[dest]

In France, if I am mot mistaken, you can legally have an account at the Banque de France. People go there when they got kicked from regular banks, like after having signed checks without having the money. Banque de France has become an heuristic for landlords to reject candidates, so having a right for bank account might not be enough.

[a3_nm]

You are thinking about the "droit au compte" (right to a bank account) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_au_compte but I think there may be some confusion. People exercise their "droit au compte" by making a request the Banque de France, but they do not have an account there: Banque de France designates some regular commercial bank which is then legally obliged to provide them with an account. The French Wikipedia page says that, in practice, this is usually La Banque postale: it's a pretty normal bank that I don't think anyone discriminates against.

[dest]

Thanks for those precisions

[reallydontask]

In the UK the biggest banks have to offer a free basic current account.

Requirements basically boil down to acceptable ID

[DanBC]

Basic bank accounts are not always available to people with a fraud marker against them.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-6367319/C...

[reallydontask]

I stand corrected.

I remember when my wife first moved to this country, it was extremely difficult for her to open a current account, I thought that the basic accounts would solve those problems and probably do.

They clearly don't solve all problems.

It is a bit odd though that this is the case as surely allowing people to use the accounts allow for the transactions to be traced, rather than the anonymity of cash.

Quite possibly there are good reasons, for the bank but on 5 hours of sleep so I can't come up with any :)

[DanBC]

Sorry! I wasn't meaning to correct anything. I just wanted to add a little snippet.

You're right that the Know Your Customer regs make it very hard for some people to open an account.

[lixtra]

And you think those landlords would rent to cash payers?

[DanBC]

In England many landlords would rent to someone who provides the entire 6 months + deposit or 1 year + deposit in advance in cash, if there was an explanation.

[ur-whale]

In France, you can't buy a car with cash. Not exactly a shining example.