Bezahlkarte is not about payment. It is about discrimination and controll. It is designed to make us feel that we do not belong to Deutschland.
5 Points to show you, what the Bezahlkarte does to us:
1. Bezahlkarte violates the fundamental right to a decent minimum standard of living. How? I can withdraw €50 from cash machines, but I’m charged a high fee. I pay €2 per withdrawal. That’s 4 per cent of €50. Who of you pays 4 percent? None of you. That’s an extremely high fee, which is therefore deducted from my social security benefit. I can withdraw money free of charge in shops. At least. We also cannot buy in most flee markets nor buy online. But TEMU and Ebay Kleinanzeigen are the places, where other poor people in Germany usually buy, in order to live.
2. Bezahlkarte is making life more difficult. A private financial decision becomes an administrative procedure. To move, to go to school, we need a monthly train and bus ticket. To get this ticket, we must book an appointment at Sozialamt and ask them to authorize the transfer. It is not, once installed, everything is fine! No: in the App we wer einformed, that from now till the 15.10. our IBAN Numbers will change again. So, wherever direct debits are used (such as for the DB ticket), we must first have the Sozialamt update our bank details. Otherwise, we risk being fined if the payment fails. Seriously – this is time-wasting and humiliating! We are treated like people who cannot be trusted.
3. Our children are punished. Children only are allowed 25 € cash. But a lot of what they need for school, for hobbies, for normal life is paid in cash. This makes it very difficult to participate in birthdays, in cultural events, in activities. How can we integrate, when our children are excluded?
4. It stigmatizes us and fuels racism. When we pay with the Bezahlkarte, everyone in the shop knows we are asylum seekers. The cashier knows, the people behind us know. We are marked. We have no privacy.
5. Bezahlkarte is a threat to our privacy and fundamental rights. According to the analysis from Philipp Schäfers and Niklas Klee at the Chaos Computer Club, the SocialCard app contains 11 trackers that transmit data without consent once the app has been launched – transmitting data to Google and Facebook. The Companys part of the Bezahlkartensystem make profit from those trackers, but for us this is a No Go.
We did not come here to be rich. We came here to be safe. We want to learn, we want to participate in this society. But how can we integrate when we are isolated more and more? Integration needs participation, not isolation.
That is why me and Women in Exile & Friends thank everyone involved in the exchange initiatives. They show, that we are standing together in support of participation and of human rights for All.
To conclude, i want to adress the Brandenburg State Parliament: The Bezahlkarte promotes racism and, by extension, the influence of the AfD. This is dangerous not only for refugees, but for all of you too. So we call on you to become a beacon in eastern Germany in the fight against the shift to the right by abolishing the Bezahlkarte.
1Philipp Schäfers and Niklas Klee, Kein Bargeld – kein Problem? Bezahlkarten für Geflüchtete analysiert, 31.05.2024, media.ccc.de.
2Trackers like: Facebook Flipper, Google Analytics, Google CashLytics ect.
