DaveFlash
bunq has to be registered at the local national bank authority, tax authority and a bunch of other official stuff in each country
1. As far as I know, they don’t have to “register” with the local authority (i.e. in Germany, France, etc.). It is rather a notification process that is used to passport the banking license to other countries - in which the local (DE, FR) financial services authority will be consulted though. But bunq does not have to get a German or French banking license to offer their services in the respective countries
Why would they need to directly register with the tax authorities in other countries? For exchange of information, bunq will just provide taxpayer information to the Dutch tax authority, who will, in turn, „forward“ it to other countries’ tax authorities (provided an agreement for exchange of information has been set up between the two countries), wouldn’t they?
What other “official stuff” do they have to register in other countries?
when they've done that, as they did for DE, FR, IT, ES, NL and AT, bunq costumers in those countries are protected by the deposit guarantee scheme up to €100.000
It doesn’t matter if or “when they’ve done that”.
Customers in all countries are protected by the Dutch (not their country of residence’s!) deposit guarantee scheme -irrespective of whether bunq has officially launched in that country as a target market. So even if bunq hasn’t offically launched in Ireland, Slovenia or Estonia, bunq customers living there will be protected by the guarantee scheme.
consumers will have the legal rights and protections as they do for any existing local bank, to get local companies to accept their NL00BUNQ0000XXXXetc IBAN for any and all payments, transfers, direct debit, salary payout, gas & electric bill
That's not really true for "any and all payments". The SEPA regulation only applies to payments in EUROs. In countries with other national currencies, other payment methods exist (out of the scope of the regulation). And I’m not aware of any obligation for payment service providers (banks) to offer SEPA payments at all.
That means, GBP direct debits in the UK, for instance, can only be made from UK bank accounts (and no, neither do companies have to accept your NL bank account, nor would it work).
hell even the BBC Licence fee Offcom collects across the UK and Ireland, must be possible from your bunq accounts, if IE gets full bunq status, Offcom would not be allowed to refuse a bunq IBAN of a costumer with residency in Ireland
1. Ofcom does not even "handle" the BBC license fee, as they state on their website ("what we do not do"):
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/what-is-ofcom#accordion__target-87153
2. It must be possible, if it is charged and collected in Euros - which I highly doubt in the case of the UK. And with regard to Ireland...
3. Is the BBC license fee applicable at all in other countries? A quick google search didn't turn up any evidence for that, not even for the Republic of Ireland. Ireland has their own domestic license fee scheme, from what I gather.
some proud German bunqers were persistent and eventually got their bunq IBAN accepted for direct debits or Lastschrift as they say in Deutsch at companies such as Telekom.de, Netflix DE and Amazon.DE.
While I have been a victim of IBAN discrimination at Telekom (DE) and Amazon myself, these two companies were rather early in compliance (compared to many others), to be fair.
If a company in the countries bunq is officially fully active in ignores or otherwsie rejects a bunq IBAN, the users have official legal protections to complain
Again, it doesn't really matter if "bunq is officially fully active" in these countries. It applies to any EU/EEA country (for EUR payments).
the users have official legal protections to complain to local consumer, financial and banking authorities and those authorities are required to intercede on their behalf and can give penalties or fines to any non-compliant company that's refusing to accept bunq IBANs
In theory. In practice though, it seems less official. In Germany, for instance, there isn't really any official "authority" to deal with these cases. The only authority to impose penalties or fines would be (when push comes to shove) a court of law. Otherwise, enforcement is pretty much (with the exception of financial service providers) left to consumer associations and lawyers making money through competition law.
