The Central Bank should take “appropriate action” against those not complying with EU rules in relation to foreign IBANs following the decision of Revolut to issue Irish IBANs to customers, a consumer advocate has said.
Over the past few weeks, Revolut has been rolling out Irish IBAN numbers to its customers which it said would make their account “better suited for use” as a primary account.
Following Brexit, the company initially moved its Irish-users accounts to Lithuania in order to continue to do business within the EU.
However, in the years since it has moved to issue Irish IBANs to customers here but under EU law that should not have been necessary.
Revolut has approximately two million users in Ireland.
Under EU Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) rules, IBANs registered in of the 36 SEPA regions — some of which are not part of the eurozone or EU — can not be discriminated against in favour of a more local IBANs. These rules have been in place since 2014.
This means banks, Government agencies, employers, utility providers, or businesses cannot refuse to accept a valid foreign bank account number as a means of payment from a country within the SEPA region.
Under the rules, a non-Irish IBAN number from a SEPA region has to be treated the same as an Irish one.
Daragh Cassidy, of Bonkers.ie, said that many people with non-Irish but SEPA-registered IBANs still face many issues and that the Central Bank should remind stakeholders of their obligations under the SEPA rules.
He said that he has been hearing some difficulties with IBAN discrimination from some energy companies and some telecoms companies.
“You do hear of businesses, employers, energy companies, making life more difficult for people,’ he said.
Mr Cassidy said Revolut shouldn’t have been necessary for Revolut to switch Irish customers’ IBANs but there was a need because people were having trouble with the Lithuanian IBAN.
He added that while there is a lot of focus on Revolut at the moment, there are still over 200,000 N26 customers in Ireland — a German online bank all of which still have German IBANs — who “may still encounter difficulty using their account”.
“It must continue to monitor the situation and take appropriate action against businesses and employers which fall foul of the legislation.
“And this includes Government agencies which can be among the worst culprits.”
Mr Cassidy said SEPA was brought in to make banking for EU citizens simpler, improve competition, and allow EU citizens to live, travel and work abroad more easily.
He added a French student shouldn’t need an Irish bank account to get by if coming here to study and likewise an Irish student shouldn’t need to worry about such things if heading abroad for the year.
