You need to prove where you lived for the last 3 years. Oh, you don't have paper bills? Your country is very progressive, too bad. Moved around? Well, you need a UK address or at least a rental agreement.

Also showing your current bank account statements will help.

But we'd rather refuse to open this simple checking account just because (...we're busy laundering money :-)...).

And no one gives you the exact goddamn reason or a simple solution.

Paperless billing still has a bill that you can print out, it just means that you wont be mailed a statement every month.

The UK immigration authority does not recognize printed online statements. I had to print 100 pages from my bank's website, take the paper to my bank branch, and have each page stamped by the bank to make it "original." This is a true story.

Painful. I suppose online statements are too easy to counterfeit? It's a shame the bank couldn't provide authenticated documents to you as a automated service.

Documents produced on a home printer are meaningless for identity or address verification. Anyone can open the PDF in inkscape and make it say any name, address or date they like.

Isn't it more fraudulent to give the bank home-made documents than to give them nothing? At least when you give then nothing you're being honest about what you're giving them.

Yeah, but that modification is forgery and fraud. In all honesty, I could probably replicate a paper bank statement by doing the same thing. The crime is in the manipulation.

As for me, I continue to print out bank statements on university printers and have everyone from embassies to landlords accept them.

No one I've met believes that going to your bank's website and printing out the PDF they give you is fraudulent.

I was on the phone to British Gas complaining that I suddenly stopped receiving paper statements. The agent on the phone got really helpful all of a sudden when I told him I needed the paper bills for proof of identity.

Turns out he had just gone through the whole debacle himself. He had to show a bank statement, but he only has an online account. Went to the bank to get a statement printed and stamped, and whoever he went to turn it in to still refused it because it hadn't been mailed.

Personally, I don't want to give the BA any easy reason to reject my visa applications, I get all the mailed proof of address I can.

Chase in the US rejected my recently expired US passport as secondary ID, but accepts my non-expired Indiana vehicle registration, a document laser-printed on ordinary copy paper at the BMV with no graphical elements other than form boxes that'd be trivial to counterfeit. So it's probably safe to say that "difficulty to counterfeit" is not a criterion for secondary ID at Chase (nor, apparently, is mismatched mailing address, because my vehicle isn't registered at the address on my primary ID).

Wow, I guess you just proved all those people saying they couldn't get such papers accepted are clearly lying because you've never had a problem.

The fact that they are so easily manipulated is the reason they are most often not accepted as proof of identification, regardless of criminal law. It could be totally legal and it would be in the best interests of banks/businesses to not accept them due to possible liabilities.

Used to work in retail, sold credit obo Barclays bank - we were told not to accept printed copies of bank statements but I heard stories of people asking customer to log into online banking live.

It's mostly just bureaucratic ceremony and British strict rule-following

Usually those statements or bills have a lovely big DUPLICATE watermarked across them which invalidates them for identification purposes.

As someone who just went through this, an FYI for anyone else in this situation: Lloyds Bank will let you open a current account with just a US passport and a UK work visa, no other docs needed. HSBC has a similar account you can get, but, well, see parent story...

Even Lloyds is hit and miss. A general strategy that seems to work is to gather as much documentation as you can (work contract, flat lease, any government paperwork, something that documents your address and status where you come from, anything with the address you live at, even if it doesn't have your name on it etc) and hit the main street banks from one end, eventually one will bite. Don't worry which one you get, you can easily change it later - all you need is for any bank to send you a statement.

I was actually at my 3rd bank trying to open an account, but without any other documentation than my passport & visa. I think it was Halifax. The guy I was speaking went in back for a bit, and per usual said "I'm sorry but without proof of address we can't open an account for you." When I started lamenting my sense of defeat to him about UK banks, he said "okay look, I'm not supposed to say this, but off the record, if you go down the street to Lloyds, they have a special process for US citizens where you can just open an account with a passport." Sure enough I went down the road, and after making yet another appointment (an appointment to open a bank account? really Britain…), they confirmed that indeed they do open accounts for US citizens with just a passport.

So I feel pretty confident in recommending Lloyds in this case.

Lloyds is probably better than average since at least at some point they had a formal process for getting an account without proof of address. But my wife was asked for proof of address there (which she was able to provide) and my friend failed to get an account , but got one at Halifax. I have a few more secondhand anecdotes about other people who was turned away at Lloyds, but taken on at Barclay or HSBC.

I think the case is that it's a rather non-deterministic process and the outcome depends a lot on exactly which manager you talk to and what their mood is like that day.

france does that stupid appointment crap too

I'm just waiting for Lloyds and Barclays to figure out I'm a US citizen and then close out my accounts due to FATCA.

I think the easiest way to get a UK bank account as a foreign national is to be a student.

You don't really need a bank account to rent a home. In fact, at my first place I've only paid rent with cash or by debit card for almost one year, and it was an agency. Private landlords tend to be even more flexible, basically the ones I've had only cared about being paid on time, not how.

How do you have a debit card with a bank account to attach it to?

Presumably pre-paid credit/debit card (bought with cash a at gas station, grocery store, etc.).

Yeah its bizarre I had to jump through hoops in the UK to open a new ISA account (tax free savings) even if I am a customer of the bank all ready.

Its not like I turn up with with 50k in 500 euro bills and want to open an account that day.

When I did this I got a letter from my employer and then took that to the same branch of the same bank where my employer did their banking. It worked.

That's why cryptocurrencies are so good. Nobody can deny you when creating an account or moving your money.

How would that have helped me pay my electric bill? I mean sure, if the electric company wanted to support it, OK, but they'd sooner support credit cards or PayPal, don't you think?

I mean, the perspective.

I don't like this system when you need a bank account to get a home and utilities. Why can't you use cash? I don't like that the bank wanted your utility bills with your residential address just to create an account for you. What for? They want to control everything. I just don't like that.

I don't need a bank account for utilities in the US. The easiest way to pay is by check my mail or credit card online but if you did not have a bank account you can pay in person or get a money order or maybe even a prepaid debit card?

As a non-US person who moved to the Bay area ~2 years ago, I have found found several difficulties with either method you have mentioned:

First, if you have just move there, and don't have a bank account, you don't have checkbook either (there are countries who has no checks at all) - no check by mail.

No utilities accepted credit or debit card, they always wanted to have a proper bank account number from me. Later on they have improved their system and now they offer online bill pay, with an extra "convenience fee" for credit cards. Hurray! (Although I am not sure if the bank account is still a requirement for opening.)

Btw. similar story applies for wireless service: I was required to provide my full employment contract to receive a simple phone number (at that point I had bank account, active employment...). How weird is that?

The 'you don't need a bank account' method in the parent was the money order (there is also usually a way to pay in person, lots utilities do this in concert with convenience and grocery stores).

The wireless thing is because the phone companies treat the account as a credit account. The easy way around it is some prepaid plan (which is possible to fund in cash...). 5 years ago it wasn't such a good option. These days a $50 prepaid plan is at least reasonable, even if it isn't the best option.

The usual postpaid cellular account that most US providers want to sell is indeed a credit account. They're usually paying hundreds up front towards your phone, plus accepting the payments after you've used the service.

For cellular, prepaid seems to solve all of the problems everywhere I've been. I ordered a prepaid SIM card here in the US over the internet with nothing but a credit card number, has full data service and everything. Same thing everywhere else I've travelled in the last year.

Around the beginning of 2013, I took a trip to UAE, Norway, and the Netherlands. In each of those, I was able to get a prepaid SIM card at the airport for cash, with nothing but a passport for ID. All with phone, text, and data service.

I paid my electric in person before years ago before I started paying online and I had a problem with mail delivery and they didn't mail me a bill to mail back. It was simple.

I also knew someone who paid their phone bill in person every month because he was a teenager and didn't have a checking account, but had a cell phone bill.

I ALWAYS pay my electric bill with credit card. No fee.

When I set it up, it required a phone call to turn on, and my name, um, not sure what else. No bank account or anything else. Just a phone call with my name.

Note that the law requires that all debts, public and private, can be settled using legal tender (ie. cash).

In practice this is mostly implemented by demanding the person pay cash at a post office.

You do not need a bank account to pay for utilities in the US. I'm not saying not having one will be very pleasant though.

> You do not need a bank account to pay for utilities in the US. I'm not saying not having one will be very pleasant though.

I came to the conclusion that in the US, if you have everything that people usually have (SSN, bank account, credit card, residential address, phone number, car, drivers license), you will be treated well. Miss just one on list, and people will assume that something is wrong with you, and it probably triggers a few warning signs (e.g. in fraud detection systems).

It may be coming from the fact that homeless and criminal elements usually miss a few on the list, so it was considered an easy signal for such pre-filtering, however, moving from a different country has the same signals, triggering multiple false alarms.

You can just use cash if you have a key meter like millions of people in the UK.

You don't need an account.

You'll pay a hefty premium for that though - it's just one of the ways life is more expensive for the poor than for the wealthy.

Or just use HSBC, apparently.