Deutsche Bank Terminates Its Blocked Account Services for International Students

Though the bank has not made any official statement to the press, on July 15, the same responded to a Twitter user asking about the service “Unfortunately, Deutsche Bank does not offer student blocked accounts.”

Quietly, the bank, which at a time was the only one offering the service of blocked bank accounts for students, has withdrawn from this market, and analysts from BlockedAccountGermany.com attribute the move to the bank’s incapability to keep up with the digitalization of the service.

Until 2016, Deutsche Bank was the only bank offering the service of blocked bank accounts to students applying for a visa to Germany. However, the procedures were completely manual, and the applicant, amongst others, had to fill in two application forms by hand, make an appointment with the German Embassy in their country of residence, submit several documents to the Embassy, and then send the same documents to the bank in Germany by mail.

The procedures took weeks, and even after the student arrived in Germany, the same couldn’t withdraw the monthly limit before registering their address in the country.

After 2016, many banks started entering the market and offering completely digitalized procedures, AtoZSerwisPlus.com reports.

“When other banks started offering the service of blocked bank accounts, due to their facilitated procedures, Deutsche Bank slowly became less favoured by students, who instead turned to banks that had more digitalized procedures,” they assert.

Now, students who, for one reason or another, prefer Deutsche Bank will have to find alternatives, like Expatrio, to open a blocked bank account, which is among the main requirements for a student Germany visa.

Expatrio is a digital Blocked Account provider which enables students to open their accounts from home without the need to make an appointment at the Embassy or pay hefty fees. Students can complete the whole procedure online, including here paying the €49 account opening fee.

Deutsche Bank is not the first German bank to terminate such services; as in June 2021, Hamburg-based BAM Bundesweites Anlagenmanagement stopped transferring monthly payments of €861 to hundreds of students in Germany. At the time, many students had claimed that the move had left them in financial distress since these monthly payments were their main source of income.

Later on, in July of the same year, the bank announced it would pay back international students in Germany who had a blocked bank account at BAM.

In a statement, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) advised students to contact the bank and to provide their German bank account details, the name of the account holder, IBAN, and BIC, in order to receive their payments for July and August.