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.
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.
They do. As I said, they work for a middleman and that middleman is where the paper trail stops. The middle man takes a cut & they get exploited. It’s a hard life but they survive.
Glad to hear there are success stories. But those do not obviate the horror stories. The horrors are facilitated by a system of forced banking while the success stories do not require forced banking.
Optional banking is part of society. Forced banking creates a crippled society that’s gradually and quietly becoming a reality in Belgium. It’s not an acceptable society to create. So far it’s unlawful. Belgian law still requires a cash option but it’s going unenforced. If you report Manhattan Burger for refusing cash, your report will be ignored.
Banks decide who you’re allowed to pay. E.g. ~10 or so years ago banks in collusion decided if you wanted to donate money to Wikileaks they would not support it. Donors were blocked. Luckily cash enables people to escape from that nannying. When the cash option is gone banks will be able to abuse their power much more rampantly. They can collude to cancel any org they want.
Banks can also block your account spontaneously for trivial reasons such as the copy of your ID card on their records expiring. Indeed this is how some banks inform you that you need to help them update their records- they just block access to your money. Luckily when that happened cash enabled me to eat until the bank opened again on Monday morning (although this was a time that I was expected to be present at work).
Banks inherently collect data which is then vulnerable to breaches. The best defense against data breaches is to not arbitrarily create the data to begin with. I.e. pay in cash. Outside of the GDPR region, banks would gladly sell records on how much you spend on McDonalds food, tobacco, and cigarettes. Health insurance companies would love to have that data. Within the GDPR, I think they can still do that but they have to put it in their terms of service you must agree to. So it’s important to have the option to disagree.
It depends on your career. And strangely enough, the law makes career type a factor. Cash wages are legal in industries where that norm is established such as domestic work. It would be unusual for a white collar worker to be paid in cash and because it’s unusual, it’s illegal. There’s also an unusual law in Belgium, France, and Spain that prohibits B2P cash transactions over €3k. So even if all workers had an equal right to receive cash those whose paychecks exceed €3k would still have a problem.
(I had to break my reply into 3 parts because the lemmy form just goes to lunch if there’s too much text)
Domestic work in Belgium is used with the Titres-Services systems, which prevents cash transactions (the whole system was designed to make it more appealing than cash). https://www.belgium.be/fr/famille/aide_sociale/titres_services
That’s just an example where I heard cash wages were normal. The law is strange because it just says cash wages are acceptable if it’s the norm in an industry. The law does not list industries where that’s a norm, so if someone is prosecuted someone would have to convince a court whether or not cash is normal for the line of work.
Is it possible to pay water bills with cash where you come from?
Yes. I did not test it but the legal tender law there is that all debts can be paid in cash. Point of sale is different. If you try to buy a product the merchant can dictate form of payment. If the two parties do not agree, no one loses… consumer keeps their money and the merchant keeps their product. But debts are different because debtors must have a way to pay. I suppose a malicious water supplier could make a requirement that you make a deposit from a bank account before water is turned on, then unbanked people would be unable to accumulate a debt. But I’ve not heard of any such scenario. Water suppliers have never asked me for an advance deposit that I recall.
There’s a European Commission recommendation that member states make all debts payable in cash. Belgium does not distinguish debt payments from points of sale. Belgium requires cash to be accepted in both varieties of transactions. But now that Belgium is not enforcing cash acceptance it’s a problem. Some articles imply that the law only applies to retail transactions. So I’m unclear on what the law says about cash payments to public services. Communes have started violating the law if they are bound by the same law.
Interesting.
You mentioned some groups advocating for no banking dependency, do they plan to start any legal action?
Anyway, seems like you are in a stuck situation. I realistically don’t see Vivaqua bringing the ATM back, they are known to have bad management since years
https://www.lesoir.be/art/881137/article/actualite/belgique/2015-05-18/vivaqua-verse-dans-l-illegalite
https://www.lesoir.be/453205/article/2022-07-08/sept-mois-de-bugs-informatiques-chez-vivaqua-au-moins-85000-clients-bruxellois
https://www.dhnet.be/regions/bruxelles/2022/11/25/vivaqua-contrainte-demprunter-plusieurs-millions-deuros-pour-payer-son-personnel-nous-ne-recevons-pas-de-subsides-4PDARX4FBNAKDKKBQOVMIIKQ4I/