traduction par Argos Translate:
Vivaqua a retiré leur machine à sous et refuse maintenant de l’argent. En effet : pouvoir accéder au service d’eau à #Bruxelles dépend désormais de l’acceptation par la banque et de l’acceptation des services bancaires.
All of this is true, but how many people would go for a 90 days stay in Belgium without making sure to have a bank account that would avoid those caveats? There are bank accounts for foreigners: https://fififinance.com/banking/bank-account-belgium
I appreciate the link. I didn’t know of some of those options (and a temporary visitor likely would not know either).
Proof of income is listed. Probably not many people carry that around assuming they’re working. I personally tend to take long 90—180 day vacations when I’m between jobs because that’s the best time to do it as it does not require any request or justification to an employer. Minimum deposit could be a problem as well (banks are becoming cashless which triggers the same problem that the account is supposed to solve). Proof of work permit is obviously a non-starter for those not coming to work. And indeed when I was looking for an account one of the banks I approached demanded that.
So ultimately it’s a really bad idea for a distributor of something as essential as water to refuse cash. There are countless pitfalls which can cause a real nightmare for people. If we were talking about a burger shop, no problem… burgers are not essential & there are always other vendors so exclusion is not tragic.
Those documents are not always needed. There are students coming to Belgium all the time, they manage it.
Are you opposed to the banking system as a whole, or are you looking for a bank that would accept opening a bank account for a foreigner? https://wise.com/ allows to open bank accounts without proof or income, minimum deposit or work permit.
How would you deposit cash on the wise.com account? I didn’t look too closely at it but I’ve noticed in general the more modern & online a bank is, the more crippled and helpless it is. I see that the app for wise is limited to Google playstore or apple, so that’s another vector for exclusion unless their web access is fully featured. (edit: #Wise is a Cloudflare site, so I would indeed run away from that as it gives a US tech giant a clear view of all traffic, usernames, passwords, etc… i’m not that trusting)
I’m opposed to forced banking. It’s good to have a banking system in place as a convenient option, but a disaster to be wholly dependent on banks and entirely helpless when there are technical problems (which have dozens of points of failure both on your side of the transaction as well as the merchants). I was in the grocery store and a customer’s bank card failed. Long line of people had to wait through many reattempts before in the end she had no choice but to walk out empty handed and leave all her groceries at the cashier, who then had to haul them out of the way.
Banks are gradually becoming less and less competent overall… some even forcing customers to blindly trust & execute closed-source software.
I think if I arrived in a foreign country for a 90 day vacation I would be outraged if I had to spend however many days researching and fiddling with banks just to pay for running water… time that could be better spent. Refugees will likely be harmed by the loss of cash option as well. Though it’d perhaps be poetic justice if in the end such a mess were simply left without bill payment. Hopefully Vivaqua’s move leaves them with some delinquent accounts they can’t collect on.
You indeed would need to send money to the Wise account from another bank account, but that’s following the logic that you have a bank account in your country of origin.
People coming to a country for 90 days usually have contracts were bills are included. Student housing in Belgium includes electricity and water in the vast majority of cases. Short-living rentals usually account for it as well. But to be honest, both student and short-rental housing would also prefer you to make a bank transfer rather than to pay them in cash.
I know people who helped refugees arriving in Belgium, one of the first procedures the refugees want to do is to open a bank account.
Vivaqua’s money comes from the population taxes. Please pay them rather than leaving a public institution with debt.
At the demonstration against forced digital public services a few weeks ago I spoke to a charity group there that assists refugees & they said bank accounts are a serious problem for them. They have to find someone who will be officially hired in their place, who then withdraws cash and pays them as subcontractors because they are excluded from the banking system. Then the workers have to trust that the middle man will actually pay them. The energy suppliers have always been anti-cash which is a problem for refugees.
Seems strange to me:
https://febelfin.be/fr/services/service-bancaire-de-base-pour-les-particuliers
I mentioned the basic bank account to the charity workers. I don’t recall now what their response was.
But undocumented immigrants come in different varieties and the keyword in that faq you quoted is “recognized” refugees. Perhaps they don’t all reach a level of recognition that they need. Or perhaps they simply fear it. Forcing a bank account on them obviously adds complexity to their already overly complex and difficult situation.
Being recognized is indeed a struggle, but even without a bank account, if they are not recognized, they wouldn’t be able to work, to find accommodation, etc.
Ukrainian refugees opened 11k basic accounts: https://febelfin.be/fr/presse/banque-et-societe/11-292-comptes-bancaires-ouverts-par-des-refugie-e-s-ukrainien-ne-s-en-belgique
Banking is a part of society, that’s not specifically Belgian. It can be accessed using BPost bank, for free if you receive at least 500 euros on your account monthly: https://www.bpostbanque.be/comptes-et-cartes/comptes-a-vue. Otherwise it’s 1,5 euro.
I don’t even think employers would agree to pay you in cash today, for security reasons.