Opening a French Bank Account, Part 1

On Saturday, Virginie took me to a BNP bank in Grasse so that I could try to open a French bank account (key word: try). One of the major initial struggles that TAPIF assistants often have when first arriving in France is that without an address, you can’t open a bank account. Without a bank account, you can’t set up a monthly French phone plan. Without a French phone number, it’s difficult to contact people about apartments for rent. Without an apartment, it’s difficult to open a bank account…Do you see the problem?

Luckily, since I’m staying with Virginie and her family temporarily, she was willing to come with me to my appointment at the bank so that I could use her address when setting up my account. She called ahead of time to check on the documents we would need to bring with us to the appointment: my passport/visa, my work contract, a gas/water/electricity bill of hers, and her ID. I also brought some other documents just in case (birth certificate, some papers from the last time I had a BNP account, etc.), which I didn't end up needing.

Overall, the appointment went fairly smoothly. The first difficulty was when they asked for my TIN (tax identification number?) and it took us a while to figure out that it was probably my SSN, based on the fact that the number of digits matched up. I said “oh, maybe it’s my social security number?” and they were like “enh, probably.” So we used that. Then it turned out that they also needed my NIF (numéro d’identification fiscale), a French financial identification number. The problem is that I normally wouldn’t get my NIF until my first paycheck, but I can’t get paid until I finish setting up my bank account by giving the bank my NIF…. It turns out that the requirement of the NIF is a new rule this year that was implemented by the American government to try to prevent Americans from cheating on taxes, which is why Virginie didn’t know about that rule even though she helps the assistants open their accounts every year.

I was able to set up the account, but I can’t use it until I give them the NIF and then it will take them a few days to process before I can get my card and use the account. On Monday I went to the school in the morning with Virginie to ask the secretary about the NIF and she told me that I need to ask the person who originally sent me my work contract (someone who is in charge of all of the language assistants in the Académie of Nice). I emailed her on Monday and still have not heard back… So that’s as far as I can get toward opening my bank account for now. Hopefully I can make more progress next week.