No Fixed Address Bank Account | Hacker News Reader

No Fixed Address Bank Account

hsbc.co.uk

242 pointsacqbu313 comments

The need for an address is incredibly outdated imo. Not just for banking but for anything. It's the equivalent of when places used to want to to give a home landline number.

I think there needs to be more discussion about how we move away from addresses to some other kind of basis for taxation, education, health, etc (not blockchain), a real answer that lets me declare my residency on the highest territorial level possible and transact electronically or to a physical location I pick

I'm not sure I have the faculties to address what bothers me about this comment, but there is so much tied to traditional society the comment seems to ignore.

- Voting districts - obviously tied to physical land, with different styles of vote counting system per area, often according to local cultural needs. I come from a society where special voting considerations exist in order to achieve actual peace. Prior to that system being introduced, there was war. The right to vote and the manner in which the vote occurs is an essential and inalienable attribute of all democratic societies, often deeply saturated in historic customs taking centuries of diplomacy to achieve stability.

- Public services - voting and taxation are directly related to policy in a local area. The tax that I pay my local council is accountable almost directly to me because I can schedule an appointment with the very people whom I elect to spend my taxes as I desire. My physical address in that locale entitles me to an opinion on the use of those taxes, and a stake in ensuring awareness of local policy, and that the policy works for myself and the people around me.

- Land rights - a requirement for a physical address, or the alternative of no requirement for a physical address, (is/is not) an implicit endorsement of land ownership and encouraging long term placement of people within fixed communities. Community quality and composition varies greatly across every region of the world, and for folk spending most of their life inside cities, it is easy to forget the concept of a community exists. Establishing a physical local presence is essential for many kinds of growth, not least, starting a family and therefore the continued growth of a healthy society.

So to summarize, I think what bothers me is that the only possible way to arrive at what the parent comment suggests would be to avoid participating or contributing to any of these essential traits of civil society, which is to say it is an opinion explicitly rooted in contributing to civic decay. It's not "incredibly outdated", a physical address comes with many essential implications that ought to be encouraged.

There have always been travelers in the world. They have long had friction with settled peoples who feel a fixed address is essential.

Even American military members have friction with the rest of America over this. It just gets mitigated by the fact that the federal government makes accommodations for them.

Military members historically had trouble opening local bank accounts so there are military banks on military installations and when I was a military wife I could cash a check at the PX/BX because banks don't like cashing out of town checks.

This is not just a homeless issue. This is problematic for all kinds of people with nomadic lives and this has long been true.

Of course, it's all tied up with state government too. You need to be a resident of some state to get a driver's license. And no high tax state wants, say, Nevada to offer state residency that puts your name on an office door in exchange for an annual fee. Then there's voting/jury duty/etc.

Well heeled people already do pretty much as they please. Own a house in one state, travel as you see fit in your RV or whatever.

It's only a serious hardship for poor people.

Maybe it’s better to think of local government as a Proof of Stake system. Where you Stake the value of land+house as collateral (using an address) to access trust based services like voting, banking, etc. such that everyone is clear that you can pay the annual fees or penalties (if ever applicable) for that local government / bank.

Sadly that does mean poor people who can’t stake capital or spend capital on rent in an area get left out of the system.

What would a system look like that didn’t use Proof of Stake as collateral to get people access to trust based systems?

I live in a town with tons and tons of students. They live here for a few years and move on.

I’m glad they avoid voting. They’d just vote for high taxes, which they wouldn’t have to pay for very long.

The city has a good system for dealing with political activism by students: there are a ton of unpaid committees with actual power - but exercising the power requires jumping throwing hoops to make sure it’s used well.

In practice this means students can get lots of influence, if they’re willing to put in the time and effort.

That seems like a good system to me.

It also makes me very cynical about voting in general. The fact that someone is willing to wait in line for 20 minutes and check a piece of paper says little about their ideas.

Spending 20 hours a week - evening and weekends - to research and write reports shows you care.

Proof of Time frankly is really just Proof of Stake with a different monetize-able asset.

Not to say the time isn’t worth it, or doesn’t need to be put in. I just don’t feel like it’s substantially different (for the purpose of this conversation) to buying a house in the area. ie. The homeless can’t spend time on committees.

The Committee on Homelessness requires that some of its members currently be homeless, and other members be formerly homeless.

Even absent owning a house or otherwise having a permanent address in a given state, well heeled people probably have a stable/trusted relative or friend who can serve as a nominal permanent address and place to receive official mail. I did this for someone for a few years.

A PO Box costs ~$100/yr.

Doesn’t work. Usually banks, for example, won’t accept a PO box as a residential address. They need to know where you actually live.

There are private services that make it look like a real street address. The top hit when I just googled it was $9.99 a month, so pretty affordable.

Banks and some other entities have databases of these services. Some will not accept these addresses. They will let you use them for mail, but they will also require a physical address and proof that you live there. But others will not. It depends on which mailing service you use and which bank, etc. This is my personal experience.

Recently, when I (in Australia) opened a US investment account, the US firm I was using wanted to see a utility bill to prove I actually lived at my home address. I ended up sending them a copy of my water bill, which they accepted.

However, if a person owns multiple residences, all that proves is that you own that residence, not that you actually live there at all. At least in my jurisdiction, landlords receive and pay water bills (and the tenant has to reimburse the landlord the usage portion of the bill), so a water bill could even be from an investment property one is renting out.

With electronic billing, you can have a billing address that doesn't actually get a bill sent to it. So if you have something that doesn't require the actual physical address (like a cell phone), you can use that as your utility bill, and no mail actually shows up.

That's why cell phones bill aren't accepted as utility bills, for many cases. Electric, water, sewer -- these things have a physical connection, and that's what they want to see.

You need a physical address for many things.

Or alternatively, have a relative who will let you use their address? That seems a lot cheaper.

A hard case is combination of not having money and not having family.

Homeless people frequently are homeless in part because they don't have any relatives they are on good terms with. Most of the world blames the homeless person and chalks it up to their presumed bad behavior but it's not unusual for them to be fleeing an abusive situation.

Yes, I should have said "not having family they're on good terms with."

This of course is a particular peculiarity with the US, having such varying state taxes.

It is actually very common in federal systems to have state/province-level taxation, driver's licensing, etc. I don't think the US is particularly peculiar here at all. Canadian provinces also have individual GST and income tax rates.

In some ways, I'd say Australia is actually more peculiar than the US, in that the Australian states have significantly more limited taxation powers than American states or Canadian provinces do – here, the federal government banned state income tax and state sales taxes (GST/VAT), forcing uniform national tax rates and collection for both. However, Australian states still retain the power to levy some other taxes independently, such as land taxes and payroll taxes.

There’s other weirdness too. CDLs are different between states. Oregon used to issue lots of shady licenses to undocumented and on the run type people.

Is this a USA thing? As a child of an RAF pilot who moved around a lot (here and overseas), I have never encountered this. My Dad had the same bank account all his life, at the bank in the town he was born in, in the UK, and never (as far as I know) had any problems cashing cheques etc. back when such were things.

Not cashing out of town checks (especially in large amounts) is definitely a thing in the US.

For larger transactions, it is also common to get a "cashier's check", drawn on the bank's own accounts to minimize the seller's counterparty risk.

The rationale for the in-town restriction is also to limit counterparty risk: if the check is from an unfamiliar bank, it is more likely to be bogus and the seller won't be able to verify the account with a quick call to a known bank nor expect to be able to address fraud within the local law-enforcement framework.

I take your word for it, but I rember getting cash on my UK credit card several times when I've worked in the US. Of course, these were for small amounts, and the credit card company were the ones finally at risk.

I have suddenly had a vision of Clint Eastwood, in High Plains Drifter mode, riding into town and attempting to cash a cheque :-)

Credit/debit cards and checks are totally different systems. Cards can be checked for available funds instantly. Checks need to be cleared through the ACH system (in the US at least), which is an asynchronous process that might take more than a day to complete. If you cash a check from a different bank at your own, usually it will actually draw funds from your account and the check will be deposited after it clears.

It's been a long time since I had a cheque book, but way back then the cheque at the bank (not for electricity payments and such) trying to get money needed to be backed up with a bank's card, and the risk was on the card issuing bank.

I'm not familiar with UK banking but this sounds like something lost in translation. The checks the ancestors are speaking of are personal checks, basically just an IOU -- I'm guessing this is more like your "for electricity payments and such". The cashier's check mentioned above sounds to be more like your "cheque at the bank", where the instrument carries value itself, rather than being a draft on the writer's account.

It was. The US has/had a distributed banking system with thousands of banks. It’s archaic and stupid.

Basically, you can tell from the routing number on a check where the bank is. Back in the day, if the bank wasn’t from NYC or the same region they wouldn’t honor the check. Checks were mailed between clearing systems and would take weeks to clear. My dad maintained a bank account at the Bank of New York specifically for business travel in the 80s.

That’s mostly gone now as ACH is automated and quick.

The problem is that the US is rather larger than the UK, so a distributed system was (and maybe still is) a natural fit. For the same reason, all the citizens of the US can't just come to one place and vote for a President, like ancient Athenians could.

I was paid by the Canadian government through a fellowship while I attended graduate school in the USA. They paid my entire years fellowship in a single check which clearly said Government of Canada, however, the check was denominated in US dollars and drawn on a US bank, yet I still got a lot of confusion and difficult when trying to cash it and had to convince them it was, in fact, possible.

I'm American, so, yes, I'm describing my experience with the USA.

One of the advantages of Empire :)

Yes, and “travelers” have historically had their own systems of law and governance.

The US military being an excellent example. Extraterritoriality for merchants was a big thing in the 19th century. Ecclesiastical laws was a big thing before that (not all clerics were travelers - monks needed their own legal system for the opposite reason).

But nobody said “screw physical jurisdictions” - they just created a new, non-territorial jurisdiction for a select few.

Fundamentally it's an issue of how people in a settle community, with communal rules and support handle people who aren't part of that community.

It's frequently outright abusive of the nomadic peoples. People want soldiers to lay down their lives for national security, natural disasters, etc but then want to treat them as unwelcome outsiders, don't want to hire their spouses, will happily gouge them for rent, etc.

> will happily gouge for rent

Making profit is the goal for renting out, right?

> So to summarize, I think what bothers me is that the only possible way to arrive at what the parent comment suggests would be to avoid participating or contributing to any of these essential traits of civil society

I don't think this take is very realistic. Most people want to live in a home with a static address. They aren't doing it because they need an address to participate in society. However, there are people who are more nomadic and the physical address requirement for some things can be a challenge.

I concur that most people want to live in a home, but except for the fact that’s it’s engrained in the legal system, what do you really need a static address for nowadays? I could give suppliers lat/long coordinates of my front door or the route to my house, and my physical mailbox gets more spam than mail I really need, and the latter also could be delivered via email.

A static email address is much more useful (or, actually, a static digital identity)

How soon until we end up with government-mandated email addresses? Email is already a required field in many governmental forms in the US.

> Most people want to live in a home with a static address.

Statistics can address what most people do do, but how can one possibly speak to what most people want to do? (Even if one could, I can believe that people's preferences are much less absolute than they are shaped by existing affordances; maybe some people who currently want one thing would change their mind if obstacles to the alternative were removed.)

Regarding voting, I think people who pay taxes should only be allowed to vote based on the place they pay their taxes in. It really annoys me that because I don't have a long-term address, I need to separately register where I live at a given time to vote in local elections, to have any say in what the money I pay in taxes is spent on, while there are many people who pay their taxes in one place and vote in another, where they haven't contributed a penny. Those things should be linked.

I travel a lot, I spend 50% of time at home in city A, 25% in city B and 25% in city C. Often when I travel it’s election time in some locality. Once in a while it’s an issue I have a strong opinion on, and I spent a lot of time in that city so I understand the issue. I’d love to be able to split my voting power by where I spend my time and offer 25% of a vote to city B’s impactful referendum. Instead I’m forced to pick only one city to call home even though I feel a sense of being at home in multiple places.

I think voting should be about where you physically are and where you spend your time.

What about people who don't pay tax because they don't earn enough. Should they be allowed to vote?

They still owe taxes, it's just that some years their obligation is $0.

Edit: also there are things like fuel and sales tax that almost everyone owes, even if they don't have to pay income tax.

I don’t think I should be eligible to vote in every city, state or country I’ve paid sales taxes in over a year.

You are basing this on the premise only people with a fixed address can provide value to society. One of the best classical guitarists I have ever met is homeless, living on the street, but provides extreme value to everyone within earshot. Doesn’t he deserve a bank account to safely store the few dollars he makes playing Mozart, Beethoven, and other works of art on the street? Would you rather he gets mugged by some criminals and loses everything he earned that day, week, month?

I think your concerns are valid, but I think we can come up with ways to avoid them without forcing people to declare and be bound to a specific location.

Just want to add that for example in France there is a "gens du voyage" status for nomadic people that allows then to access government services without a fixed address. I don't know enough about it to say if it's successful, just saying there are options.

I think this is a really interesting discussion. I'm a bit of a nomad myself and cautious of the things you bring up - if everyone behaved like this, there'd be no community development and things would decay. But, you already see this in more common situations, like the movement of young people to cities, e.g.:

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191121-can-tiny-aband...

Just for some context, I was nomadic for well over a decade and consider that time an extravagant extension of youth, and a needless stunting of my growth into adulthood in absolute terms. By my late 30s I see no reason to encourage nomadism, or to celebrate or encourage others in the belief that it is a healthy way to live, it essentially amounts to the epitome of the dark side of individualism. When my children are of age, I would strongly discourage it for all the reasons in the original reply. Floaters don't grow - in the worst case they turn into "professional expats", and those (according to anecdotal experience) tend to develop into some of most fragmented and purposeless personalities on the planet by the time they reach middle age.

Holy moly just because you couldn’t figure it out doesn’t mean that nobody else can or will.

I’d argue the opposite. Reducing friction with nomadism increases the likelihood of a pilgrimage and radicalization of hyper aligned internet communities into meat space.

Being nomadic post teenage years is natural among animals, particularly for males, before settling into a pack when mature.

I’d encourage you to not suppress that instinct in others just because you’re not currently in that phase of your life.

Both of you are correct.

Out of interest, where did you go, and what were your reasons for stopping?

I think I can relate to a lot of what you say. I'm not saying I'm doing things the right way, but I've met people that you're describing that are basically on a very long holiday.

It's a proper cliche, but travel has definitely broadened my horizons. I hope you don't discourage it too much - emphasize travelling with purpose, and when to stop.

Mostly Asia. I stopped for exactly the reason in the previous comment.. I realized that what initially seemed like a fun and academic idea about the people I was meeting absolutely did develop into a fundamental life choice, after the umpteenth drink shared with someone who might have initially seemed eccentric and interesting, but had very little depth and purpose almost immediately below the surface.

The choice was to either seize the endless excitement of travel permanently, and further develop my own eccentricities at extraordinary risk of accomplishing little material, or swallowing my pride and acknowledging the dream of travel may have been a substantially emptier experience than originally promised.

This is not to say I did not "develop" - I met numerous people, swap emails, send Christmas gifts, had amazing experiences, and so on, but the question is what permanence these actions and relationships have, and at what cost those experiences are gained. I still itch - regularly - to jump on a plane to a country I have never been before. It is so easy to indulge in that sense of adventure. But I notice this comes most often during times of stress, and nowadays I always weigh that adventure against the actual costs of what I am leaving behind. Due to this, adventure holds very little of the appeal it once did, and I often wonder how many of those life-loving expats I met who did not admit to running from their old lives were still on the run from something, perhaps while living with complete delusion that they were only having fun.

On the other hand I did meet people who had found a real sense of belonging and purpose in their life through the foreign communities they interacted with, but even if I were one of those, over a long time horizon, I don't imagine the outcome to be so much different on every occasion. There are only so many children to educate and schools to build before the satisfaction gives way to the wariness of ones own ephemeral relationship to their environment, the only answer to which is yet more adventure, or the cold reality of going home and discovering what was missed in the meantime.

As another reply suggested - travelling with purpose makes a lot of sense. Some of the most interesting people I met were NGO or higher education placements there temporarily to accomplish a specific task.

Thanks for sharing. Seriously.

you sound fun

Thanks for the judgement -- much appreciated!

On the other hand I was basically non nomadic until about 40 and always discontent. Then for the last few years have been working in different countries and love it. I also try and at least understand and if possible contribute to each culture I encounter in a small way. I'm not sure how that counts as fragmented and purposeless.

"I was nomadic for well over a decade and consider that time an extravagant extension of youth, and a needless stunting of my growth into adulthood in absolute terms. By my late 30s I see no reason to encourage nomadism, or to celebrate or encourage others in the belief that it is a healthy way to live, it essentially amounts to the epitome of the dark side of individualism."

Way, way too many people never leave the area/country they were born in.

By traveling to radically different places you can learn about different people, customs, and cultures. You can see how the norms you were brought up with aren't absolute and that good and bad people exist everywhere. Travel can really open your eyes to the humanity of every person everywhere.

You can also learn what it's like to be the outsider, the one that's different, who can't speak the language and so is not treated like the first class citizen you're used to being back home, you might learn what it's like to go through the bureaucracy of a foreign land, and hopefully this will all help to to develop some empathy for people from other countries and who speak different languages when they come to yours.

You can learn to engage with, survive, and thrive among people very different from you. Learning the customs and languages of other people and places can be very useful for both you and them, as you can act as an intermediary or unofficial ambassador between your own country/culture and theirs.

That's not to mention your seeing and experiencing all sorts of wonderful things you might never have imagined were you to stay in one place all your life.

There are so many great things about travel, though life as a permanent nomad or expat is not for everyone. At the very least, though, it can really open your eyes and your mind.

> the epitome of the dark side of individualism

In short: anyone who isn’t part of the tribe is a dangerous threat.

I’ve always thought that voting, at the national level, might benefit from non-geographic constituencies.

The representatives might be for 24 to 34 year olds, unmarried mothers, children, prisoners, or of course the homeless. People who need more representation than they are probably getting.

The more categories you fall into, the more votes you get. Maybe that’s not a bad thing when faced with the status quo of money based politics.

It is a poorly thought out idea but your comment reminded me to give it some more time.

> I’ve always thought that voting, at the national level, might benefit from non-geographic constituencies.

The US voting system is uniquely bizarre and designed for vote manipulation by electoral district boundary fiddling. National level voting should just be by popular vote, like it is pretty much everywhere else.

This doesn't work at all for people who move around. I might have an assignment one year in Berlin then another for two years in Bangkok, then another three years in Singapore.

So how do you manage your banking and tax issues without going insane? Is your company providing you with high-quality tax advisors that help you deal with this issue?

It's not that complicated if you are just earning salary / self-employed income in places. GP's situation with those three countries -- given their fairly sane tax systems and streamlined reporting -- is probably about as complicated as an American's tax, especially if you have multiple states involved.

From my limited knowledge, companies do tend to handle the tax work for expats. In fact years ago when I was interviewing for an international position where I'd have been moving around a lot, as I recall, they told us something like they'd take some fixed percentage off our paychecks and handle the whole thing.

If you're on your own, you presumably have to hire an appropriate accountant.

This comes up even internally in the US if you're spending a lot of time in a number of states as a non-resident.

But why does one's address have to be fixed to provide these services / establish these qualities?

Society adapted to advance the listed social causes in the historical context where having multiple or frequently changing residences was far too costly for the average person to consider. But what if modern civilization makes this mode of living attainable for the masses?

* Information technology enables efficient markets for renting out housing for short durations.

* Modern financial technology enables these markets to become globally accessible with minimal processing fees and delays.

* Modern transportation technology enables people to travel globally very quickly and affordably.

* Modern construction technology enables people to build much more housing units per capita than in the past, which makes second homes, vacation homes etc more viable.

* Modern telecommunication enables people to work remotely, which makes a work life that is combined with travelling much more viable.

We could very conceivably see a significant fraction and even a majority of people consider themselves world citizens, and prefer to travel non-stop, with the change brought about by the aforementioned technologies. In such a setting, society could very possibly manage physical neighborhoods differently, without tying people to a district in order to procure the necessary resources to maintain said neighborhoods.

In terms of the social aspect, people may adapt by linking themselves moreso to virtual communities, in order to enable connectivity amidst physical travel and migration.

Society not currently being set up to work without residents who are tied to physical neighborhoods is more likely due to the majority of people historically not being able travel non-stop than functional societies not being possible without static addresses.

I think most of this comment can be answered by highlighting the difference between supposed "Internet friends" and "real friends". Over corona there have been a wide range of studies published on the negative effects virtual communication has had on education in particular, the strength and quality of the relationships children have managed to develop, and even the severe effect it has had in some cases on development of vocal skills and the ability to read emotion.

Information technology is only a tool, it is not, never has been and never will be a replacement for the real thing. A child cannot develop motor skills by climbing a virtual tree, a toddler cannot take shelter from a storm by dwelling in a virtual home. You cannot raise a child on an aeroplane without substantially reducing its quality of life and damaging its early growth. Thus continuance of the society that produced us and all the freedoms and privileges we enjoy (including air travel) is largely incompatible with these new tech-centric ideals.

In the normal case for that society to continue functioning, long term physical presence is required for development of its next generation, and nomadic world citizenry is largely a temporary (and abnormal) trait of those who are young, unwilling to reproduce, and primarily misallocate their capital to consumption and selfish pursuits. This trend is a significant contributor to the collapse in population growth rates across the western world and consequently directly impacts GDP, which is to say, the steady decline of our way of life.

Often immigration is offered as a solution to the population growth aspect, but immigrants quickly assimilate our culture and consequently our growth rates within a single generation (predictably as a result of their new privilege), meaning the qualities our culture celebrates cannot be worked around by importing replacement people to breed on behalf of the laptop class exploiting the spread between income and the cost of a beer in some remote reach of the world. Finally there are many signs that immigration may have reached a local peak as resource access concerns are beginning to dominate global politics for the first time in half a century.

For a little more context, I'm a tech native that has lived on the Internet since around 1998, this is mostly written as a rebuke of my former self, who had little idea of the practicality or implications of all the grand empty promises of technology. You cannot now and never will be able to replace a physical address with a transaction on a blockchain.

I entirely agree with you on the damage done by lockdown-imposed remote learning for kids. I don't believe we're at a place technologically where telecommunication can fully substitute for in-person learning. If left to our own devices, people would not have chosen to switch their children, en masse, from in-person learning to remote learning, for precisely this reason.

But as technology advances, I believe more activity will voluntarily migrate to electronically mediated, as this mode of interaction becomes more effective. This is especially the case if the law and institutions are adapted to make this mode of living more possible. People should have a choice to switch to this mode of living if they perceive it as advantageous. That is all I'm arguing for.

If my predictions of a mass-transition to an 'always traveling' mode of life don't pan out, then that means the technological evolution I predicted didn't emerge, and no one was harmed because they were able to discern that this mode of life was not advantageous, and avoid switching to it. So I don't see the harm in providing that option, just in case my predictions do pan out, and being able to switch to having a dynamic physical address turns out to be better for most people.

>Voting districts - obviously tied to physical land, with different styles of vote counting system per area, often according to local cultural needs. I come from a society where special voting considerations exist in order to achieve actual peace. Prior to that system being introduced, there was war. The right to vote and the manner in which the vote occurs is an essential and inalienable attribute of all democratic societies, often deeply saturated in historic customs taking centuries of diplomacy to achieve stability.

People shouldn't be voting on local issues, land should.

Voting on local issues should be 100% correlated with your investment in that locality.

> People shouldn't be voting on local issues, land should.

All issues are local on some scale.

So back to aristocracy?

No, because aristocrats could be landless.

> a real answer that lets me declare my residency on the highest territorial level possible and transact electronically or to a physical location I pick

So a digital identity system needs to be implemented. Something akin to what quite a few countries have already implemented.

I'm unsure why it would require more discussion at this point. It's not hypothetical science fiction without practical examples.

Well to start, the assholes using a South Dakota trust held by a Nevada LLC to run a Delaware corporation would have a harder time hiding their beneficial ownership and might have to pay taxes.

Also the “mark of the beast” crowd is real, really loud and politically powerful.

> Also the “mark of the beast” crowd is real, really loud and politically powerful.

Can't that be bypassed by implementing the system but making it voluntary? That crowd is honestly quite unfathomable to me.

> It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

If it practically excludes people from transacting it kind of plays into the prophecy. That's how people go off on bank accounts and debit and credit cards as being the mark of the beast.

Massively agree, this has been annoying me for a while now. I'm only renting and the need for everyone to know my address which i'll only reside for a couple of months is so pointless. Also the need for people to see some utility bill to verify that i'm there is problematic when they're all in my landlords name.

> It's the equivalent of when places used to want to to give a home landline number.

Or today, when companies assume that everyone has a mobile phone - if not a smartphone?

Agree it shouldn't be a hard requirement, but fyi a secure physical address is pretty valuable for re-establishing relationships if electronic communication breaks down or is lost.

This sounds like something that could be provided as a notary style service. A letter addressed to an individual, only to be handed over on positive ID, care of local business providing this service.

Fun fact: The US Postal Service offers this service, for free. (Though not in an ideal way; they'll just match name to ID, don't uniquely identify an individual. All that would need would be to write a drivers license or such number on the letter too, and the USPS to confirm that.)

when handling substantial matters (big$, felony accusations, etc), I question the definition of "positive ID."

I don’t see it until biometrics and sovereign identity are a thing. The only people who really benefit are really rich people and really poor people. It also creates a dozens of hundreds of truly difficult problems.

In the US, people pitched a fit when the tax authority started requiring facial verification for sign in to access sensitive, vulnerable to fraud records, so it ain’t happening here.

The really rich people don’t really care, and nobody really cares about the really poor. Nobody cares in the least about the elderly. Everyone else has a home and has more to lose to the rampant fraud that happens when you make things like this easier.

> It's the equivalent of when places used to want to to give a home landline number.

Lots of places still require a phone number (many email services do for example).

Voting out all elected government officials over age 30 would be a good start to a better tomorrow.

It's not outdated in the least. The vast majority of people have an address. Most people don't move that often. Hell, most people don't live outside the country they were born in.

Seem odd to design a whole new system for an edge case?

> (not blockchain)

Why not?

Because blockchain solutions to anything are almost always awful. (And I'm unsure about needing the word "almost".)

Awful? Ignoring the crypto coins, I'd love to see all spending/funds in for governments, ONG, non-profit orgs, (mass)media channels, public hospitals, all companies that have shareholders/sell shares, anything that runs on public funds and so on should be tracked via publicly available blockchains. You can probably see where I'm going with this.

I have mixed feelings about banks, national banks, lenders, art trading, casinos, pawn shops and such though. I'm a bit worried about tracking private individuals at that extent because of these.

Nothing about this requires the blockchain though. It's additional complexity for no gain.

You can do that without a blockchain. Have all those orgs publish their accounts in a form that allows for anyone to make copies and to audit that the published versions don't get modified over time.

I always replace "blockchain" with "distributed ledger" and see if the idea still make any kind of sense (it rarely does).

I want politics and taxation to be more local in the smallest division practical, with extreme limits being placed on the power and scope of larger political organizations. In short I fully support US Style Federalism and oppose the move to make the US Federal Government all powerful

If I was in the EU I would support sovereignty of the nation states,and oppose efforts to make the EU Government all powerful

the move to make governments larger and all encompassing including calls for a 1 world government, are IMO a threat to individual freedom and will not have the desired effect you seem to think

The idea that more power in the hands of local governments seems attractive. Even knowing better, it still seems attractive to me...

You imagine people knowing the lawmakers better. You think that the lawmakers will be more connected to the community. That they'll be more likely to protect the freedoms that they also want to enjoy. At first blush, this all seems reasonable.

However, if you look at history, the actual practice is the opposite of that. When power is mostly exercised locally (at the town level), over time, laws are passed to regulate the minutia of daily life. When shops can be open. Laws about who can work in which trade. Laws about who can use "public" infrastructure and when. Laws about what you can do with your pets. Laws down to what colors and fabrics your cloths are made of. And, of course, laws to protect their hold on power.

It turns out that people in power at local levels are nosy parkers who will try to force everyone they can to live the way they think is best. And they become generationally powerful. Sad but it's the historical reality.

Personally, my speculation is that it's because most people try to exercise all the power they're given. And since those local lawmakers don't have to think about "big" issues in a broader sense, they just make laws about "small" issues and deal with big issues only when they are pushed in front of them.

According to Rawls, to make good laws, we need to make laws behind a veil of ignorance - law makers need to consider things at an abstract level. It's very difficult to get that level of abstraction when everyone knows the particularities of everyone else at the local level.

There's also the question of the size of the talent pool that you draw your leaders from.

Well 2 things.

First I stated smallest practical, and with that it would depend on the power we are talking about, so the smallest practical for national defense would be the federal government, the smallest practical for professional licensing may be state level, etc.

Also in that idea of federalism also include natural individual rights that can never be violated at any level of governance, including property rights like when you can open your shop...

And when we talk about American style federalism one must also recognize the checks and balances of power that over the last 100 years or does have been worn down but not eliminated. These checks need to be strengthen so no single arm of the government can end up tyrannical like your fear

I recognize the possibility of local tyranny, I think American federalism has checks in it for that. However even in the worst example of city tyranny that is far and way preferable to the alternative of an all powerful federal government

Fun fact, US states have more freedom from the Federal government than EU member states have from the EU.

US states can basically just ignore or refuse to enforce the federal law with little to no consequences (immigration sanctuary states/cities, Texas no longer treating suppressors as NFA items, etc.), but EU member states can't. EU law is binding to all of them and there's no escape from it.

That's quite a stretch.

US states cannot just ignore federal law - unless the federal law is deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court - a federal institution.

There are effectively no limits to US federal powers - while the treaties governing the EU enshrine the principle of subsidiarity[1] - and the powers granted to the EU are specified in treaties. A topical and obvious example is that the current Roe vs. Wade controversy just couldn't happen in the EU - as it's unrelated to trade or competition, the EU has no competence in this area. Or the idea of the EU imposing a health care system like the Affordable Care Act or deciding drug laws or gun control laws is unthinkable.

An individual cannot be arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned for breaking EU law the way the feds can do in the US, regardless of state law. There are no EU prisons.

By any measure the US is far more centralized than the EU - money is power as they say and 64% of government receipts in the US are at the federal level while the EU budget represents only 2% of government spending in the block.

[1] - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/7/the-pri...

> or deciding drug laws or gun control laws is unthinkable.

They have. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_(EU)_2021/555

This stupid thing almost caused Switzerland to leave the Schengen area, and it upset a lot of countries that didn’t want anything to do with it.

At least the complete ban on handguns (that the Netherlands wanted) didn’t happen.

As a firearms enthusiast in the EU, this actually upset me. Not that it affects me too much in the country where I live (I just can’t have 30rd mags, which is stupid, but it could have been a lot worse).

> There are effectively no limits to US federal powers

There is. The 10th amendment. Of course, there’s the commerce clause, that’s been abused ad infinitum.

"A topical and obvious example is that the current Roe vs. Wade controversy just couldn't happen in the EU - as it's unrelated to trade or competition"

The US Federal government has been very crafty in associating just about anything to "interstate commerce"[1] and thereby expanding its power enormously.

I'm sure the same thing could happen in the EU given some creative lawyering and a judiciary willing to swallow their arguments.

It's the appointment/election of particular judges and their willingness to craft or go along with certain arguments and interpret laws in certain ways that is really at the crux of how nations are governed.

Like the old saying goes: It's not votes that count, but those who count the votes. Likewise, it's not the laws that matter, but those who interpret the laws.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause

EU budget is far craftier than that

member state departments that are under its sole control are still funded by national budgets

the 2% is just the head of the snake

The EU budget is tiny - under €150B euro per year[1]. And what's more it has being falling in absolute terms in the last number of year.

While the US federal government spends over $20 trillion a year. This isn't comparable at any level - regardless of any snake-anatomy analogy.

I'm not sure what your definition of a "member state department" is? But knowing something of the political set-up in a number of EU countries, none are under the "sole control" of the EU (commission I guess you mean?).

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/eu-budget/eu-budget-added...

Your point still stands, but US federal spending is more like $4-7 trillion depending on the year. I assume you went based on Google’s answer box, which somehow confuses total GDP with government spending.

that's because agencies used to implement federal policy (e.g. the FDA) are attributed to the federal government budget,

whereas the EU member state equivalents that implement EU policy get attributed to national budgets

the EU doesn't fund enforcement of the GDPR, the national information commissioners do

not having to pay to implement its policies makes the EU look many, many times more efficient than it actually is

Doesnt the EU pass unfunded liabilities back onto the member states?

Meaning the EU will pass a law or regulation or program that the member states then have to fund with domestic taxes?

Generally speaking for the federal government, if they want to pass a program or requirement the federal government must also pay for that, for example the federal government could not require the state governments to put in bike lane on all road with out giving the states the money to do it.

That is why the Federal government is so large..

Also defense spending, We actually honor our NATO treaty by spending no less than 3% of our GDP on national defense, something the EU nations never do

>>US states cannot just ignore federal law

They absolutely can and do. State government are under no compulsion to enforce federal law, nor do they have aid federal law enforcement. Sure the FBI can still arrest you but as a practical matter the federal government relies heavily on local law enforcement for support in their efforts and task forces.

The state governments can neuter federal enforcement by refusing to supply personnel and equipment or other support to federal law enforcement task forces and actions

Conversely the federal government also supplies (i.e bribes) local law enforcement with money, and gear to grease the wheel for that support.

The supremacy you are referring to with the Supreme court is about when Federal Law and State law conflict then Federal law would win over State Law. Personally I think this is bad but until there is a constitutional amendment to change it that is the reality. However that supremacy does not mean state law enforcement or governments must enforce federal law, only that they can not overrule/supplant a federal law with their own

>> A topical and obvious example is that the current Roe vs. Wade controversy just couldn't happen in the EU - as it's unrelated to trade or competition

Well according to the Current Draft our federal government did not have the power either. It is funny you mention trade, you do know that ACA is a trade regulation the constitutional power that allows ACA to exist is the interstate commerce clause of the US Constitution, that was MASSIVELY expanded in power by the court in the abomination / disgraceful 1942 Wickard decision which effectively made every activity a commercial interstate activity that can be regulated by the federal government.

Personally if the court is in the mood for over turning precedent someone should take a case to them aimed squarely at over turning that abomination, putting the federal government back into their proper scope and place

On the other hand, I still remember how, back in the 1980s, U.S. states that were reluctant to raise beer-drinking age from 18 to 21 were brought to heel: no federal funds for highways, I think it was.

> EU law is binding to all of them and there's no escape from it.

Only in theory, in practice EU countries break EU law all the time, with minimal consequences. Some like Poland even openly, it recently said something like "we'll rather pay the fine than respect this particular EU law". EU states remain fully sovereign.

The EU projects power in the same way the Federal government projects the majority of its power: under the threat of withholding funding for large projects

this is the only sane way forward.

Yes, you are living in le cyberspace.

I don't think there needs to be any discussion. The 10k programmers living as nomads can get a PO box.

Problem solved. No need to reorganize society for the 0.001%.

This is incorrect. I am a digital nomad w/ a PO box and it's not accepted by many financial institutions that do KYC. My credit union requires me to list a "real" address. My credit card company required me to list a permanent address as well. Any time there's a fraud alert on my of my accounts & I have to provide proof of residence, there's a good chance submitting a document w/ my PO box will not be accepted.

I use my dad's address for my permanent residence. But since I'm not on the utility bills, it can be hard to provide true residence. In one case, I had to write up a lease agreement & buy renter's insurance to get one of my accounts unlocked. They wouldn't accept a bank statement, my driver's license, or voter registration card. It was a real pain in the ass, and resolving it took a good 2 weeks.

I do this exact same thing. Though, I have the benefit of sharing a name with my father so proof of residency had had never been an issue. It feels like cheating but it's so damn convenient lol.

You have hacked the system. Bravo.

At least in MA for a driver's license, there are a lot of documents that can be used for proof of residency including things like cell phone and auto insurance bills.

Lots of people's names aren't on utility bills. They may be sharing a place with others or utilities may be included in the rent.

Things you can't do with a PO box and no fixed residential address: get a driver's license; vote; prove to the last place you were resident that you're no longer resident and don't owe them taxes anymore; get insurance (vehicle, medical options severely limited); get a PO box in the first place.

Do we want people with no address voting? I could think of all kinds of problems if people could just roam around voting in places where they have no skin in the game.

Because just letting people pick where they want to be taxed/sued/regulated doesnt work. Laws change from one place to another. Where you live matters to which laws apply to you. Where your bank account lives matters to which laws apply to it. Would you rent a london appartment to someone if you might have to sue them in Quebec should they fail to pay rent?

I don't think OP necessarily meant what they said on an international scale.

The first step would be to avoid the requirement when in the same city, state or country. To the extent possible, if there are legal reasons, maybe those should be reviewed. There are options for sure.

Why would you have to sue them in Quebec? Legal persons work exactly like this. And they are able to rent stuff just fine, last time I checked.

Chile has a great system which guarantees a free bank account linked to your national ID called Cuenta RUT. It has some limits like only a debit card and a max value you can store there but I think it’s a fantastic idea. You just need to walk in to any branch with your ID and you’re all set with an account you can receive and send payments from. If you need something more from your bank account - it stands to reason you have the necessary documentation to apply for a ‘regular’ bank account which most do.

Even foreigners with any kind of work permit get this ID called a RUT and are eligible.

Venezuela just imemented something like this as well.

> Chile has a great system which guarantees a free bank account linked to your national ID called Cuenta RUT.

To me this reads as a dystopian nightmare. I want a bank account not associated with me in any way digitally or on paper; where I have total control.

Otherwise the government can seize my assets at a whim.

Funny story, in IL I have a bank account with chase. They decided to close the account because it wasn’t active (making regular deposits) (I’d do yearly deposits and use it to pay static bills) AND give it to the state. So the state of IL took custody of my bank account, without warning. I then received something in the mail I had to respond to within 10 days to get it back. I filed the paperwork, but nothing. Money just gone. I’m currently fighting to get my money back.

Anyway, the point is political actors can debank people they disagree with (see Wikileaks) and destroy them. Ideally, that wouldn’t be possible. The government should answer to the people, not control their people.

Sounds like you would consider the entire world dystopian then. I don't think there's any country, with the possible exception of a few failed states, that lets you have a bank account that isn't tied a real person.

You can actually do it in the US to an extent. Basically create a LLC with owners masked. Enable an authorized user to be an attorney and register with bank. Then use bank and routing number.

You can also use crypto and have a crypto wallet.

Prior to 9/11 it was far easier and widespread among elites to have effectively anonymous bank accounts.

Considering the evil those are used for, I would consider it more dystopian than a government sponsored bank account.

There are a multitude of ways to claim unclaimed money that the government holds. I've used it to claim $15 before, it was easy. https://www.usa.gov/unclaimed-money

This process is not dystopian in the least. It's functioning system put in place by the government to help people.

Political actors can and do seize assets in private banks too. Private banks are also subject to laws.

Interesting that the selection of branches includes Belgravia and Notting Hill Gate, two of the most expensive areas in the UK

The branch list does not include Camden Town where there are homeless people sleeping in the streets near HSBC.

The underlying issue here is that Covid has accelerated the transition to cashless digital first transactions that are controlled by private entities that have their own agenda.

> Notting Hill Gate, two of the most expensive areas in the UK

That's not really how London works though: less than a mile north of Notting Hill Gate you start to hit some areas of serious poverty: https://jamestrimble.github.io/imdmaps/eimd2015/ is a good tool for exploring.

This is somewhat inaccurate; Maybe if it's updated to account for recent years

The masses of council estates around notting hill are probably poorer now than in 2015.

The cost of living of an area of London don't really correlate (in the way you're suggesting) to if homeless people can exist there.

HSBC were the ones who blackholed my request to open a new account for monthly rent deposits (because I was going to be co-living).

It was months of back and forth before they finally told me that I had offhandedly mentioned my salary and they wanted proof of that. Despite never needing proof before, and despite them being the bearer of my bank account so they could see this. I had to refuse to leave the HQ on Fleet Street for 4 hours before they even told me that.

They wouldn’t accept my payslip pdf as proof. So I walked across the street to Barclays and opened 3 accounts on the spot and never looked back.

Ironically to this topic, I had to close that account when I left the UK because I didn’t have a UK address. But HSBC handled my case really badly, I nearly lost my accommodation because of their opaque stalling (I need to prove direct debit before move-in). So I would never go back.

HSBC are notorious bastards and I fired them ages ago.

They transferred £2000 out of my account randomly one day with no cause or explanation when there was £118 available in it. The next day they froze the account and a specific contact at HSBC forced me to make a repayment arrangement for the money. I refused and opened a dispute and it took me 14 months to get it back and all fees incurred for entering an unarranged overdraft. It ruined my credit rating for 3 years. Every contact I made with them was handled by someone utterly incompetent or disinterested in solving the problem even when I involved a solicitor.

Never an apology, never an explanation, never a true resolution.

NEVER work with HSBC. ALWAYS keep your finances distributed between multiple accounts.

With Santander mostly now who so far, touch wood, have succeeded in not fucking anything up. Halifax as a backup.

I went through a bad mental and financial episode 15 years ago and was really struggling to keep my account in good order. All the advice I heard was call your bank, explain your position and they will help you sort it out.

So I did that and the way HSBC helped me was to immediately cancel all my cards so I was left high and dry. Since my problems had only just begun I realised my credit record was still good and opened an account with Barclays the next day who were more than happy to issue me cards and a line of credit.

The moral of this story is that if you have financial problems do not tell your bank.

The core business of banks is trading money-right-now for future-money and vice versa.

So if you have the type of financial problems where you need money-right-now but have some good future-money to offer in exchange, they'll be glad to help you make a deal (and vice versa for investments), and you should absolutely talk with your bank about such problems.

However, if you have the type of financial problems where both money-right-now and future-money are lacking, then yes, no bank is going to be helpful there.

They'll only help you if you qualify for a product they can sell you.

Diversifying your banking lowers your risk or being locked out of an account, but increases the risk of data and identity theft somewhat, as various digital copies of your IDs and other data now reside on even more servers, creating a larger attack surface in case of a breach of one of the banks.

It's fine. The credit agencies already leaked all of everyone's info so we don't have to worry anymore.

Working in the sector it’s everywhere already even if you have multiple bank accounts or not. The banks are by far the least of your worries.

> ALWAYS keep your finances distributed between multiple accounts.

always get biten in the hand, when the bank you trust with 90% of your savings decides to lock your account or wtv

never again, keep it distributed as much as possible

Opening a bank account as a fresh immigrant before the age of neobanks was a nightmare. In my desperation I even called a private bank in Jersey only to be told a need a whopping 5M pounds deposit to open an account. After visiting 20+ branches in person in London, one manager took pity on me and opened a business account. I had all paperwork fully ready, they just weren't interested, or at least I wasn't aware of the 'dance' required to open an account. You couldn't just walk in an open one. You needed an appointment for another day.

The hard part opening a bank account in UK as a fresh immigrant is providing a proof of address. The easiest way is to show your NINo paper (SSN equivalent). It will take you about 3 months to get that paper, so you need to manage somehow without a UK bank account during this period.

I had no problems, opening the account online and only showing up to the branch for the final papers, but I had that NINo paper. Maybe you chose the "wrong" banks? Some like Lloyds are much more accommodating to immigrants and have few requirements.

My experience was exactly the opposite. Being a new immigrant in UK, Barclays handed me a list of required documents and also made it clear I needed a NI number (UK tax number) before I could open an account. At this point I did not have an account I could get my salary paid in.

Walked across the street to HSBC and all they needed was a letter from my employer and I had my account in a few hours.

In the EU, you have a right to open a bank account:

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr...

Sadly, Boris fixed this for the UK.

This sounds good in theory, but the way it’s implemented in Poland is a bit of a joke. The basic account must be your only bank account in Poland. You need to visit a bank branch to open it (for any other accounts, you can usually just take a selfie and a photo of your ID card), banks tend not to promote its existence and hide it in unguessable places on their websites, and there are some other random limitations (eg. no e-government access, no Google Pay). The basic account is free, has a free debit card, and has five free operations and five free ATM withdrawals. But normal accounts with cards cost nothing if you have some minimum usage, standard transfers done in online banking are free, and withdrawals in the bank’s own ATMs are usually free too.

The effect? Less than ten thousand basic accounts existed in 2020, two years after their introduction. (source in Polish: https://serwisy.gazetaprawna.pl/finanse-osobiste/artykuly/14...)

Banks routinely offering a better account than basic minimum is to their credit and expected in an even slightly competitive sector, not a joke at all. That in other countries it needs to be legislated is weird.

UK law requires its 9 largest banks to offer fee-free basic bank accounts[1]. While that's not the same as a legal right to an account, it ensures people with poor credit history have access to banking -- it's pretty inclusive but IIRC does require an address -- the 'no fixed address' approach fixes that.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/basic-bank-account...

The "you can be refused an account if you do not comply with EU rules on money laundering and terrorist financing" line is key here; this requires an address. This is also what leads to the catch-22 of "you need a bank account to rent something" and "you need an address to get a bank account".

Things are a lot easier now with IBAN though, and a bank account is less of a hard requirement than it was 15 years ago.

Sure but this is for citizens where I'm guessing OP was on a working visa.

The first line in the link says it’s for anyone residing legally in the EU. Not just citizens.

Same in Canada. The regulation is called "access to basic banking" [0]

[0] https://cba.ca/newcomers-to-canada

"....if they meet the identification requirements set out in the Bank Act."

Not sure I see a difference?

Identification does not require a fixed address, and it's not like the UK "no fixed address bank account" discussed in the original article can be opened without a proper ID.

Understood, but the challenge of getting documentation for ID can be as significant as having a permanent address.

In the USA, you don't have a right to a bank account.

In most cases, unless you bounced a check (There is a separate system banks use on checks. It not tied to credit agencies.) you can get an account by walking in with any check, or money, though.

Many of our poor are stuck with Payday, with their outrageous fees.

Some homeless shelters offer p.o. boxes. Very few sadily.

All the Covid fun money blown out of tee shirt bazokas to fraudsters, and big healthy businesses; none went to people without an address. None.

> In most cases, unless you bounced a check (There is a separate system banks use on checks. It not tied to credit agencies.) you can get an account by walking in with any check, or money, though.

ChexSystems is a credit agency. They just specialize in one data point (as of now).

It’s easy to say that poor people make (or are forced to make) terrible financial decisions. But that may not entirely be the case and we may be missing some of the advantages of those decisions. See for example http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good-dea...

Cashing a check takes 6 weeks in the UK. Not many people can wait that long for their salaries to show up.

I had the same problem with Barclays (a long time ago...) when moving to the UK, they wouldn't accept a letter from my employer and they wouldn't accept a rental agreement either as proof of address. Solution: the confirmation letter that I received from the NI people was finally good enough, so I could open an account only a month after I'd moved to the UK! Btw. the NI number is a must anyway, so it's just that it takes some time until you get it.

This is a direct consequence of there being no official central registration of one's address in the UK, unlike in many other countries. You might call Austria bureaucratic for example, because you have to register within 3 days of moving (and another registration is necessary within 4 months), but then you get official papers that prove your address, so this never becomes an issue here, unlike in the UK.

Is the NI really a must in UK? I have heard of people working there that are working only for a few years in academia who don't have an NI - or at least so they claim.

I lived there just fine without one. I wasn't working, but rented a house and opened a bank account, I don't remember ever being asked for one.

Yes, of course, if you have the "money-honey", you don't work or expect maternity or jobseekers allowance, and you are not interested in state pension, you can get by without one :)

I just checked, and for healthcare you don't actually need it in the UK. In other EU countries you usually have to pay health insurance for yourself if you are not working (sometimes a LOT of money), but not in the UK.

I got a letter threatening me with a fine if I didn't register to vote, and I needed a NI number to register.

yes but you're taxed at some 'emergency tax' rate which is really high.

Same. Barclays gave me an error in their app at the end of their account opening process, telling me to take an appointment at the branch, but telling me I can’t take an appointment, then sending me a welcome email. I tried calling them but I can’t get beyond their voice recognition system that doesn’t understand what I call about, and this is their premier banking experience. I must say that I have no idea whether I have an account with them or not right now.

I also helped a friend who just arrived in the UK. The procedures are completely circular. You need a proof of address to open a bank account but you need to have a bank account to do anything that will give you a proof of address.

As for natwest their account opening procedure involves printing a blank pdf form, filling it by hand and going to the branch with it. Welcome to 1999!

When I opened an account with Barclays as an exchange student I was given a signed and stamped letter by the university and told to go to a specific Barclays branch nearby and ask for a specific person who would help me. I thought the whole circularity of the thing was just absurd, especially when on the other hand I could pay with contactless on the tube (very advanced at that time).

> Barclays gave me an error in their app at the end of their account opening process,

Don't take this personally, every Barclays customer experiences random error messages as an everyday benefit of banking with Barclays. The only good thing I can say is that they still have physical branches where you can walk in and talk to a person who is usually nice and helpful.

You can exchange your drivers licence and a tenancy agreement and those take care of the proof of address.

Isn't that the whole circularity problem - in UK often you need a bank account before you can get a tenancy agreement.

If you aren’t receiving support from Shelter or one of our other partners, you won’t be able to access the No Fixed Address programme.

Well, I hope it helps some people but color me unimpressed. It's hard to prove homelessness and some people don't qualify for services and etc.

I wish some bank would pull its head out of its butt, accept an email address as adequate contact info and let people pick things up at the local branch (like a new debit card).

Online banking is encouraged anytime you, say, try to call the bank these days. They have the capability to implement this.

They could do it quietly and not make it "a homeless program."

>accept an email address as adequate contact info

I wonder if the international anti terrorism / anti money laundering regulations are making that more difficult. For example N26 was under fire for not doing much to verify identities in this regard.

ID verification can be done with ID/driver's license or tax records though - the address shouldn't matter and as I explained in other comments the vast majority of documents requested as proofs of address are trivial to forge anyway.

Banks can't decide these things on a whim. They are heavily regulated.

Regulator here, previously in the industry. I'm utterly appalled at how much 'useless'(1) info banks require to provide a service as simple as opening an account. neither the Rgulator/Supervisor nor AML bodies require them to collect so much before providing so little. Most of the time, regulation = proportionality.

(1) unless they do data mining, but that's another story.

Regulators don’t just invent rules randomly. Banks are in regular communication with regulators about what (they think) the right rules should be.

Outside of the obvious money laundering issues, there are other regulatory reasons why a bank would need to verify where a person resides, including taxation, data management requirements and if the person is even allowed to have an account in the first place.

But I completely agree with your general point, in that banks could probably work with way less information than they are requiring now. For instance a valid ID with any proof that you reside in the country you open the bank account in should be enough, no need for an exact address, or proof of employment etc.

Currently most of their requests are to weed out low margin customers. Proof of it, there are actual banks that already work on a "prepaid" basis providing very little service outside of storing money, and they effectively only need an official ID and a phone number (provided the ID will have a residence and more info)

I'm sure they can't do that because it makes money laundering trivial. Makes it waaaaay to easy to invent fake people.

ID requirements would still apply (and be a serious obstacle to invent fake people), it's just about the address verification.

You don't need to invent fake people, just use the ID of a real one.

If someone opened a bank account with your ID and name, would you ever know? A checking account doesn't gain interest so there will be no tax filing about paltry amounts, and if they don't frame you or overdraft the account then or never use an institution that you'll ever use then what? Its not like the statements will ever come to your address.

Unlike USA, most countries have a more stringent ID system so that this scenario simply does not happen. Like, it technically can happen but in practice does not - I spent a few years working in a bank on fraud, and we had zero cases of a forged ID. We had attempts with stolen IDs (there's an electronic database of IDs reported lost/stolen, but there's a time gap until people report that), we had gangs trying to use homeless people (with their real IDs) for money laundering, we had all kinds of interesting fraud schemes but zero cases of forged IDs used to open accounts.

An ID is hard to forge (again, as far as I understand in USA it's different because USA doesn't have a proper ID system) - counterfeiting currency is simpler than passports, and has ways of remote verification (banks use it to e.g. verify when their customers have been declared dead which has all kinds of financial obligations to the institution) so you'd generally need to get someone in the actual government agency to issue a real fictitious ID; that's definitely possible but very rare, that's within the domain of sophisticated organized crime and costly/risky enough to make it not worth it for simple fraud - like, getting a real poor person with a real ID to do what you want is simpler and cheaper, so that's what criminals did.

Also it's risky to use, as forging IDs is a felony by itself, and you'd risk immediate arrest by going to a bank and trying to use it; I believe we had one fraudster arrested in the branch when trying to use a stolen ID, it was more than a decade ago so I don't remember the details.

So someone opening a bank account with my ID and name would require my passport being stolen without noticing it and, crucially, when I do notice it and report it (to get a replacement) the old ID is invalidated, that bank would get notified and the account would get blocked at that point as the fraudster can't provide the replacement ID. Of course, all of that isn't possible with a central registry of IDs which seems anathema to USA and UK, but is successfully used in many other countries.

Have you seen the scale of leaks over the past decade?

The point is that nobody would know that a stolen/copied id was being used and everyone gets to pat themselves on the back that the financial system is safe from illicit actors when they would have no way of knowing.

You can just go on forums like crimemarket.cn and find hundreds of people using fake IDs to open bank accounts in Germany. It's really not unusual at all in Europe. Banks don't do much to verify IDs, they almost never even check basic security features like OVI and OVD. Usually they don't even bother with UV.

Anyone can print flawless Romanian ID cards with an inkjet printer and some teslin sheets at home, those are valid everywhere in Europe and you can even safely fly with them (outside of Romania, obviously) if you feel so inclined.

The printing inside the country is so inconsistent that they're literally impossible to authenticate offline https://temp.sh/oZGbx/ROMANIAID.pdf

Have you seen what Greek ID cards look like?

Every day, thousands of bank accounts are opened around Europe with fake IDs.

> Also it's risky to use, as forging IDs is a felony by itself, and you'd risk immediate arrest by going to a bank and trying to use it

Except not really because you'd just make sure that the ID is good before you go to the bank. Just compare against a real one or check on PRADO.

I remember moving to the UK at 19. I was room sharing so had no bills in my name. I had no job yet, so no payslip. Only documentation was a British passport.

I eventually gave up trying to find a bank that would do passport only bank accounts. And just forged a few utility bills. HSBC, despite being the most onerous bank in terms of demanding documentation was the most lax in actually doing any due diligence.

The problem is that there's ultimately no due diligence you can do on a utility bill that can't be defeated by a fraudster. No utility will answer a call to confirm/deny someone's details (as it can be abused), and even then, utilities that don't rely on a physical location (wireless telecoms/internet) themselves can't prove (and don't particularly care about) the address they have on file so even a legitimate utility account doesn't guarantee the account holder actually has access to that address.

The banks are only requiring them to cover their ass because the country seems to have accepted the idea that a utility bill is somehow an authoritative document, so they can claim their due diligence was up to scratch (well they're not wrong, as you can't reasonably do any better) if things go wrong.

Monzo will do this; I signed up for a bank account without a permanent address, and had one within 30 mins of arriving in the UK. They still require an address to mail you your card (so not the same target market as the OP), but it wasn’t too onerous.

This is basically saying “We are going to allow you to participate on society just a little as long as you follow the rules and is associated with these institutions we approve”.

How is this not considered a violation of human rights and dignity? Oh I forgot… gotta keep those unwashed 87% of the world population out of our pretty financial system.

> follow the rules and is associated with these institutions we approve

Isn't that the definition of a society?

Depends on who "we" is -- here, a bank is saying it is their prerogative to decide your access to banking based on arbitrary private charities that they like

As a matter of fact it is their prerogative. This indicates, i'd say, a failure of the state to provide access to what is now a basic need (banking).

Do people who are convicted of financial-related crimes (like money laundering) deserve access to banking too? Just curious how absolute this right to banking should be.

Yes, banking is a requirement for proper participation in society, and we definitely want convicted felons to be able to properly participate in society once they get out of prison (otherwise what's the point of letting them out?) so they should deserve access to banking, and in EU they do have that right.

It might reasonable to deny a known fraudster access to credit, but they should have access to a bank account, for example, to make electronic payments for their rent and utilities.

I suspect that the bank is actually trying its best to supply services to the indigent without running afoul of a strict regulatory regime. You make it sound like they’re being intentionally unreasonable out of some sense of cruelty.

In America we call this a credit score: a black box system that nobody, not even the credit agencies, can describe or understand. Obligatory dhh/Apple Card Twitter thread on this subject - https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1192540900393705474

Yup, for the longest time I've maintained we entered a cyberpunk society when credit scores were introduced. An absolutely soulless abomination of a system designed to treat you as a number and not as a human.

Most of the financial system is nothing more than money laundering for cartels and corrupt oligarchs. We need to walk away from the brick and mortar banking institutions.

Does the UK government really leave this to private institutions and their "partner charities"? In the Netherlands the government will just give you a PO box if you're homeless.

In the US, a PO Box is not a valid address for some things. I believe this includes voting and banking.

This is an issue for some Native Americans who have a PO Box as their only address on the reservation and have difficulty exercising their right to vote because of it.

Good idea. Given that in many (most?) countries the post/mail system is a part of the state apparatus I think it's only right that every citizen automatically be given a P.O. box address as an enumerated positive right.

It's not necessarily that easy; the city refused to give me anything as I wasn't "properly homeless". I wasn't allowed to use a forwarding address ("briefadres"). But I also didn't have a fixed address or bank account and people were unwilling to rent to me because of that. It took me a long time to get things sorted; everyone basically just shrugged.

Things were actually easier when I moved to the UK a few years ago. If you don't have a registration in The Netherlands you really can't do anything, and if the municipality doesn't want to give you one you're screwed. In the UK at least things are ways around things (which are strictly speaking not necessarily legal, such as forging a utility bill, but needs must...)

I keep hearing "In the Netherlands" as a reply to any social dilemma.

Surely, not everything is paradise in the Netherlands...

Of course, Netherlands sucks in many aspects, so (tongue in cheek) if even a place like Netherlands has a working solution for some problem, then it can't be that high bar to pass for any proper country, can it?

In France it’s integrated in the system, charities can be the address of the homeless people they follow, and that address can be used for almost any red tape.

Stay away from HSBC if you value your money and sanity. *unless you’re a drug cartel; I hear they get great service.

Valuing your money has nothing to do with it, your money is just as safe with them as with any other major bank.

> If you aren’t receiving support from Shelter or one of our other partners, you won’t be able to access the No Fixed Address programme.

I mean basically this should be called "We Let You Use Our Partners' Address Bank Account".

Sure, but since one of those partners is a homeless charity, it means "you can have a bank account whilst homeless" which is potentially a big deal to a homeless person trying to save some money.

(It isn't particularly useful to me, who lives full time on a mobile boat, but that's more of a "first world problem")

What about digital nomads? Not my situation, but still interesting.

It seems froma banking perspective an address is more secure than most forms of identity. This makes sense as it is very hard (though not impossible) to pretend you live at an address that is not directly sympathetic to you for a long period of time.

So here HSBC seem to be saying - if you are working with a charity (ie. have a case worker), and that charity vouches for you, then we've done the dance that makes it less of an issue for the charity to help you with an address. but you still have an address; its just the charities' address.

This is a good solution for homelessness. Its hacky, it will miss people, but it is quick.

I expect the path to getting digital nomads a verifiable address via some kind of service will be a long one; and being able to bank without an address even longer.

> It seems from a banking perspective an address is more secure than most forms of identity.

My Indentity card has chip and pin on it with my biometrix data. Some countries have cryptograpgic signatures in them.

You think addresses are secure? They are not even real. They are not a spesific location like GPS coordinates.

They are any written text that gets mailto you. An address of 'big yellow house' can be valid. The following 'address' was delivered:

“Lives across the road from the Spar, his ma and da used to own it, his mother was Mary and da Joseph, moved to Waterfoot after he got married, plays guitar and used to run discos in the parochial hall and the hotel in the 80s. Friends with the fella who runs the butchers in Waterfoot too.”'

https://static.guim.co.uk/images/favicon-32x32.ico

Postcards with 'England' can get delivered to the right person:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/christmas-card-addr...

For political reasons the U.K. (and US) are opposed to having identity cards so that isn’t really a workable solution. 8 think it’s also inaccurate to say that your address for the purposes of banking is ‘anything one can write on a letter to have the Royal Mail deliver it to you’. For example, you probably can’t give the address of a hotel where you’re staying.

They're also against having a population register.

Denmark has a population register ("CPR") [1], but does not have identity cards. It's required that you update your address in the register if you move house or emigrate.

Everyone also has a NemKonto ("EasyAccount"), which is a nominated bank account linked to the CPR (somehow) to receive payments from public institutions. That should make fraud of this type even more difficult.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Det_Centrale_Personregister

It's probably more accurate to say that it's any residential address that, in the case of the US, is in the USPS address database. Though there are probably exceptions.

I don't understand the issue considering HMRC has a record of every taxpayer? Are these people who are against ID cards also not paying taxes?

As fun as those ways to address a postcard are, they are not addresses that the bank will accept. The bank checks against a database of valid addresses; this is a common problem for people that have just built a house - most companies used cached databases so refuse to accept your address until it has trickled down.

Firstly, they have no authority to refuse - if I have just moved to a new address, the bank had a legal obligation to deliver my monthly statements, letters, etc. Their database is their problem, I have lived at new addresses and every serious institution has a way to manually enter abtirary address. You might get some nonsence from the customer service person and might have to speak to a manager to get it sorted, but if you show up with contract of purchase for a new house that states your address, they can't turn you away.

I have also been registered with several improtant institutions at an address that does not exist, because the telephone operator made a mistake - and the address was preposterous, they have put me in a house number 15000. So they don't check much.

Thirdly, addresses are not real. They are a myth, like simultanous events in special relativity, they do not exist in the real world but people who never had to deal with them much don't realise it.

What we call an address is a set of instructions to the postman, and if that set of instructions gets the post to your door, it is valid. Anyone paying attentions should have noticed that they often recieve post with slightly different permutations of their address. And ofcourse I have given a few silly examples. But there are genuene addresses that are unkowable. I lived in a building that spaned 3 streets, (one for each side, the last side was a house). It had 2 entances and 2 addresses.

There are addresses that are not a {street}{housenumber}, there are addresses that are a grid and no map software knows how to deal with them

And lastly there are houses that have no 'official' address! A lone hamlet near the coast might have no name at all.

So the only way to determine if an address is real, is to sent a letter, and to see if it arrives.

>A lone hamlet near the coast might have no name at all.

In the US, a lot of addressing was rationalized to support E911 service. So for example, a "camp" (i.e. a cabin without utilities) I would sometimes rent used to just have a name. But at some point it got an address on the dirt road it sits on. They also did things like change a road segment name if there was a gap between it and another segment with the same name.

> It seems froma banking perspective an address is more secure than most forms of identity.

I disagree, an address is trivially falsifiable compared to something like an ID or tax record (both of which the government can actually authenticate, and I'd expect/hope that financial institutions have a way to verify them that way).

The concept of a useless, trivially-falsifiable "proof of address" became a standard in the country so what the bank is doing here is merely covering their ass. As long as the entire country believes that "proof of address" is secure then they're in the clear - whether that stops any financial crime doesn't actually matter, especially when the government would rather focus on internet filters or endless gossiping about lockdown parties.

The bank needs an address because they verify the address themselves. They literally send your card and sensitive info to it.

If you try and register 100s of cards to one address, they would notice. If you try and register to 100s of different addresses you can bet your backside that a majority of the residents would return to sender.

Before your address is verified your account has much more stringent fraud flags.

Plus those accounts are going to be locked rather quick if large amounts start getting wired in.

I imagine accounts setup to help the homeless would make poor money mules.

Sort of the inverse situation making corporate accounts hard to get in Japan. Such an account can receive large volumes of cash without raising red flags.

Unless the rules have been tightened since then, fintechs such as Revolut and Monzo (back when it was a prepaid card) used to open accounts instantly with no KYC with low limits (which they get raised when you pass KYC), so I wonder why they wouldn't just do the same and skip the KYC step altogether.

Is this still happening? I feel all fintechs use KYC now. Even other services, such as Airbnb, oddly have started to use KYC.

Most digital nomads of my acquaintance bank in either their country of origin or in a regional hub. Getting access to an address sufficient to open a bank account is not terrifically difficult for socially established people who e.g. have family members in the middle class, capability to rent an apartment for at least a month and get a lease issued, etc.

There are a lot of people in the community who play a bit fast and loose with taxes but from a banking perspective they’re low risk retail accounts and, even if not in technical compliance for KYC, not out of bounds for tens of percent of the retail portfolio of many banks.

(Personal opinion disclaimer, yadda yadda, I would not identify as a digital nomad but have many acquaintances who do and am intimately personally and professionally acquainted with banking internationally.)

How can you skip (at least parts of) KYC requirements these days?

To me it seems KYC gets ever more pervasive: I had opened a bank account 5 years ago in the EU/UK space and 4 years ago closed it again. Now I opened an account again at the same bank - and the process was significantly more involved, more documentations needed to be provided for the same service, even though I had been their customer before.

The KYC requirement makes me feel uneasy from a privacy point of view: If it would be an eyes-only verification, I would be happy to provide a lot of data to prove I'm not a bad guy. But since the data gets stored and potentially forwarded to third parties, this significantly increases my risk for data and identity theft, as number of increasing data breaches show: https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/96667-the-top-data...

And there is also a long-term risk associated with excessive KYC data hoarding about individuals: The atrocities in Nazi Germany were in part possible because the government gathered data about the Jewish population (e.g. by enacting essentially KYC-like requirements for its citizens; though I guess through this lense the word should be "KYJ") and then subsequently used that data to round them up: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/locating-t...

Also, what do you mean by "not out of bounds for tens of percent of the retail portfolio of many banks"

Have a P.O. Box for correspondence. Or a super low-rent place that you're "domiciled" in.

Of course, it has to be in a tax haven. Otherwise there's no point in being a digital nomad in the first place.

>Have a P.O. Box for correspondence.

In the US, the USPS required you to prove your address before they will rent you a PO Box.

So I know someone who decided to move to the Caribbean, the UK bank stopped them from using internet banking, they could only transact with the bank using the phone. Why is this, well in the UK new legislation appeared in 2000 or 2001 iirc which allowed banks to carry out their own "security" related affairs which includes data sharing under the guise of security. Fraud and financial crimes were handled and investigated by the banks instead of the Police and if the banks felt there was a case only then did it get handed over to the Police for prosecution. Perhaps a bit of Jeremy Bentham philosophy at play but also Maslow's hierarchy of needs considering the wide picture of house prices, home ownership and the wider changes seen in UK society.

Its like GDPR creates the impression you have control over your data when you dont if its labelled as scientific or law enforcement data.

"Maslow's hierarchy of needs considering the wide picture of house prices, home ownership and the wider changes seen in UK society."

What do you mean by that? I cannot immediately see how house prices and home ownership issues drive diminishing banking privacy .

You are more likely to stay out of trouble if you own your house and have a family to support, unlike housing association tenants.

When it used to be the council providing the housing, some tenants learned they could get a new kitchen every two years, so right on the two year point, they simply smashed it up and the council fitted a new one. An example of the tenants gaming the system paid for by taxpayers. Although Margaret Thatcher is despised by many for doing things like selling off council houses to their tenants, it was a clever way to offload costs back onto the tenants as many bought their homes and started to get into "property" ownership.

The Northern Island troubles with the IRA largely died down because they made more money "on paper" by becoming landlords and gave up drug dealing and knee capping. A surgeon I spoke to once said some hospital in Ireland was the best for knee surgery and those skills have been lost because the IRA werent doing knee capping's any more!

So Maslow's hierarchy of needs is based on things like high priority need for food and shelter at the bottom of the pyramid and social media like facebook and instagram at the top to keep the ego happy with loads of bot followers. You see this everywhere now, even here on hacker news with the upvoting downvoting system, but Google's more recent removal of the dislike button is perhaps best known.

Psychological population control without having to fire a bullet or bomb, deploy police and the food regulations helping to manage the hormonal fluctuations to keep people docile. Populations controlled with the push of a button, clever init! LOL

As far as I know there is no legal way to be a digital nomad.

You have to live about 6months in the same country at the very least.

No you don't, where did you get this idea from? If you're referring to the EU tax residency logic, then that's based on where you spend the majority of your time, as well as where you have significant connections. Time alone isn't even the deciding factor. If we ignore the other factors for a moment, six months doesn't have any importance here either. You can live in 12 different countries in a year, a month at each if you'd like, for example. Your tax residency will be based on where you spent the most time between all those and then all the other additional factors.

> Your tax residency will be based on where you spent the most time between all those and then all the other additional factors.

Also false. Depends on the tax laws of the countries, but most likely you wouldn’t be considered tax resident anywhere, absent of having a strong economic interests in one particular country (and tax havens wouldn’t care about this, and the burden of proof would be on the tax authority).

I wouldn't bet on "most likely you wouldn’t be considered tax resident anywhere" - first, you have a default tax residency at your country of origin and the local law is likely to say that you lose it only if you can prove another tax residency.

Second, countries are likely to err on the side of caution which benefits them, so if you have unusual arrangements, then it's quite plausible that you are a tax resident of multiple countries and owe taxes to all of them - many countries have bilateral treaties to avoid dual taxation (which is the default outcome in many cases), so a digital nomad in an unusual situation might owe taxes to two or more countries, but are very unlikely to owe tax to no country.

"the burden of proof would be on the tax authority" - no, definitely not. The tax laws generally assert their claim on all income accrued in a certain country. The abovementioned 'non-dual-taxation' treaties have a process so that in reasonable scenarios the worker only pays tax in their home country, but if they don't apply (for example, because the 'home country' is a tax haven with whom there such a treaty isn't made), they owe tax where they earned the income. The mere fact that you are a tax resident somewhere else does not mean that you're exempt from local taxes, that requires fulfilling the criteria of those dual taxation treaties.

The weak point there is enforcement - there are all kinds of ways how a digital nomad can ensure that they won't be hassled much to collect the taxes they owe and they often can avoid paying them - but legally, they still owe them and are at the mercy of the authorities not finding out or not caring.

This. Tax laws are very complicated and the 6 months rule is more a rule of thumb than a "hard" rule. In practice, the tax authorities have a set of tests they perform, where the time spend in a country is just one item among many - and these rules vary from country to country.

Indeed. Every country is different. Being a "tax non-resident" doesn't necessarily mean you own no taxes either.

In Singapore, tax non-residents simply pay a different rate. To be exempt from income tax entirely, you need to work in Singapore for fewer than 60 days.

https://www.iras.gov.sg/taxes/individual-income-tax/basics-o...

It goes even deeper than that. There’s also the question on where is the money being made.

Say a hypothetical scenario, I’m self-employed contractor working through a corporation in, say, Panama, and I spend some 120 days a year in Singapore.

Would Singapore even subject me to any taxes?

But yes, ultimately one can be a digital nomad, not be a tax resident anywhere, and not be subject to any income or corporate taxes anywhere. You just have to be very particular about the countries you pick.

Yes they would tax you because the work was done in Singapore.

Would they know? Probably not.

But it’s not you earning any money, it’s an entity in Panama.

Just outlining the complexity of this.

You’d still have to pay the corporate tax rate in Panama I assume?

How would you eventually obtain beneficial use of that money? Ie how and when would it reach your personal bank account? If it won’t, how do you plan to use the money for your own gain? I assume (haven’t done any research) that Panama wouldn’t let you treat things like paying for Netflix, movie tickets, supermarket shops, clothes shops, etc as business expenses?

At some point you’d need to transfer it from Panama to yourself and at that point it would be taxable (capital gains or income tax depending on how you transfer). If you time things right you could be resident in a country without income tax eg UAE. But you would have still paid Panama corporation tax I believe.

Panama doesn’t tax income on foreign gains, so the corpo tax there would be 0%.

That’s not how Singapore defines “Singapore earned income”.

They define it by “where the work was completed” not “where income come from” or “country where you were hired”.

Many countries do it that way.

Edit: I misread. Well if your Corp doesn’t pay you I see the point, but you’re also the sole owner?

That list of countries is usually pretty thin if you also remove countries which forbid you of working while on a tourist visa.

Most countries actually don’t care about you working on a tourist visa, as long as it’s incidental to the travel and the work is online.

The US is the exception here, not the norm.

> The US is the exception here, not the norm.

That is incorrect. This is actually the norm in most countries in the world.

> Most countries actually don’t care about you working on a tourist visa, as long as it’s incidental to the travel

But it's not

> and the work is online.

The work being online just makes it better hidden and thus a more difficult fraud to detect but it has no incidence on the legality of the work.

This comes up periodically.

Generally speaking, events, meetings, etc. are fine in many countries with just a basic visitor's visa. (US, it needs to be a B-1 Business visa.)

However, as you point out, remote online work is hard to police. That said, you shouldn't say that remote work is the reason for your visit. And you should be somewhat discrete--e.g. not renting a co-working space.

I wish I could bank without an address or phone number. Just email me all correspondence.

How does account recovery work for those who lose access to their email?

The bank still needs to KYC and have loads of ID. I actually don't want my bank using my phone or my address as a recovery mechanism, neither of these is particularly secure.

You walk in a branch with a government-issued ID?

You call them and verify your identity like you normally do.

It is possible but I don't want to get downvoted for no reason.

Is being downvoted such a bad thing?

Interesting - could really help some people who do not have a fixed address. Great to see that an employment services firm, Reed in Partnership, is one of the partners who will be used to validate the candidate's authenticity - it can be a struggle for someone without a fixed address to get a bank account and it is often easier to initially get part time employment than it is to get a bank account or a lease in your own name. Lessors want a bank account, and banks want proof of a place of residence. However, where does the employer deposit the salary? I know this is a problem - I was in this precise position twenty years ago.

It's only for people who are "in the system" of poverty:

"If you aren’t receiving support from Shelter or one of our other partners, you won’t be able to access the No Fixed Address programme. View the list of supporting charities. To access the scheme, you'll need to call the charity, or visit their website and complete an online referral form."

AFAIK, South Dakota is the only state in the US where you can legally obtain residency and a driver license using a post office box, provided you spend at least one night in the state. In fact it is encouraged, and is the state in which most US travelers, RV'ers, etc have residency. Plus no state income tax. Low vehicle license and registration fees. NO vehicle inspection. Low insurance rates on health & auto. Indeed there are businesses that will support you with all your residency requirements (including mail scanning & forwarding) for an extremely modest fee (e.g dakotapost.net in Sioux Falls and choosesd.com in Spearfish). The SD banks will gladly open a bank account for you and your business(es) with such residency.

I thought this was about generating a new bank account number for every invoice based on the headline.

For context: UK businesses are more serious about requiring an official address than the US. In the US, you can just fill in any plausible address. Your parent's house or a friend's house is fine. It used to be important to be able to get mail sent there, but not really any more since you can get everything by email.

In the UK, you frequently have to provide a current tax or utility bill with your name and the address you're claiming, to show that you're the official owner / renter of that address. It's a considerable hassle when moving there.

> In the UK, you frequently have to provide a current tax or utility bill with your name and the address you're claiming, to show that you're the official owner / renter of that address.

This doesn't do anything to prevent fraud though - utility bills are trivial to forge and can't be validated in any way, though a lot of companies that don't deliver a physical product (wireless telecoms/internet) don't actually care about your address so bad guys can also obtain a "legitimate" fraudulent utility bill by opening a SIM-only contract in a phone shop with any address they desire.

> It's a considerable hassle when moving there.

Back when I was living in shared accommodation I had no utility bills in my name (everything was included in the rent) and I've had no issues with using a niche VoIP provider's invoices as proof of address - their invoices look like any other utility bill but obviously since it's VoIP it's not actually tied to an address and yet was accepted everywhere, proving once more the uselessness of this entire "proof of address" charade.

Yes, like many things it's a hassle for the rule-abiding without being much of an obstacle for fraudsters.

I find it strange that we are okay with business requiring our physical address. Maybe with some rare exceptions, I can't think of a good reason why these businesses need to know where we live. Even banks. Usually the reason given is security, anti money-laundering, anti-terrorism or whatever. But I think the real reason is government control and surveillance. We should not be okay with this.

In UK a government letter addressed to you is accepted as proof of address. Like the NINo paper (SSN equivalent). And UK gov doesn't require ownership proof on the address you provide to them.

are there any charities or organizations out there that are simply providing fixed addresses? I get that providing housing has a lot of challenges, but it seems like providing addresses to people for the sake of receiving mail and having an address to put on forms shouldn't be that difficult.

I'm not homeless, but I move relatively frequently and putting down my parents' address any time i need a more permanent address is a huge convenience for me

I'm some places, yes. But I don't think it's common.

I wish it were more common. Lack of a mailing address is a huge barrier to getting their lives back and this would be a seemingly low cost thing to do.

Most charities focus on "feeding a man a fish" while doing little or nothing to help them get a fishing pole and learn to fish, so to speak.

I imagine there would be quite a lot of legwork involved whenever the address gets implicated in things like fraud, collections, warrants, etc. so while it does seem like a charity could get in this business, the expenses would probably put an enormous dent in the previous allocation of resources (food, clothing, etc).

I don’t find it odd. It’s “normal”, in that it’s basically always been that way. They needed your address to contact you in a formal/reliable method: through the mail.

Yes we have other communication methods now but the requirement has stuck around.

Maybe it’s because it’s always been like that but I really don’t see the issue with it.

I’m the past I could provide whatever address I want. The bank wouldn’t care or check it, because why?

The new thing is that you have to prove you actually live at the address.

It sounds like you can think of good reasons, you just prefer a conspiracy theory.

This is something that really resonates with me - this should be a norm adopted by all banks, not the exception. Kudos to HSBC.

However, my interactions to date with the company have been riddled with signs that they are a dinosaur-corp, built on a foundation of inefficient and illogical processes, legacy tech, and Kafka-esque bureaucracy.

> To access the No Fixed Address programme, you must be experiencing housing or homelessness difficulties and receiving support from one of our partner charities.

If you aren’t receiving support from Shelter or one of our other partners, you won’t be able to access the No Fixed Address programme.

It's weird seeing this all of a sudden, when Monzo has for a long time not required a fixed address. They require an address just to get your card sent to, but nothing else (so you could get it sent to a hotel, P.O box etc).

I'm a pessimist but this probably has more to do with circumventing those pesky KYC and AML laws that HSBC keep getting fined over

I was an HSBC customer for a long time. One of the worst banking experiences I can imagine. Just FYI.

So, HSBC is now trying to catch up with Bitcoin?

Better late then never , I guess.

A required next step, for the removal of cash from society.

Although I don't do so often, I appreciate the ability to pay cash for many things if I want to. At least in the US, the continued availability of cash is likely to be very sticky. Although it's increasingly marginalized especially middle to upper class.

Removal of cash is a great way to further remove the population of its personal power and enable authoritarian forms of state.

Welcome to Sweden.

I happened to be in Austria, when this happened: https://orf-at.translate.goog/v2/stories/2204205/2204206/?_x...

If you had a bank card from a certain big Austrian bank ("Erste Bank"), that day you could not pay by card, nor get money from the ATM; basically you were locked out. Safe to say, chaos ensued for a number of hours, as many people had too little or no cash with themselves. I remember being at a cantine where a long queue had formed with people with the trays wanting to pay and cantine staff running desperately around with "name lists" to register people in return for their promise to pay when service resumed, which it did in the afternoon.

A cashless society is much more prone to black swan events.

Surprisingly I was told by acquaintances that the incident didn't make headlines the next day, and was casually mentioned among other political scandals.

You are correct but it is one in year or decade. Right... rest of the time all is good. people will opt for convenience.

One year (one day actually) in a decade comes close to the very definition of a black swan event. :)

And yes, people will opt for convenience, not rational behavior:

In some cases, that black swan event will cost more than the cost of inconvenience. For example in the US, it is "inconvenient" to retrofit buildings to make them earthquake-resilient, but when the earthquake black-swan hits -and it will hit for sure, the only question is when- damages will be huge, and costs as much as 4 times higher than investments in earthquake-resilience today: https://www.optimumseismic.com/earthquake-preparedness/what-...

I'm sure Kahneman & friends have a name for this cognitive bias that somehow makes it hard for humans to correctly assess the risk and cost for black swan prevention (sometimes, because of the rarity, these computations in principle can't be made). This type of cognitive bias seems also connected with difficulties humans have in thinking on time scales that exceed their own life spans ...

Lets be honest - not having cards working for a day is not the same as earthquake. Sure people will miss trains/rent etc. 1 or 2 business may go under but for 90 % people all will be fine. Heck I am sure if many shops/metro will be free if some one like erste bank or Sparkasse does not work.

Reminds me I should add some cash back to my wallet...

Easier to launder money this way.

Ugh. Whenever I see HSBC I think "These people should be in jail and their entire operation disbanded". Of course their annoying little pop-up is not GDPR compliant. And of course their little image-reformation attempt here has terms and conditions that make it impossible to actually, really use.

I know I'm not supposed to be dismissive, but I have nothing but contempt for HSBC.

No fixed address, but:

>>To access the No Fixed Address programme, you must be experiencing housing or homelessness difficulties and receiving support from one of our partner charities.

>>If you aren’t receiving support from Shelter or one of our other partners, you won’t be able to access the No Fixed Address programme.

If they're anything like the charities in North America, they work closely with the state, and receive most of their funding from it. So you have to become dependent on the state - effectively a ward - to qualify.

The true "no fixed addressed bank account" is a MetaMask wallet.

I thought it might be useful for people without a regular address like digital nomads, but it's not. It's specifically for people "experiencing housing or homelessness difficulties and receiving support from one of our partner charities." Still a good initiative.

now the time comes for poor man's money

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