If none of the banks will give you a bank account, and there's no such thing as cash... then you're just not allowed to have money. That shouldn't be a position that it is possible to get into.
Sidenote: I was in on bitcoin back when you could generate blocks with a CPU... and came to the conclusion that privacy of transaction was too fundamental to a good coin and abandoned bitcoin. Given central banks ability to invent money at scale, I also always thought the 50% attack was something they would work towards... and so that's the story of how I almost became a millionaire.
Those stories tell you a lot about the person in question. How it didn't work out and how they cope with that "loss".
Yours is the first where someone coped out because not being satisfied with the kind of privacy Bitcoin provides.
A coin that uses all that compute to work on protein folding or other big problems that also has privacy would be something I would really like to see.
Check out creditboards.com for lots of ways to get those companies to straighten up.
https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads
[1] or someone with the same name and similar residential history
In the UK, the nine largest banks are legally required to offer basic bank accounts specifically to cater to people who cannot otherwise get a bank account.
https://www.ukcisa.org.uk/blog/6538/Student-banking-Do-you-r... gives a decent overview of the process. It also mentions the unofficial national ID of the UK, household utility bills.
The punchline is whether a printout of a PDF of something that never had a print original counts as an "original" for ID purposes in a completely adhoc adversarial system. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
I live in an essentially cashless country, but even countries where cash is still used would be very hard to live in without a bank account, so that legislation is important.
This is little comfort if you're not a legal EU resident, or if they believe you're laundering money or financing terror groups (whether you actually are or not).
As long as there are any caveats to "cannot refuse bank accounts to all people" then switching to a cashless society would create an underclass of people who are just not allowed to have money.
Governments are quite imperfect, and humans are a varied bunch. There are exceptions to everything , and exceptions to that. The Windrush generation is just a recent example that comes to mind: luckily, they were numerous enough to get their story heard. But people fall through such cracks every single day. Sometimes an imperfection in the law, sometimes an “overzealous” public servant.
Do they have to prove this, or is their belief enough? And are we okay with the punishment for money laundering being death by starvation and homelessness?
For another, banks don't have to show anything. It's risk management, they can close your account if they believe you're high risk, partly because if they didn't they'd get fined by the USA for money laundering. See: HSBC, whose fines were largely due to not closing accounts aggressively enough.
https://monzo.com/blog/2018/05/29/getting-bank-account-immig...
But to take an extreme case, there's nothing preventing you from getting yourself into trouble due to a lack of valid payment methods. For example, Americans have visa-free access to the EU, so nobody will check their finances, and an American could theoretically land somewhere in the EU without a payment card and only carrying US dollars, which aren't legal tender.
I thought part of the job of immigration officers is to screen travelers for ability to sustain their trip? Visa waiver does not mean you are entitled to enter.
When I (an American) visited the UK and EU on a backpacking trips, the immigration official asked me how I'd cover my expenses, and specifically queried about backup plans if my card wasn't accepted. (This was back before chip and sig rolled out)
Though they did just take me at my word I had enough US dollars that I could convert them to pounds and get a room if needed...
Correct, but in practice the level of scrutiny depends on where you're from, and which country you're entering. From what I've heard, people from rich Western countries, like the US or Canada, are generally allowed in with only perfunctory questioning, especially in countries where the immigration officers are known to be more relaxed. So an unprepared American is still likely to get into the EU, but a Colombian would probably be questioned more, despite being in the same legal category as a US citizen.
When that happens you don't have a home country that you have a meaningful connection to, and you certainly don't have a bank account there.
For some it happens due to predictable visa expiry and rules ordinary people can comprehend. But for others it is impossible to know in advance (I have some experience with lawyers who are unable to figure out how the law applies in practice in some cases - few can afford a proper judicial review to find out). There are numerous articles in the press in recent years about people who were resident in the UK for a long time, have long since settled with families, then suddenly found they lost basic rights.
The ones which shocked me most where people who were branded "persona non grata" as if terrorists, because they filed minor corrections to their tax returns - the problem with that is not only do the then immediately lose UK rights, they also get a stamp that excludes them from most other countries of the world. That's a harsh price for doing the right thing. That sounds implausible, until you know that the UK Home Office has exclusion targets, and will use any random tick-box to exclude people no matter if it's not justified and would lose on appeal in front of a judge. (Most appeals against Home Office decisions about residence overturn the decision, which shows how dodgy the decisions are, but the right to appeal has now been removed in many cases.)
Right now, there are a large number of people in the UK who do not know with certainty whether they will be allowed to maintain legal residence in the next few years or not. So far, non-UK EU citizens do not need visas or similar documentation while being resident in the UK, even for their whole lives. This means they don't tend to keep a strong paper trail. But that is probably about to change, and for many of them this already creates uncertainty about their future rights, because the UK has a harsh reputation for refusing long-term residence for bogus reasons, such as a gap in perfect record of household bills going back a few years, or failing to purchase some obscure kind of private health insurance a few years ago which nobody knew was needed but is now cited.
The situation to come is worse for, for example, non-EU spouses of UK citizens, who obtained the right to bring their spouse into the UK via EU law (the human right to a family life). Surprisingly, a UK citizen does not have an automatic right to have their spouse live with them in the UK - there is a substantial earnings threshold. This may force spouses who thought they were settled here to have to leave the UK and their families, over the next few years.
When any of these events happens, you are denied the ability to rent privately (even in cash), to have a bank account, or to use health services.
Very few of these people have a bank account in their home country. Why would they? They've been living and settled in the UK for years. Working, married, with families, all legally, until the day they find out they aren't.
It seems like helping people get bank accounts would be what you’d want, though the IT issues arround outages and lack of network services in area is a hard one.
You can be banned from getting credit pretty easily too; if you've failed to pay council fines (parking, tax, etc.), or missed a repayment on a loan, a judge can give you a ban. It can be a real problem for people who get into a bad financial position and want/need a new bank account later on.
I've personally seen friends struggle with all of the above, but the reloadable AMEX cards at Walmart seem to be doing well to fill in the gaps (except for not being able to direct deposit into them)
Additionally, I know many employers in Indiana offered prepaid cards to their employees that did not have bank accounts. It has been 5 or 6 years since I lived there, mind you. These had fees involved as well, but it was better than nothing.
It really gets my goat that some banks even charge monthly fees. Having a checking and savings account should be free. Withdrawing from and depositing to the account should be free. Writing checks and using a debit card should be free.
I am not a fan of overdraft fees, but I can see that they're at least justifiable.
Please don't patronize banks that have these fees.
I would surely love 2% on my checking though! I thought 2% was on cash back, I will need to search for 2% checking with no restrictions somewhere
My credit union will give you 2% in checking if you meet all of these:
10 debit or credit card purchases per month
enroll in and maintain eStatements, eNotices, eTax & eCoupons for your accounts and loans
$300 minimum monthly ACH credit transaction or $5000 in deposit or loan balances
Previously, they required 10 debit card transactions per month, and I'm not sure I've made that many in my life. I'm going to check a bit closer on this, thanks. Credit union is StarOne.