A Statutory Right to a Basic Account for Anyone Lawfully in Serbia
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Germany on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
195 exceptions recorded across 74 countries · none match Germany to Serbia · Opening a bank account
Article 73n of the Law on Payment Services gives a consumer who is lawfully staying in Serbia and has no payment account the right to have a bank open and run a basic payment account for him, on request. The right is expressed as a duty of the bank, subject only to the anti-money-laundering legislation and the rest of the Act, and the account must be usable for payment transactions in dinars. The services it must carry are listed: everything needed to open, run and close the account, cash deposits, cash withdrawals at counters and at cash machines, and the execution of payment transactions by direct debit, by payment card including payments over the internet, and by credit transfer including standing orders, at terminals, at bank counters and through the bank's internet system. The bank must offer those services to the extent it already offers them on other payment accounts, must apply non-discriminatory conditions, and must open the account or refuse within ten business days of a complete request. A refusal is permitted where the consumer already has a payment account at another bank giving access to the same services, unless he gives a written statement and the other bank's notice that the account will be closed.
At a glance
- Who has the right
- A consumer who has a lawful stay in the Republic of Serbia and has no payment account open
Article 73n of the Zakon o platnim uslugama. The test is lawful stay, not residence or nationality.
- Currency
- The account is used for executing payment transactions in dinars
Article 73n of the Zakon o platnim uslugama.
- Time to open or refuse
- Without delay, and at the latest within ten business days of a complete request
Article 73nj of the Zakon o platnim uslugama.
- What the account must do
- Opening, running and closing; cash deposits; cash withdrawals at counters and at cash machines and similar devices; direct debits; card payments including over the internet; credit transfers including standing orders
Article 73n of the Zakon o platnim uslugama, which also limits the duty to the extent the bank already offers those services on other accounts.
- Post office
- A bank may let the consumer open and use the account through the public postal operator, where that operator provides payment services in the bank's name and for its account
Article 73n of the Zakon o platnim uslugama.
- Ground of refusal the Act names
- The consumer already holds a payment account at another bank giving access to the same services, unless he states in writing and produces that bank's notice that the account will be closed
Article 73nj of the Zakon o platnim uslugama.
- Non-discrimination
- The conditions for opening, running and closing a basic account must be non-discriminatory within the meaning of article 73b of the Act
Article 73n of the Zakon o platnim uslugama.
Requirements
- Being a consumer with a lawful stay in the Republic of Serbia
- Having no payment account already open - or, where one exists at another bank, a written statement and that bank's notice that it will be closed
- Compliance with the legislation on the prevention of money laundering and the financing of terrorism, which the Act expressly leaves untouched
Country-level policy
Every citation on these pages goes to the Pravno-informacioni sistem Republike Srbije, and Serbian law says exactly what that is. The Zakon o objavljivanju zakona i drugih propisa i akata establishes the system in article 28 as a collection of data in electronic form containing the electronic form of the Official Gazette, the archive of gazettes, the register and texts of the regulations in force, case law and a link to EU legal acts, published on the internet pages of the public enterprise. Article 26 settles what is authoritative and what is not: the basic and special editions of the Gazette are issued in printed form and in electronic form in PDF and HTML, and it is the printed form and the electronic form in PDF that are the official editions. HTML is produced and is not named among them. Article 29 then describes what the system gives away free to every internet user, and the first item on the list is 'незванично пречишћени текстови прописа' - unofficially consolidated texts of regulations - alongside the original gazettes in PDF carrying the base texts and the gazettes carrying their amendments; for everything else the enterprise charges a price the Government approves. The pages themselves are headed 'Редакцијски пречишћен текст', an editorially consolidated text: a third phrase for the same status. So the consolidated text this corpus quotes is free, current, produced by the state's own publisher, and not the official edition of anything.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Germany
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«Не доводећи у питање примену одредаба закона којим се уређује спречавање прања новца и финансирања тероризма и других одредаба овог закона, банка је дужна да потрошачу који има законит боравак у Републици Србији а нема отворен платни рачун – на његов захтев омогући отварање и коришћење платног рачуна са основним услугама.»Our translation - not official
Without prejudice to the application of the provisions of the law governing the prevention of money laundering and the financing of terrorism and of other provisions of this Act, a bank must, at the request of a consumer who has a lawful stay in the Republic of Serbia and has no payment account open, enable him to open and use a payment account with basic services.
About this source
The legal information system of the Republic of Serbia, established by article 28 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona i drugih propisa i akata and run by the state publishing enterprise JP Službeni glasnik, which also prints the gazette itself. It carries the electronic Official Gazette, the archive of gazettes, the register and texts of regulations in force, case law, and a link to EU legal acts. Article 29 makes three things free to every internet user: the consolidated texts of regulations, the original gazettes in PDF in which the base texts were published, and the gazettes in which their amendments were published; everything else is charged for at a price the enterprise sets with the Government's consent. Addresses follow ELI: https://www.pravno-informacioni-sistem.rs/SlGlasnikPortal/eli/rep/sgrs/{body}/{type}/{year}/{issue}/{item} where {body} is skupstina, vlada or ministarstva, {type} is zakon, uredba, odluka or pravilnik, {issue} is the gazette number and {item} is the instrument's position among that body's instruments of that type in that issue - not its page and not its article. An amending act's own ELI resolves to the consolidated text of the act it amended. The end of every consolidated text carries a register block - Основ доношења прописа, Акт којима је пропис основ доношења, Повезани пропис - listing every subordinate instrument by gazette number and page, which is the cheapest index to Serbian secondary legislation we have found.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Its consolidated texts are not official and the governing Act says so.** Article 26 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona i drugih propisa i akata provides that the printed gazette and the electronic gazette in PDF are the official editions; the HTML edition is produced but is not named among them. Article 29 describes what the system offers free as 'незванично пречишћени текстови прописа' - unofficially consolidated texts. The pages themselves are headed 'Редакцијски пречишћен текст', an editorially consolidated text, which is a third form of words for the same thing. Cite it for what the law now says and say what it is; for the text as enacted, go to the gazette PDF the page links. **Its consolidations carry no sweep date.** The masthead lists every gazette number incorporated and nothing else, so there is a last amendment incorporated but no statement of a date up to which the text was checked. Do not record a consolidation cut-off from it. **It is unreliable to render and fails silently in two distinguishable ways.** A 73-character reply beginning 'Ne postoji akt sa URI-jem' is the publisher saying the address does not exist. A reply of roughly 1,225, 6,691 or 8,000 characters that begins with the Glasnik contact line or with the gazette navigation is the PIS home page served because the single-page application did not render the document - a failure of our extraction, never an absence of the instrument. Where /reg returns one of those, dropping /reg often renders the same instrument: the Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana at .../zakon/2001/24/1/reg returned the home page on four attempts and .../zakon/2001/24/1 returned 266,652 characters of it. The dated form .../reg/YYYY-MM-DD renders a different and shorter version of the same instrument, so quotations must not be mixed between the two addresses. **Its texts mix scripts.** The statutes are published in Cyrillic, but article 40 of the Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana carries Latin e, o and a glyphs inside Cyrillic words, and article 26 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona prints 'РDF' with a Cyrillic Р while article 29 prints 'PDF' with a Latin one. Both are the publisher's own encoding and quotations must reproduce them. **It interleaves furniture with the statute**: 'Мишљења, модели и литература' and 'Судска пракса' are inserted after article headings, so a quotation taken across an article boundary will contain words the legislator never wrote. **Its English service cannot be cited.** propisi.pravno-informacioni-sistem.rs advertises 'More than 200 basic and refined texts of regulations of the Republic of Serbia translated into English' under ISSN 1452-6662, but it is a subscription product and a single-page application: both / and /index returned the same 1,499-character shell, so no English text of any Serbian instrument was readable here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Основне услуге које се односе на платни рачун из става 1\. овог члана обухватају: 1) услуге које су потребне за отварање, вођење и гашење тог рачуна; 2) услуге које омогућавају уплату готовог новца на платни рачун; 3) услуге које омогућавају исплату готовог новца с платног рачуна на шалтерима или на банкоматима и другим сличним уређајима; 4) услуге извршавања платних трансакција, тј. преноса новчаних средстава с платног рачуна, односно на платни рачун, и то: (1) директним задужењем, (2) коришћењем платне картице, укључујући плаћања путем интернета, (3) трансфером одобрења, укључујући трајни налог, на одговарајућим уређајима, шалтерима банака и коришћењем интернета.»Our translation - not official
The basic services relating to the payment account under paragraph 1 of this article comprise: 1) the services necessary for opening, running and closing that account; 2) services enabling the deposit of cash into the payment account; 3) services enabling the withdrawal of cash from the payment account at counters or at cash machines and other similar devices; 4) services of executing payment transactions, that is, of transferring funds from the payment account or to the payment account, namely: (1) by direct debit, (2) by use of a payment card, including payments over the internet, (3) by credit transfer, including a standing order, at the appropriate devices, at bank counters and by use of the internet.
About this source
The legal information system of the Republic of Serbia, established by article 28 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona i drugih propisa i akata and run by the state publishing enterprise JP Službeni glasnik, which also prints the gazette itself. It carries the electronic Official Gazette, the archive of gazettes, the register and texts of regulations in force, case law, and a link to EU legal acts. Article 29 makes three things free to every internet user: the consolidated texts of regulations, the original gazettes in PDF in which the base texts were published, and the gazettes in which their amendments were published; everything else is charged for at a price the enterprise sets with the Government's consent. Addresses follow ELI: https://www.pravno-informacioni-sistem.rs/SlGlasnikPortal/eli/rep/sgrs/{body}/{type}/{year}/{issue}/{item} where {body} is skupstina, vlada or ministarstva, {type} is zakon, uredba, odluka or pravilnik, {issue} is the gazette number and {item} is the instrument's position among that body's instruments of that type in that issue - not its page and not its article. An amending act's own ELI resolves to the consolidated text of the act it amended. The end of every consolidated text carries a register block - Основ доношења прописа, Акт којима је пропис основ доношења, Повезани пропис - listing every subordinate instrument by gazette number and page, which is the cheapest index to Serbian secondary legislation we have found.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Its consolidated texts are not official and the governing Act says so.** Article 26 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona i drugih propisa i akata provides that the printed gazette and the electronic gazette in PDF are the official editions; the HTML edition is produced but is not named among them. Article 29 describes what the system offers free as 'незванично пречишћени текстови прописа' - unofficially consolidated texts. The pages themselves are headed 'Редакцијски пречишћен текст', an editorially consolidated text, which is a third form of words for the same thing. Cite it for what the law now says and say what it is; for the text as enacted, go to the gazette PDF the page links. **Its consolidations carry no sweep date.** The masthead lists every gazette number incorporated and nothing else, so there is a last amendment incorporated but no statement of a date up to which the text was checked. Do not record a consolidation cut-off from it. **It is unreliable to render and fails silently in two distinguishable ways.** A 73-character reply beginning 'Ne postoji akt sa URI-jem' is the publisher saying the address does not exist. A reply of roughly 1,225, 6,691 or 8,000 characters that begins with the Glasnik contact line or with the gazette navigation is the PIS home page served because the single-page application did not render the document - a failure of our extraction, never an absence of the instrument. Where /reg returns one of those, dropping /reg often renders the same instrument: the Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana at .../zakon/2001/24/1/reg returned the home page on four attempts and .../zakon/2001/24/1 returned 266,652 characters of it. The dated form .../reg/YYYY-MM-DD renders a different and shorter version of the same instrument, so quotations must not be mixed between the two addresses. **Its texts mix scripts.** The statutes are published in Cyrillic, but article 40 of the Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana carries Latin e, o and a glyphs inside Cyrillic words, and article 26 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona prints 'РDF' with a Cyrillic Р while article 29 prints 'PDF' with a Latin one. Both are the publisher's own encoding and quotations must reproduce them. **It interleaves furniture with the statute**: 'Мишљења, модели и литература' and 'Судска пракса' are inserted after article headings, so a quotation taken across an article boundary will contain words the legislator never wrote. **Its English service cannot be cited.** propisi.pravno-informacioni-sistem.rs advertises 'More than 200 basic and refined texts of regulations of the Republic of Serbia translated into English' under ISSN 1452-6662, but it is a subscription product and a single-page application: both / and /index returned the same 1,499-character shell, so no English text of any Serbian instrument was readable here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Банка је дужна да на захтев потрошача отвори платни рачун са основним услугама, или да тај захтев одбије, без одлагања, а најкасније у року од десет пословних дана од дана пријема уредног захтева. Банка може одбити захтев за отварање платног рачуна са основним услугама ако потрошач код друге банке већ има отворен платни рачун који му омогућава коришћење услуга из члана 73н овог закона, осим ако потрошач да изјаву у писменој форми и достави обавештење друге банке о томе да ће платни рачун бити угашен.»Our translation - not official
A bank must, at the consumer's request, open a payment account with basic services, or refuse that request, without delay and at the latest within ten business days of receiving a complete request. A bank may refuse a request to open a payment account with basic services if the consumer already has a payment account open at another bank enabling him to use the services under article 73n of this Act, unless the consumer gives a statement in written form and submits the other bank's notice that the payment account will be closed.
About this source
The legal information system of the Republic of Serbia, established by article 28 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona i drugih propisa i akata and run by the state publishing enterprise JP Službeni glasnik, which also prints the gazette itself. It carries the electronic Official Gazette, the archive of gazettes, the register and texts of regulations in force, case law, and a link to EU legal acts. Article 29 makes three things free to every internet user: the consolidated texts of regulations, the original gazettes in PDF in which the base texts were published, and the gazettes in which their amendments were published; everything else is charged for at a price the enterprise sets with the Government's consent. Addresses follow ELI: https://www.pravno-informacioni-sistem.rs/SlGlasnikPortal/eli/rep/sgrs/{body}/{type}/{year}/{issue}/{item} where {body} is skupstina, vlada or ministarstva, {type} is zakon, uredba, odluka or pravilnik, {issue} is the gazette number and {item} is the instrument's position among that body's instruments of that type in that issue - not its page and not its article. An amending act's own ELI resolves to the consolidated text of the act it amended. The end of every consolidated text carries a register block - Основ доношења прописа, Акт којима је пропис основ доношења, Повезани пропис - listing every subordinate instrument by gazette number and page, which is the cheapest index to Serbian secondary legislation we have found.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Its consolidated texts are not official and the governing Act says so.** Article 26 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona i drugih propisa i akata provides that the printed gazette and the electronic gazette in PDF are the official editions; the HTML edition is produced but is not named among them. Article 29 describes what the system offers free as 'незванично пречишћени текстови прописа' - unofficially consolidated texts. The pages themselves are headed 'Редакцијски пречишћен текст', an editorially consolidated text, which is a third form of words for the same thing. Cite it for what the law now says and say what it is; for the text as enacted, go to the gazette PDF the page links. **Its consolidations carry no sweep date.** The masthead lists every gazette number incorporated and nothing else, so there is a last amendment incorporated but no statement of a date up to which the text was checked. Do not record a consolidation cut-off from it. **It is unreliable to render and fails silently in two distinguishable ways.** A 73-character reply beginning 'Ne postoji akt sa URI-jem' is the publisher saying the address does not exist. A reply of roughly 1,225, 6,691 or 8,000 characters that begins with the Glasnik contact line or with the gazette navigation is the PIS home page served because the single-page application did not render the document - a failure of our extraction, never an absence of the instrument. Where /reg returns one of those, dropping /reg often renders the same instrument: the Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana at .../zakon/2001/24/1/reg returned the home page on four attempts and .../zakon/2001/24/1 returned 266,652 characters of it. The dated form .../reg/YYYY-MM-DD renders a different and shorter version of the same instrument, so quotations must not be mixed between the two addresses. **Its texts mix scripts.** The statutes are published in Cyrillic, but article 40 of the Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana carries Latin e, o and a glyphs inside Cyrillic words, and article 26 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona prints 'РDF' with a Cyrillic Р while article 29 prints 'PDF' with a Latin one. Both are the publisher's own encoding and quotations must reproduce them. **It interleaves furniture with the statute**: 'Мишљења, модели и литература' and 'Судска пракса' are inserted after article headings, so a quotation taken across an article boundary will contain words the legislator never wrote. **Its English service cannot be cited.** propisi.pravno-informacioni-sistem.rs advertises 'More than 200 basic and refined texts of regulations of the Republic of Serbia translated into English' under ISSN 1452-6662, but it is a subscription product and a single-page application: both / and /index returned the same 1,499-character shell, so no English text of any Serbian instrument was readable here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The condition is a lawful stay, which a visitor inside the 90 days in 180 also has. The Act does not require residence, a permit or a registered address for the basic account, although a bank's own due-diligence obligations under the money-laundering legislation are untouched by the right and are what tends to decide the matter in practice.
The Act fixes no fee for the basic account in the provisions read here, and this record makes no claim about pricing.
This record rests on the Zakon o platnim uslugama. We did not read the Zakon o sprečavanju pranja novca i finansiranja terorizma, which article 73n expressly preserves, nor the Zakon o deviznom poslovanju, which governs residents' and non-residents' foreign-currency accounts.
- consolidatesЗакон о платним услугама, редакцијски пречишћен текст („Службени гласник РС”, бр. 139/2014, 44/2018 …)
Правно-информациони систем Републике Србије (ЈП „Службени гласник”)
About this source
The legal information system of the Republic of Serbia, established by article 28 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona i drugih propisa i akata and run by the state publishing enterprise JP Službeni glasnik, which also prints the gazette itself. It carries the electronic Official Gazette, the archive of gazettes, the register and texts of regulations in force, case law, and a link to EU legal acts. Article 29 makes three things free to every internet user: the consolidated texts of regulations, the original gazettes in PDF in which the base texts were published, and the gazettes in which their amendments were published; everything else is charged for at a price the enterprise sets with the Government's consent. Addresses follow ELI: https://www.pravno-informacioni-sistem.rs/SlGlasnikPortal/eli/rep/sgrs/{body}/{type}/{year}/{issue}/{item} where {body} is skupstina, vlada or ministarstva, {type} is zakon, uredba, odluka or pravilnik, {issue} is the gazette number and {item} is the instrument's position among that body's instruments of that type in that issue - not its page and not its article. An amending act's own ELI resolves to the consolidated text of the act it amended. The end of every consolidated text carries a register block - Основ доношења прописа, Акт којима је пропис основ доношења, Повезани пропис - listing every subordinate instrument by gazette number and page, which is the cheapest index to Serbian secondary legislation we have found.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **Its consolidated texts are not official and the governing Act says so.** Article 26 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona i drugih propisa i akata provides that the printed gazette and the electronic gazette in PDF are the official editions; the HTML edition is produced but is not named among them. Article 29 describes what the system offers free as 'незванично пречишћени текстови прописа' - unofficially consolidated texts. The pages themselves are headed 'Редакцијски пречишћен текст', an editorially consolidated text, which is a third form of words for the same thing. Cite it for what the law now says and say what it is; for the text as enacted, go to the gazette PDF the page links. **Its consolidations carry no sweep date.** The masthead lists every gazette number incorporated and nothing else, so there is a last amendment incorporated but no statement of a date up to which the text was checked. Do not record a consolidation cut-off from it. **It is unreliable to render and fails silently in two distinguishable ways.** A 73-character reply beginning 'Ne postoji akt sa URI-jem' is the publisher saying the address does not exist. A reply of roughly 1,225, 6,691 or 8,000 characters that begins with the Glasnik contact line or with the gazette navigation is the PIS home page served because the single-page application did not render the document - a failure of our extraction, never an absence of the instrument. Where /reg returns one of those, dropping /reg often renders the same instrument: the Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana at .../zakon/2001/24/1/reg returned the home page on four attempts and .../zakon/2001/24/1 returned 266,652 characters of it. The dated form .../reg/YYYY-MM-DD renders a different and shorter version of the same instrument, so quotations must not be mixed between the two addresses. **Its texts mix scripts.** The statutes are published in Cyrillic, but article 40 of the Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana carries Latin e, o and a glyphs inside Cyrillic words, and article 26 of the Zakon o objavljivanju zakona prints 'РDF' with a Cyrillic Р while article 29 prints 'PDF' with a Latin one. Both are the publisher's own encoding and quotations must reproduce them. **It interleaves furniture with the statute**: 'Мишљења, модели и литература' and 'Судска пракса' are inserted after article headings, so a quotation taken across an article boundary will contain words the legislator never wrote. **Its English service cannot be cited.** propisi.pravno-informacioni-sistem.rs advertises 'More than 200 basic and refined texts of regulations of the Republic of Serbia translated into English' under ISSN 1452-6662, but it is a subscription product and a single-page application: both / and /index returned the same 1,499-character shell, so no English text of any Serbian instrument was readable here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source