Bankswitching is the everyday name of the Belgian interbank mobility service (service de mobilité interbancaire): the new bank brings over your standing orders, your direct debits and your regular incoming payments, at no charge, in ten banking days at the earliest. The service works. Yet in 2025 it was used for only one current account in three hundred.
What is bankswitching?
A mandate. You sign a form at the bank you are joining, and that bank fetches the list of your payment orders from the old one, re-enters them, then informs your creditors and the payers who send you money at regular intervals. The service is free, reserved for private individuals, and it applies to current accounts as well as regulated savings accounts. How it works is set out in six pages of rules published by Febelfin, the Belgian banking federation, which every bank applies in the same way.
The procedure itself, step by step and deadline by deadline, is in our guide to switching banks in Belgium. The question here is a different one: why is a tool that works used so little?
111,745 requests in 2025, for some twenty million current accounts
Febelfin publishes the count every January. Put end to end, the last four releases tell the story of a rise, then an ebb.
| Year | Requests received | Of which savings accounts | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 93,167 | not stated | Febelfin, review of 2022 |
| 2023 | 119,517 | not stated | Febelfin, 15 January 2025 |
| 2024 | 134,343 | 47,908 | Febelfin, 15 January 2025 |
| 2025 | 111,745 | 45,178 | Febelfin, 7 January 2026 |
Figures taken on 11 October 2026 from Febelfin's annual press releases.
The fall in 2025 comes to 17%. Febelfin puts it down to the bank mergers that had inflated 2024, and the explanation holds: when a brand disappears, its customers move because they have to, not because they want to.
That leaves the order of magnitude. Of the 111,745 requests in 2025, 45,178 concerned a savings account. That leaves 66,567 for current accounts, split between closures with a transfer of payments (38,118, or 34% of the total), transfers of payments without closure (16%) and plain closures (10%). Financité, a Belgian responsible-finance association, in the opinion it submitted to the Chamber of Representatives on the subject, puts the Belgian stock at about 20 million current accounts and 18 million regulated savings accounts in 2023. The sum is quickly done: 0.33% of current accounts went through the service in 2025, and 0.25% of savings accounts.
One account in three hundred.
The same opinion sets this against the other markets where a Belgian consumer can leave whenever they like. In 2023, 18.42% of customers changed electricity supplier. In 2024, 8.7% of active SIM cards moved to another operator with their number. The gap between energy and banking is one to fifty-five, and the price of moving does not explain it, since bankswitching costs nothing and closing a current account costs nothing either.
A "free" bank does not exist, but the service that lets you leave one really is free. It is used for one account in three hundred.
Why is bankswitching used so little?
Because it solves the easiest problem.
Twenty years ago, moving payments was the real chore of changing banks: writing to every supplier, waiting, checking. The service removed that chore, and removed it cleanly. But what ties a customer to a bank in 2026 lies elsewhere. The Belgian Competition Authority wrote as much in its 2023 report on retail banking, where it describes a market held by four groups and points to tied sales, especially at the time of the mortgage. Everyone knows the mechanism: a rate discount granted on condition that you have your income paid in and take your insurance in the same house. No mobility form detaches those products from one another.
The other brake is more ordinary. Financité, in the words of Morgane Kubicki interviewed by the public broadcaster RTBF on 7 April 2025, sums it up like this: "We know that Belgians change banking services very little", largely because they imagine the process to be complicated. It is not. But a service you have to request from the bank you are joining, whose official name runs to four words and whose nickname is English, does not make itself known unaided.
The service forgets everything that is not a payment order
The rules define their object precisely: standing orders, transfers with a future execution date, direct debits executed at least once in the previous thirteen months, and recurring incoming transfers. Nothing else exists as far as they are concerned. The list of what remains is longer than you would think when signing:
- the account number, which stays attached to the old bank, with everything that follows for the details you once gave to a notary, a building manager or a former landlord;
- card payments, meaning streaming subscriptions, online shopping platforms and gyms that debit a card number rather than an account;
- annual direct debits that fell just before the thirteen-month window, typically a home insurance premium or a membership fee;
- the FPS Finance, the federal tax administration, which keeps refunding to the old number until you change it yourself on MyMinfin;
- products attached to the account: mortgage, pension savings, securities account, safe deposit box, none of which follows;
- your saved beneficiaries and your statement history, to be exported before closure if you want to keep them.
None of these omissions is a failure. They follow from the scope, and Wikifin, the financial education site of the FSMA, the financial markets regulator, says so plainly when it recommends keeping the old account for a while.
Can you use bankswitching without closing your old account?
Yes, and one request in six does just that.
The form offers four boxes for a current account: transfer the payments and keep the old account, transfer and close, only have creditors and payers informed, or close without transferring anything. Keeping the old account means paying for two: €45 a year for a pay-per-item account at KBC, debit card included, at the price in force since 1 January 2026, against €0 for a Green formula at Argenta according to the price list valid on 16 September 2026. As for the plain closure, it informs nobody.
Business account, joint account, negative balance: where the request stalls
Three situations block or curtail the service, and they are written into the rules.
The first concerns the self-employed. The text covers only the consumer, defined as a natural person acting outside any commercial, craft or professional activity. A business account therefore falls outside it, and Febelfin sends entrepreneurs to a separate page of its site.
The second affects joint accounts. For a current account, one holder common to the old and the new account is enough. For a regulated savings account, all holders must be the same on both sides, which in practice rules out the couple who use a change of bank to separate their savings.
The third is the most frequent. If the old account still carries open commitments, the old bank does not close it on the planned date and simply informs you. Some receiving banks go further in their own terms: Revolut, whose Standard plan costs €0 a month (figure from our article of 26 September 2026 on Revolut in Belgium), states in its account switching terms, consulted on 11 October 2026, that a request aimed at an old account with a debit balance ends up rejected, that the holders must be identical and that the service only works in one direction, towards Revolut.
Would account number portability do better?
This is the serious objection, and it comes from consumer associations. If you keep your phone number when you change operator, why not your account number? A bill tabled in the Chamber under number 56 0223 wants to write that principle into the Code of Economic Law, and the federal coalition agreement commits to "examining the feasibility" of the measure. Financité argues for an alias system modelled on Sweden's Bankgirot, and reckons a national scheme would cost far less than a European one.
Febelfin answers with the technical side. The IBAN contains the bank's code, it is harmonised across the SEPA area, and making it portable would require a European database able to say in real time which institution each number belongs to. "It would be quite heavy to set up", its spokesperson Charline Gorez told RTBF, adding that there is "no disadvantage" in using bankswitching compared with portability.
Each side is right on one point. Portability would indeed remove half of the omissions listed above: no number to give the tax office, no lost beneficiary, no stray annual direct debit. It would not touch the other half, that of cards, the mortgage and securities accounts, in other words the ties the Competition Authority identifies as the real locks. I do not believe a portable number would take bank mobility from 0.33% to 18%. It would probably shift it, and that is already a reason to follow the file.
A good tool for a small part of the problem
Bankswitching does the one thing asked of it well. If all you have is a current account, a debit card and bills paid by direct debit, it settles your departure in two weeks and without a euro. If a mortgage, pension savings or a securities portfolio tie you to your bank, it will only move the easy part, and the question becomes one of keeping two banks rather than changing.
Either way, the form comes after the sums. Our ranking of Belgian banks gives the annual cost of the current account institution by institution, the comparison tool puts two packages side by side and the which bank to choose page starts from how you use your account. For savings, the cost of leaving is counted in lost loyalty bonus, and we put a figure on it in the article on transferring a savings account to another bank. And if the problem is the reverse, a bank that no longer wants you, the basic banking service is the one to look at.
Sources
- Febelfin, Règlement relatif au service de mobilité interbancaire: definition of the consumer, transferable payment orders, thirteen-month rule, four options on the form, common-holder rule, open commitments, closure deferred by three months, remedies. Version published in December 2024, consulted on 11 October 2026.
- Febelfin, In 2025, the bank switching service received 111,745 requests: 111,745 requests, 38,118 closures with transfer, shares of 16% and 10%, 45,178 savings accounts, fourteen participating banks for savings. Press release of 7 January 2026.
- Febelfin, In 2024, the bank switching service received 134,343 requests: 134,343 requests in 2024, 119,517 in 2023, 47,908 savings accounts. Press release of 15 January 2025.
- Febelfin, In 2022, the bank switching service received 93,167 applications: 93,167 requests in 2022. Annual review published by Febelfin, consulted on 11 October 2026.
- Financité, Avis sur la proposition de loi 56 0223/001: about 20 million current accounts and 18 million regulated savings accounts in 2023, 18.42% of customers changing electricity supplier in 2023, 8.7% of SIM cards ported in 2024, securities account transfer costs of €25 to €150 per line, reference to the Belgian Competition Authority's 2023 report. Consulted on 11 October 2026.
- RTBF, Changer de banque tout en gardant son numéro de compte ? Pas si vite: statements by Morgane Kubicki (Financité) and Charline Gorez (Febelfin), commitment in the federal coalition agreement. Published on 7 April 2025.
- Wikifin (FSMA), Comment changer de banque ?: scope of the service and advice to keep a transition period. Page updated on 17 February 2025.
- Ombudsfin, Introduire une plainte: mediation procedure, free for the consumer. Consulted on 11 October 2026.
- Revolut Bank UAB, Belgian branch, Account switching terms: debit balance, identical holders, one-way service. Consulted on 11 October 2026.
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Marion a travaillé six ans en agence, à Namur puis à Bruxelles, avant de passer côté rédaction en 2020. Elle a ouvert, fermé et transféré assez de comptes à vue pour savoir où se cachent les frais : le forfait « tout compris » qui exclut justement le virement instantané, la carte de crédit offerte la première année, le compte d’épargne dont la prime de fidélité s’évapore au premier retrait. Depuis, elle relit chaque janvier et chaque juillet les documents d’information tarifaire des banques belges, recalcule le coût annuel réel par profil, et vérifie ce que rapporte vraiment un taux affiché quand le plafond est de 500 € par mois. Ce qui l’agace : les comparatifs qui classent une banque première sur la qualité de son application alors que le client, lui, paie ses frais en euros.