An advert for Co-operative wholesale society bank from 1960
The news that the Co-op bank in the UK has ceased offering a basic bank account for undischarged bankrupts means that only Barclays will continue to offer such a banking facility.
So what are the options for anyone going through the personal bankruptcy process and desperately needing a basic bank account .
The way I see it is it’s Barclays Bank or one of the prepaid credit cards such as the Cashplus card which issue an account number and sort code to enable benefits or wages to be paid onto it and direct debits to be paid out of it accordingly (total access needs to be enabled by verifying your personal details in order to avoid any usage limitations).
As I understand it the sort code and account number facility for this prepaid card is supplied by the Co-op bank so it remains to be seen if this service will be affected in any way. Hopefully not or it’s Barclays or the highway for personal bankrupts. If anybody has further details then please let me know.
Bankruptcy isn’t the end of the world but not having access to a bank account of some kind until a discharge is issued can be a major handicap because it’s much harder to be paid cash in hand or to entirely make payments in cash without being financially penalised for so doing.
If you are facing personal bankruptcy or debt issues then it’s worth giving the UK national debtline a call.
Image by sludgegulper under this creative commons licence
