Guide
IBAN discrimination: the EU banking right nobody tells expats about
By Covered Abroad Research Desk · Last verified July 2026
The IBAN rule, verbatim
Your Europe's payments page states the prohibition in working detail: for SEPA credit transfers and SEPA direct debits — paying bills, buying online, paying taxes or receiving tax refunds, unemployment benefits or other allowances — "your account may not be refused because it is situated in a different EU country than your counterpart". The employer insisting on a local IBAN for salary, the utility rejecting your foreign-EU account for direct debit: both are the textbook violations. The same framework makes euro payments cost the same as domestic ones, a rule binding even banks in non-euro EU countries.
Enforcement is practical, not theoretical: cite the rule in writing to the payer's customer service; escalate to the national competent authority or FIN-NET-routed bodies when they hold the line.
Source: Your Europe, payments, transfers and cheques — IBAN discrimination, read 6 September 2026.
The basic-account right
The companion right, from the bank-accounts page: as a legal resident in the EU you are entitled to open a basic payment account, and "banks cannot refuse your application for a basic payment account just because you don't live in the country where the bank is established" — with refusal grounds limited to matters like anti-money-laundering compliance, and the right covering payment accounts rather than savings products. This is the door-opener for the arrival months, before payslips and utility bills exist: the account that cannot be refused for foreignness alone.
National machinery implements it — Spain's cuenta de pago básica being our worked example — and each country's consumer portal names its own version.
Source: Your Europe, bank accounts in the EU, read 6 September 2026.
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Half of arrival friction is circular dependencies — no account without address, no address without account. These two rights break the circle from the EU side, which is why they belong in the same folder as the registration papers and the ID numbers. The other document that breaks circles — the insurance certificate the visa file names — deserves the same rigor: