Later I got a job as an UI developer in the City, but the first few months were hard.
The rental side has become more tricky. The Immigration Act 2015 made it a criminal offence to rent a property to someone who does not have the legal right to live in the UK, with a maximum penalty of 5 years imprisonment and an unlimited fine. Unless you have an EEA passport, it can be very difficult to find somewhere to live. Some landlords are even more cautious/discriminatory and won't rent to anyone who seems foreign. It's another embarrassing symptom of Theresa May's illiberal and inhumane "hostile environment".
You can mail your debit card to any address you choose, no verification required.
“When you sign up through the Monzo app, we’ll ask you to take a picture of that ID and a short video of yourself. That’s it! You’ll need a UK address where we can send your debit card, and then you’re good to go.”
[0] https://monzo.com/blog/2018/05/29/getting-bank-account-immig... [1] https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-bac...
If you are registered to a university, Barclay's will have something to sell you.
Eventually the employer strongarmed the bank to open an account for me.
This also applies to anti-money-laundering stuff: it's better to affect loads of people really badly who are most certainly not money laundering as long as it does not affect the people who are money laundering at scale.
That said, there are people who don't really understand that people on social media paying you for access to your bank account are probably money laundering.
This is in a country where it is perfectly permitted to open several stores of the same chain of gambling establishments in the same street with fixed-odds betting machines and no questions of where the large sums of cash being handed over come from.
Apparently in the past people with questionable sources of income used to open fake accounts to move money and the banks were happy to do it until the regulators slammed them with fines.
Also, when you have a bank account you can get things like a phone contract with a direct debit payment. Apparently, some people made it a habit to leave the UK without paying their bills after they are done with their seasonal work.
I'm sure some people run much more elaborate scams.
A passport is enough to prove your identity isn't fake. But since it's not enough to give you a credit line, banks simply refuse the service. There are way too many people with no access to banks.
They did https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girobank https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Money
A passport is enough to prove your identity isn't fake
Theoretically, perhaps, but in practice anyone who needs to validate identity will ask for multiple forms of ID.
AFAIK, it doesn't work for Santander (both in the US,UK and Spain, based on a colleagues account) as they treat each country and separate.
I never knew it was so hard for new arrivals in the UK - here in Spain it was pretty easy, the hardest thing was getting the appointment for the ID card.
I lived in Germany for a bit too and there it was also easy.
I really think we need some ID system like the NIE or Anmeldung in the UK as I can't drive and always had to use my passport as ID which is a massive pain - it'd make stuff like this easier too.
I had to make my agency write the employment letter multiple times because the banks always found something wrong. Finally, it was a week before Christmas and I had to beg the HSBC employee to accept the letter and open my account because I was running out of cash on Christmas.
To expand on what mrtksn means: in the UK, it is difficult to get a bank account without proof of address. It is also difficult to rent a flat without a UK bank account. There are a few ways around this:
- Have a friend put you on their water bill and use this as proof of address. I suspect this is illegal.
- Join a flatshare without getting on the lease, pay for your portion of the rent with Transferwise or something, and have your flatmate put you on the water bill. I sure hope this is legal.
- Find a bank which is a bit lax about proof of address and is willing to accept things like proof of employment. Lloyds used to do this, but I've heard they no longer do.