Stop the payment card!
The discriminatory payment card is received by all refugees who receive benefits according to the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act - starting in 2025 also in Heidelberg, Mannheim, and the Rhine-Neckar district. The payment card is nothing but right-wing populist symbolic politics catering to racist prejudices, further marginalizing, discriminating, and controlling those seeking protection. There is an attempt to increasingly restrict the lives of refugees and to insulate Europe from the Global South. We oppose the restrictive payment card and want to make solidarity a practice!
Why do we reject the payment card?
The payment card significantly restricts asylum seekers in their way of life. Although the payment card externally resembles a VISA card, the applications are significantly limited. In many regions, such as here in Baden-Württemberg, affected individuals can only withdraw up to €50 in cash per month. Additionally, the card only works in certain stores. Shopping at small stores, weekly or flea markets, and participation in cultural events are thus significantly hindered or made impossible. There are also high bureaucratic hurdles since, for example, every new transfer or direct debit must be approved by the responsible authority. Everyday financial decisions thus become an administrative act. We therefore see in the payment card:
1. Disempowerment of affected individuals: Refugees are being patronized in their daily lives and cannot freely decide where and how to shop. An economical and self-effective way of living is prevented, for instance, because affordable shopping options like second-hand stores, exchange, or used goods markets are often not usable.
2. Restriction of freedom of religion: To be able to eat halal or kosher, people need specially certified products from stores where payment with the payment card is often not possible.
3. Discrimination and social exclusion: Refugees are treated like second-class citizens with the payment card, preventing participation in social and cultural life.
4. Violation of personal rights: The payment card makes a person's residency status evident when shopping. This can lead to stigmatization and poses the risk of exposure or hostility in everyday life.
5. Racist control and data protection issues: The payment card provides the state with comprehensive insights into the finances of the affected individuals and serves as a control instrument. Although authorities formally do not have the right to check expenses in detail, several cases in Heidelberg are already known where this exactly happened. For additional cash withdrawals or transfers, affected individuals must submit justified applications, even though these reasons are none of the authorities' business.
6. Additional problems: The issuance of the payment card causes considerably higher costs and greater administrative effort for the federal states and municipalities than the previous cash issuance - even though the introduction was supposed to simplify it. The waiting times for applications for more cash or a transfer to be approved can be very long. Direct debits are missed, services are left out or have to be actively retrieved by themselves.
7. Illegality: The general limitation of cash for asylum seekers to €50 is demonstrably illegal. Refugees already receive social benefits below the subsistence level, now their access to cash is also massively restricted.
8. The danger of being extended to other groups: Refugees serve as a "test group." In the future, payment cards could also be used for other groups receiving social benefits. Such an extension is already emerging in Hamburg. This would mean further normalization of surveillance, control, and restriction of social rights.
Proponents of the payment card often argue that it is used to prevent transfers abroad. In reality, however, it shows that only about seven percent of refugees send money abroad, most of whom are working. The maximum €441 per month in social benefits that refugees receive is simply not enough to transfer significant amounts abroad.
The massive restrictions on refugees' way of life, the obvious illegality of the general cash limit, the problems with the introduction, and the high bureaucratic and financial expense are not an oversight but politically intended or knowingly accepted. Refugees should be made life in Germany as difficult as possible to deter people from fleeing. In this logic, supposed "pull factors" are to be reduced. However, the model of push and pull factors in migration research has long been considered inadequate because the reasons for flight and migration are extremely complex and multifaceted.
The arguments for the payment card are therefore merely pretended. The supposed problems that a payment card is supposed to solve simply do not exist. It is therefore nothing but right-wing symbolic politics and fits seamlessly into a racist policy of isolation in recent years. The payment card promotes racist prejudices, normalizes distrust towards refugees, and serves a regressive longing for authoritarian control.
For us, it is clear: A system based on exclusion, control, and discrimination is not "in need of reform" but fundamentally wrong. We oppose this policy politically, in solidarity, and practically. With solidarity exchange initiatives, we provide concrete support to refugees in overcoming the massive restrictions due to the cash limit.
What are we doing against it?
As we do not want to accept the exclusion and control of refugees without resistance and want to show solidarity with those affected, we organize exchange actions throughout the region.
The principle:
- People with payment cards buy a shopping voucher in the supermarket
- Upon exchange, they receive the voucher value in cash
- People in solidarity without payment cards receive the vouchers in exchange for cash
If you click on "Heidelberg" or "Mannheim", you will see where you can exchange in the respective city.
How can you support?
Feel free to contact us and/or come by our meetings if you...
- want to bring in your own perspectives
- want to support the organization of the exchange markets
- want to take on shifts in the exchange market
- can provide us with rooms
- are part of organized groups and are willing to issue shopping vouchers in your venues
- can collectively take shopping vouchers from us, e.g., for your shared flat, house project, club...
- want to participate in a nationwide political campaign against these racist attacks
- want to support taking legal action against the payment card.
- want to get to know us or have questions.
We also rely on donations. For the exchange actions, we need a financial buffer. Additionally, we need some money, for example, for materials like flyers or posters, small purchases like lockable cash boxes or barcode scanners, or room rentals for info events. Donation receipts can be issued.
If the financial buffer is no longer needed, it would be donated to the following organizations:
This means your donation will be put to good use.
For a world of solidarity!
What do supra-regional structures look like?
There are already initiatives in many cities against the payment card and exchange initiatives like ours. We are networked nationwide in the network "Equal social rights for all!" (Website, Instagram)
Are you looking for an exchange opportunity in your city? An overview of all exchange initiatives can be found here.
Further information
- Scientific assessment of the payment card
Refugee Council Baden-Württemberg - Fewer and fewer rights for refugees
Refugee Council Baden-Württemberg - What to know about the new payment card for refugees
State Parliament Baden-Württemberg