What if your bank account is at Monzo, or any other online-only bank that seem to be the fastest growing personal banking sector at the moment.

This is a good reason why you should probably avoid neo-banks.

Last I used one of those they wanted me to take a photo of myself with ID and I think record a video.

Unless your bank is IN Gaza ...

Depends how close your closest physical branch is. It may be hours away because of where you live. Or it may be a flight away because you're abroad.

You can call your bank. They can verify your identity over the phone and banks do so routinely.

Some banks do so routinely.

Not all banks in all countries do this. One of my banks required me to email my passport, drivers license, and case number to the person I was talking to over the phone in order to prove my identity.

My passport was 1000 miles away. My drivers license was expired (was living in NYC at the time, and not driving). My bank had no physical branches outside of the state of Louisiana.

All of this after answering the security question, and providing my SSN. How I eventually was able to re-enable my account was calling a friend who worked in the mortgage department to have my account reset. If I didn't have a friend at the bank, I wouldn't have been able to reset my account without flying either back to NYC or having a family member drive me from Texas to Louisiana.

The BBC has edited the article and the line I quoted I can no longer find. I was pretty sure that particular person the quote was from was described as living in the US (as is another one of the examples in the article).

One of the other individuals in the article lives in Saudi Arabia, which has a very highly developed banking system.

Don't call Gaza using the public phone system while you're abroad?

Not all banks have a physical presence.