Belgium

I think Germany would work because I’ve heard their basic accounts allow cash deposits.

(edit) I was mainly just exposing the chicken-egg problem. But it’s worth considering the ethical consequences of supporting forced banking. It forces people to be dependant on a corporation whose objective is profit (not the well being of the consumer, most particularly with respect to unwarranted mass surveillance). That same dependency weakens national security. If Belgium were dragged into conflict with Russia, Russian hackers would DoS-attack banks. Belgium’s critical infrastructure (energy, water, healthcare, communication) is all becoming increasingly cashless and thus helpless in such a scenario. Vivaqua recently removed their cash machine and probably no one has noticed this.

Yeah indeed most carriers and bank pairs don’t have the mutual requirement to obtain the other first. I was just pointing out that some carriers and banks have not thought through this basic scenario.

As far as phone number porting goes, I think that’s limited to just a few participating carriers. I did wonder if transferring to JIM Mobile or Scarlet would work as a workaround but bipt.be does not show them as participating in phone number portability. It would break their compliance if it worked, because (IIUC) Scarlet and JIM rely on the initial bancontact payment to be in lieu of registering a sim card to an ID card.