I’ve had bank accounts in a bunch of places, and France is sure as hell the only one that charges me for owning a bank card. I’m not even talking credit card here, just debit cards. French people don’t tend to use credit cards much, they may not even know what real credit cards are as they’ll often refer to their debit cards as “carte de crédit“. The concept of constantly borrowing and paying back money to the bank for everyday purchases is a foreign one. Credit ratings and credit histories, central to American finances, do not exist here.
In other countries in fact, banks will practically be begging you to sign up for a credit card with them, sending you one in the post when you never even asked for it. In France, you pay the bank for the privilege of using one, whilst they gamble with your earnings on the stock market. They will also coax you into package gift programs so that after 5 years of paying them €10 per month for the administration of your accounts, you might get a scarf or a toaster in the post. Thanks a lot Société Générale.
And when you visit your bank, you can’t just walk in (to your OWN bank), no, you will first be screened before being buzzed in. If they don’t like the look of you (as happened to my husband), they will even ask you to hold up your card to the camera to prove that you are a member! Customer service indeed…
So recently another option opened up to those bitter and disillusioned with traditional French banking services: online banking. Not just a service given by standard banks, but new banks which function entirely online. No face-to-face customer service, just efficient over-the-phone and online customer relations and all your banking at the click of a button. Maybe not ideal if you like to have a personal relationship with your business banking consultant, but just the no-nonsense, and crucially, no fees, service you need for every-day kind of financial transactions.
Or so I thought. It seems that getting accepted into one of these is harder than joining the Virgin Airways VIP Club. Firstly you will need to provide them with a barrage of scanned documentation detailing your earnings and employment history as well as proving your identity and address. Then they will take a week to process this and ask you for additional documentation. If you happen not to have a 2-year earnings history on hand and only have a measly contract job rather than proof of lifetime employment, then to benefit from those complementary debit cards you will need to first transfer a rather large sum (anywhere from €5000 and up) into your account.
So desperate was I for fee-free banking that I was ready to agree to these ludicrous terms, and then got rejected anyway! Why you ask? Because I had just spent a couple of years living in the USA (oh sweet land of customer service and administrative ease – how I miss you). It turns out this particular online bank will refuse to accept customers who have ANY SORT of fiscal relationship with the USA – whether you were born there, lived there, worked for a client there…
Is this just another example of French bias towards America? A dumbfounding discrimination, the logic of which they will of course not bother to explain to you over the phone. Does it cover any other foreign countries? Anyone else they happen to have a beef with? I don’t know, (if you do, leave me a comment below) but as a result, two months after arriving in France, I still do not have a debit card. So if you do choose the online banking, or banques en ligne option, be sure to first tell them where you’re from and where you’ve been, and save yourself about a month of trouble.
A ROUGH GUIDE TO SETTING UP AND SETTLING DOWN IN FRANCE 