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My job is to help immigrants settle in Germany. This is a serious issue for a lot of immigrants. The documents they need to open a bank account (plastic reside
by nicbou 3y ago
My job is to help immigrants settle in Germany. This is a serious issue for a lot of immigrants.
The documents they need to open a bank account (plastic residence permit, address registration certificate) are not available to them, sometimes for up to a year.
The ways around it are poorly documented and change often as German banks tighten their KYC requirements.
- jacquesm 3y agoIronically those KYC requirements are there on account of the United States, not necessarily the Germans.
- expertentipp 3y agoWhen once I was deregistered from an address (Abmeldung), the German bank instantly went apeshit hysterical with "Are you American?" letters. At least half dozen of them ignoring all of my previous responses or feedback. Of course I have nothing to do with US and none of my personal details indicate that I do, I'm fully EU person.
- jacquesm 3y agoIndeed. US citizens moving to the EU regularly run into the fact that their citizenship makes it much harder to get a bankaccount (and sometimes even impossible). It's probably the biggest driver in people giving up their US citizenship (that and the ridiculous taxation rules).
- csomar 3y agoEveryone here is not seeing the elephant in the room. No country will implement KYC on foreign money. It's free money. Yet, we live in world where pretty much every country requires a residence (and a dozen other documents) to open a bank account except, uhm, the USA. I find the money transfer system created in Malaysia to be interesting. It started as a transfer system between banks, then an e-wallet that you can use to pay in stores, then they added a Visa card, then they integrated with Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand where you can pay locally with your MYR wallet. Now they added a remittance service that basically acts as a SWIFT transfer (though it looks expensive). It seems like they have found a way around the KYC rules. I wonder how long they can keep at it before they get hammered and if they can increase their Fx integrations to more countries.
- nicbou 3y agoSome are, some are not. The US tax reporting requirements for their citizens abroad made a lot of banks refuse American customers. But there are also other requirements that are not related. The most effective workaround at the moment is to choose a EU bank outside of Germany. This skips the requirement for a residence permit or a registered address, so people can land in Germany with a functional bank account. Another workaround is to rely on branch employees to be a little pragmatic and let immigrants open an account. These exceptions are naturally impossible to document, but they are a normal part of German bureaucracy. A third and last workaround a symbiotic relationship between a relocation consultant and a bank employee. They expedite the process and in return they get a steady stream of high-income customers.