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Comment by ferzul | Hacker News Reader

Well, I don't know if it's the difference between “resident” and “citizen”, but i was told “no” or “maybe in a few weeks” many times when trying to open a bank account in October/November last year in Germany. “Maybe in a few weeks” is as good as a refusal.

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I've lived two years in Germany and hung out with lots of foreigners. Not only tech employees with high and steady incomes, but also freelancers or people on working holiday visas, working part-time at bars and restaurants.

Between big commercial banks and savings banks, online banks (comdirect, ING, DKB, ...) and challengers like N26, I've never met anyone who had trouble opening a bank account. Americans didn't have access to some non-essential investment products thanks to FATCA, but that's it.

How are the KYC requirements handled in Germany? What sort of documentation do you need to open a bank account?

You should not need more than an ID and the certificate of registration from your municipality.

Some online banks outsource this process to the Post: https://www.deutschepost.de/en/p/postident.html

I'm not sure how N26 does it these days, at the time it was over videochat. I believe it's just a picture of your ID and a selfie now?

I opened an account this week and it was a videochat (they call it IDNow).

However, while you need a German address, no registration is necessary (which I'm only having done on Monday). I didn't even have any German phone number yet at that point.

>challengers like N26

Don't you need a bank account to transfer money into N26? As far as I know there is no way to deposit cash into any of these disrupter service providers.

In Germany, N26 is partnered with a service that lets you deposit up to 100 EUR / month into your account, in cash, for free at supermarkets (and more for a fee).

https://n26.com/en-de/cash26

AFAIK it's the only challenger bank to support doing something like this for free, even in a limited amount. Even Bunq, which I pay for, doesn't support it (https://together.bunq.com/d/2933-how-do-i-deposit-money-or-t...).

Monzo does the same, in the UK.

I can live with that. The last time I had to deposit cash at a bank was 20 years ago after a summer job.

If you should get into this situation again refer them to §§30 et seq. ZKG [0].

§31 specifically states that anyone with legal residence in the EU must be allowed to open a "basic" account. Occasionally banks will list this as a separate offering from their normal account, but they really should have told you about that. Sorry to hear they didn't.

[0] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/zkg/__30.html

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