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No Fixed Address Bank Account

242 points by acqbu 4y ago

kennydude 4y ago
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).
stevenjgarner 4y ago
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.
nivertech 4y ago
What about digital nomads? Not my situation, but still interesting.
- Normal_gaussian 4y ago
  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.
  - Danieru 4y ago
    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.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      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.
      - data_maan 4y ago
        Is this still happening? I feel all fintechs use KYC now. Even other services, such as Airbnb, oddly have started to use KYC.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    > 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.
    - Normal_gaussian 4y ago
      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.
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  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.
  - sfriedr 4y ago
    "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 .
    - Terry_Roll 4y ago
      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
- LunaSea 4y ago
  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.
  - Etheryte 4y ago
    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.
    - sgjohnson 4y ago
      > 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).
      - sfriedr 4y ago
        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.
        refurb 4y ago
        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-of-individual-income-tax/tax-residency-and-tax-rates/working-out-my-tax-residency https://www.iras.gov.sg/taxes/individual-income-tax/basics-o...
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  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.
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    >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.
- patio11 4y ago
  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.)
  - sfriedr 4y ago
    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-breaches-of-2021 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-the-victims 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"
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
m00dy 4y ago
now the time comes for poor man's money
cnxsoft 4y ago
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.
kevincox 4y ago
I wish I could bank without an address or phone number. Just email me all correspondence.
- meltedcapacitor 4y ago
  How does account recovery work for those who lose access to their email?
  - kevincox 4y ago
    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.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    You call them and verify your identity like you normally do.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    You walk in a branch with a government-issued ID?
- m00dy 4y ago
  It is possible but I don't want to get downvoted for no reason.
  - InCityDreams 4y ago
    Is being downvoted such a bad thing?
octoberfranklin 4y ago
> 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".
- notahacker 4y ago
  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")
Andy_G11 4y ago
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.
dijit 4y ago
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.
- vrdmn 4y ago
  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.
  - miohtama 4y ago
    In the EU, you have a right to open a bank account: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-products-and-services/bank-accounts-eu/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr... Sadly, Boris fixed this for the UK.
    - pards 4y ago
      Same in Canada. The regulation is called "access to basic banking" [0] [0] https://cba.ca/newcomers-to-canada https://cba.ca/newcomers-to-canada
      - refurb 4y ago
nraynaud 4y ago
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.
napier 4y ago
Stay away from HSBC if you value your money and sanity. *unless you’re a drug cartel; I hear they get great service.
- jstx1 4y ago
  Valuing your money has nothing to do with it, your money is just as safe with them as with any other major bank.
version_five 4y ago
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
- sandworm101 4y ago
  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?
  - Avamander 4y ago
    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.
  - literallycancer 4y ago
    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.
- Avamander 4y ago
  > 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.
ulzeraj 4y ago
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.
- johnywalks 4y ago
  > follow the rules and is associated with these institutions we approve Isn't that the definition of a society?
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    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).
    - unreal37 4y ago
      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.
      - PeterisP 4y ago
        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.
    - otterley 4y ago
YuccaGloriosa 4y ago
A required next step, for the removal of cash from society.
- anticristi 4y ago
  Welcome to Sweden.
  - sfriedr 4y ago
    I happened to be in Austria, when this happened: https://orf-at.translate.goog/v2/stories/2204205/2204206/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp 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.
    - davidmitchell2 4y ago
      You are correct but it is one in year or decade. Right... rest of the time all is good. people will opt for convenience.
      - sfriedr 4y ago
        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-is-the-cost-of-disaster/ 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 ...
Tarq0n 4y ago
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.
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  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.
- unreal37 4y ago
  I keep hearing "In the Netherlands" as a reply to any social dilemma. Surely, not everything is paradise in the Netherlands...
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    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?
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  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.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  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...)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwmeariver1 4y ago
- sokoloff 4y ago
  If you don’t like the local government, in the extreme you can move. If you don’t like the world government, where are you going to go? (Same argument applies today to the EU or US Federal government as well, for citizens who might be practically confined by the policy of those governments and unable to move outside their purview.)
  - throwmeariver1 4y ago
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      It’s also way easier to press your agenda in your family or in your friend group. That’s a feature, not a bug, IMO. A powerful and inescapable government seems way worse than deciding between living with, trying to change, or moving away from your local government.
      - throwmeariver1 4y ago
        You seem to have absolutely no experience with the governance of rural America and the abuse of it. Just look how Scientology or the Mormon church are taking over cities. There is no way to fight back if a giant entity with money and questionable morality decides to get involved.
        andai 4y ago
        Now imagine the same thing on a global scale.
        throwmeariver1 4y ago
shrumm 4y ago
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.
- danlugo92 4y ago
  Venezuela just imemented something like this as well.
- lettergram 4y ago
  > 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.
  - throwaway787544 4y ago
    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 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.
DoreenMichele 4y ago
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."
- nightski 4y ago
  Banks can't decide these things on a whim. They are heavily regulated.
  - dan-robertson 4y ago
    Regulators don’t just invent rules randomly. Banks are in regular communication with regulators about what (they think) the right rules should be.
  - digital_voodoo 4y ago
    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.
- andai 4y ago
  >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.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
cmroanirgo 4y ago
> 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.
sonthonax 4y ago
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.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  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.
- rmccue 4y ago
  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.
flower-giraffe 4y ago
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.
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > 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/ https://jamestrimble.github.io/imdmaps/eimd2015/ is a good tool for exploring.
  - _aaed 4y ago
    This is somewhat inaccurate; Maybe if it's updated to account for recent years
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      The masses of council estates around notting hill are probably poorer now than in 2015.
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  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.
fumblebee 4y ago
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.
tlb 4y ago
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.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > 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.
  - tlb 4y ago
    Yes, like many things it's a hassle for the rule-abiding without being much of an obstacle for fraudsters.
- 323 4y ago
  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.
- mdavis6890 4y ago
smokey_circles 4y ago
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
notatoad 4y ago
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
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  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.
- hunter2_ 4y ago
  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).
Animats 4y 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."
mdavis6890 4y ago
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.
- MBCook 4y ago
  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.
  - mdavis6890 4y ago
    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.
- Hnrobert42 4y ago
  It sounds like you can think of good reasons, you just prefer a conspiracy theory.
janandonly 4y ago
So, HSBC is now trying to catch up with Bitcoin? Better late then never , I guess.
imtringued 4y ago
I thought this was about generating a new bank account number for every invoice based on the headline.
CryptoPunk 4y ago
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.
rendall 4y ago
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.
thewileyone 4y ago
Easier to launder money this way.
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
I was an HSBC customer for a long time. One of the worst banking experiences I can imagine. Just FYI.

242 points by acqbu 4y ago

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).

stevenjgarner 4y ago

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.

nivertech 4y ago

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

Normal_gaussian 4y ago
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.
- Danieru 4y ago
  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.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    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.
    - data_maan 4y ago
      Is this still happening? I feel all fintechs use KYC now. Even other services, such as Airbnb, oddly have started to use KYC.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > 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.
  - Normal_gaussian 4y ago
    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.
Terry_Roll 4y ago
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.
- sfriedr 4y ago
  "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 .
  - Terry_Roll 4y ago
    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
LunaSea 4y ago
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.
- Etheryte 4y ago
  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.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    > 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).
    - sfriedr 4y ago
      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.
      - refurb 4y ago
        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-of-individual-income-tax/tax-residency-and-tax-rates/working-out-my-tax-residency https://www.iras.gov.sg/taxes/individual-income-tax/basics-o...
sgjohnson 4y ago
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.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  >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.
patio11 4y ago
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.)
- sfriedr 4y ago
  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-breaches-of-2021 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-the-victims 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"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

m00dy 4y ago

now the time comes for poor man's money

cnxsoft 4y ago

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.

kevincox 4y ago

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

meltedcapacitor 4y ago
How does account recovery work for those who lose access to their email?
- kevincox 4y ago
  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.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  You call them and verify your identity like you normally do.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  You walk in a branch with a government-issued ID?
m00dy 4y ago
It is possible but I don't want to get downvoted for no reason.
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  Is being downvoted such a bad thing?

octoberfranklin 4y ago

> 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".

notahacker 4y ago
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")

Andy_G11 4y ago

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.

dijit 4y ago

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.

vrdmn 4y ago
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.
- miohtama 4y ago
  In the EU, you have a right to open a bank account: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-products-and-services/bank-accounts-eu/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr... Sadly, Boris fixed this for the UK.
  - pards 4y ago
    Same in Canada. The regulation is called "access to basic banking" [0] [0] https://cba.ca/newcomers-to-canada https://cba.ca/newcomers-to-canada
    - refurb 4y ago

nraynaud 4y ago

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.

napier 4y ago

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

jstx1 4y ago
Valuing your money has nothing to do with it, your money is just as safe with them as with any other major bank.

version_five 4y ago

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

sandworm101 4y ago
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?
- Avamander 4y ago
  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.
- literallycancer 4y ago
  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.
Avamander 4y ago
> 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.

ulzeraj 4y ago

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.

johnywalks 4y ago
> follow the rules and is associated with these institutions we approve Isn't that the definition of a society?
- mjburgess 4y ago
  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).
  - unreal37 4y ago
    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.
    - PeterisP 4y ago
      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.
  - otterley 4y ago

YuccaGloriosa 4y ago

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

anticristi 4y ago
Welcome to Sweden.
- sfriedr 4y ago
  I happened to be in Austria, when this happened: https://orf-at.translate.goog/v2/stories/2204205/2204206/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp 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.
  - davidmitchell2 4y ago
    You are correct but it is one in year or decade. Right... rest of the time all is good. people will opt for convenience.
    - sfriedr 4y ago
      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-is-the-cost-of-disaster/ 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 ...

Tarq0n 4y ago

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.

DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
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.
unreal37 4y ago
I keep hearing "In the Netherlands" as a reply to any social dilemma. Surely, not everything is paradise in the Netherlands...
- PeterisP 4y ago
  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?
DoreenMichele 4y ago
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.
Beltalowda 4y ago
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...)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

throwmeariver1 4y ago

sokoloff 4y ago
If you don’t like the local government, in the extreme you can move. If you don’t like the world government, where are you going to go? (Same argument applies today to the EU or US Federal government as well, for citizens who might be practically confined by the policy of those governments and unable to move outside their purview.)
- throwmeariver1 4y ago
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    It’s also way easier to press your agenda in your family or in your friend group. That’s a feature, not a bug, IMO. A powerful and inescapable government seems way worse than deciding between living with, trying to change, or moving away from your local government.
    - throwmeariver1 4y ago
      You seem to have absolutely no experience with the governance of rural America and the abuse of it. Just look how Scientology or the Mormon church are taking over cities. There is no way to fight back if a giant entity with money and questionable morality decides to get involved.
      - andai 4y ago
        Now imagine the same thing on a global scale.
        throwmeariver1 4y ago

shrumm 4y ago

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.

danlugo92 4y ago
Venezuela just imemented something like this as well.
lettergram 4y ago
> 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.
- throwaway787544 4y ago
  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 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.

DoreenMichele 4y ago

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."

nightski 4y ago
Banks can't decide these things on a whim. They are heavily regulated.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  Regulators don’t just invent rules randomly. Banks are in regular communication with regulators about what (they think) the right rules should be.
- digital_voodoo 4y ago
  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.
andai 4y ago
>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.
- Nextgrid 4y ago

cmroanirgo 4y ago

> 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.

sonthonax 4y ago

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.

Nextgrid 4y ago
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.
rmccue 4y ago
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.

flower-giraffe 4y ago

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.

petesergeant 4y ago
> 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/ https://jamestrimble.github.io/imdmaps/eimd2015/ is a good tool for exploring.
- _aaed 4y ago
  This is somewhat inaccurate; Maybe if it's updated to account for recent years
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    The masses of council estates around notting hill are probably poorer now than in 2015.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
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.

fumblebee 4y ago

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.

tlb 4y ago

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.

Nextgrid 4y ago
> 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.
- tlb 4y ago
  Yes, like many things it's a hassle for the rule-abiding without being much of an obstacle for fraudsters.
323 4y ago
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.
mdavis6890 4y ago

smokey_circles 4y ago

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

notatoad 4y ago

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

DoreenMichele 4y ago
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.
hunter2_ 4y ago
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).

Animats 4y 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."

mdavis6890 4y ago

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.

MBCook 4y ago
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.
- mdavis6890 4y ago
  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.
Hnrobert42 4y ago
It sounds like you can think of good reasons, you just prefer a conspiracy theory.

janandonly 4y ago

So, HSBC is now trying to catch up with Bitcoin? Better late then never , I guess.

imtringued 4y ago

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

CryptoPunk 4y ago

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.

rendall 4y ago

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.

thewileyone 4y ago

Easier to launder money this way.

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

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