show up at a "western" bank and walk out with a bank card.
You're not participating in a good faith discussion. Yes, it is technically a line of credit but it's not the reason why you're being refused service. Overdraft risks for a personal account are small and can easily be accounted-for in the service fee or via insurance (which is the same in the end).
The reason for account closure is the fear of anti-AML laws and sanctions that have nothing to do with loans. Banks in fact love offering small loans and it's not uncommon to have your account closed while having a pre-approved loan at the same time — these are different bank divisions in action.
And in any case, turning personal debit accounts into credit accounts is not something that was asked for. I lived long enough to have used Visa Electron and Maestro cards that made most of overdraft scenarios impossible. It was the banking industry decision to get rid of them.
What exactly isn't true? That compliance is the reason why accounts get closed?
As far as I understood the article this is the main reason he gives. Loans or other objective reasons that can make the interaction with the client unprofitable are only drawn as (bad) analogies and not as the actual explanation.
To be charitable, I think tptacek was referring to a variant of "accounts aren't closed because of credit risk" as not being true. The credit risk talked about in the article was ACH reversals with a bankrupt account owner falling on the bank, rather than overdrafts.
As the parent points out there's indeed such a law in France but from personal experience I can tell that it doesn't prevent the bank from closing your account without an explanation (the explanation I was given off-record was my citizenship). The law merely forces the bank to open you an account which can later be closed. So definitely the right direction but IMO not far enough.