Brexit update?

Does anyone here know what this “brexit update” is really? It’s asking me to send a photo of my passport because they might have to move us to an EU Electric Money Institution and you can’t use a drivers license there.

1 Like

Driving licence is considered valid ID in the UK but only UK issued ones. Outside of the UK they’re not recognised so if you’re an EU national they will want to use an alternative means of identification.

1 Like

Thanks!
I wonder what the implications would be of a no-deal Brexit, and how Revolut would shift their customers over.

1 Like

For who? I know everything like the back of my hand at this point - reply to the topic and I’ll try explain the best I can.

They would transfer the agreement with you to a subsidiary company. If you didn’t agree to this they would just terminate your membership.

1 Like

I also got a warning about a passport or ID card upload.

1 Like

Not wishing to be alarmist, but if anyone reading this thread receives a message from anyone to submit identification documents, please ensure you that trust the source of that request. This is especially true if you receive a request via email. Any request from a reputable organisation should address you by your name, and not just by your email address.

For potential scammers and criminals the continued uncertainty over Brexit could give them an opportunity to harvest information as customers may be worried about what is and what is not happening.

Just be careful. Be vigilient - not a victim.

11 Likes

For example, I received an email from no-reply@revolut.com and I get a notification right in the app.

That’s not true. EEA driving licences are valid and acceptable as a means of identification throughout the EEA. In some EEA countries, a travel document (passport or EEA national ID card) must be carried by law and presented to police on demand, but that’s different.

Jolly good advice, Thank you.

From my understanding they are not. Valid forms of photo identification would be national identity cards and passports, which can both be used as travel documents (although the former just in the Schengen Area)

It depends what you mean by “valid forms of photo identification” and particularly which organisation wishes to check a person’s identity. I believe that the French police, for example, accepts any EEA driving licence as identification, but obviously not as evidence of immigration status.

You are also mistaken that EEA national ID cards (“the former”) are accepted only in the Schengen Area. They are accepted all over the EEA and Switzerland, including in the United Kingdom and Ireland. This is governed by Articles 4(1) and 5(1) of Directive 2004/38/EC.

What kind of ID is sufficient and other defining factors of the onboarding process for financial KYC purposes is regulated by national law and national financial authorities. It’s different from country to country, even within the EU. It also depends on the nationality of the person trying to open an account. And it’s not necessarily related to what police or border patrol considers valid ID.

Besides official regulations, companies can have their own rules about this. Not all national ID cards come with the same security details, for example, and a company can simply decide ID verification with a specific document is too risky.

2 Likes

Just a small side note, Switzerland is in the Schengen Area.

@Frank is right. However, if a

Indeed, but Switzerland’s acceptance of EEA ID cards (and vice-versa of Swiss ID cards by EEA countries) is a treaty obligation which predates Switzerland joining the Schengen Area. That’s why I wrote “EEA and Switzerland”.

2 Likes

In the UK, it would be unlawful, specifically a breach of Sections 9 and 13 of the Equality Act 2010, for an organisation to discriminate by nationality with regard to the travel documents they accept as valid forms of identification. For example, many Eastern European workers living in the UK do not have passports; they travel throughout the EEA using their national identity cards. They obtain passports only for non-EEA travel, which many of them cannot afford. If a business (bank, prospective employer, employment agency etc) insists on seeing a passport from a national of an EEA country whose citizens typically travel on national identity cards, then this would breach the legislation. The acceptance of a national identity card by UK Border Force (which is a requirement of Article 5(1) of Directive 2004/38/EC) would be relevant to any claim by the individual for discrimination. For these reasons, you will see that UK banks typically accept all passports and EEA national identity cards.

I believe there’s a difference between online / mobile banks and high street banks that can inspect a document “in person”.

I want the UK to bring back national identity cards to be honest. I’ve never had one but I’d rather not pay for a passport to prove my age somewhere.

2 Likes

Bringing them back won’t necessarily mean they are going to be free.

They’ll be cheaper than a passport and a valid travel document for all over the EEA, what more can you ask for?

It’s a step closer for true Union. It could only get better if they removed nationality on there and just replaced it with European and the EU flag.

I totally agree with you, @Recchan. I’m one of the 13,200 British citizens who got a UK national identity card, before Theresa May as Home Secretary discontinued them in early 2011. The main reason I got it was as a travel document, because for travel within the EEA there’s no point in carrying a bulky passport with all the necessary pages which doesn’t fit in my wallet.

Although the UK told other EEA countries to stop accepting them, most Schengen countries continue to accept mine, probably because I used it extensively before this instruction was given, and it already had a strong footprint in Schengen immigration databases. The only country that doesn’t accept it any more is the UK, but sometimes UK Border Force does accept it, particularly in Calais by junior staff who are too young to remember what happened in 2010/11. It expires in just over a year and I hope that they are revived.