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by buildfocus 264 days ago
For Spain at least, most banks have foreigner accounts you can open with a passport, and convert into a normal account once you have local id later. It's a mildly unusual setup (and a bit confusing when you're new) but it's pretty widely available and it's not a significant blocker. There's plenty of other challenges and structural disadvantages as an immigrant, but this one at least isn't too bad.

If anything, there's really a big advantage to it for the banks - most locals already have banking, immigrants are the one market where you can get new customers without having to push them past the effort/laziness of switching from their existing setup.

1 comments

It is not a problem to open a bank account with a foreign passport in the UK, and most banks have accounts for those who've just moved to the UK. Hundreds of thousands of people move to the UK every year...
However, you also need proof of address to open a bank account. Which someone moving to the UK won’t have yet. This limits their options of bank accounts.
Which has no relation to Digital IDs whatsoever... and again most banks have accounts that cater for this situation.
Allow me to repeat myself:

> This limits their options of bank accounts.

Now this:

> Which has no relation to Digital IDs whatsoever

Other countries use their ID systems for exactly this purpose, so I don't see how this has "no relation."