Once you arrive in Germany and you are ready to start receiving your Blocked Account payouts, you will need to activate your Blocked Account through the Expatrio User Portal.
Our activation tool is built in a smart way to adjust to your individual situation and will always give you clear instructions on how to proceed.
Let’s go through the details step by step.
Prerequisites to activate your Blocked Account
Current bank account
The money from the Blocked Account is not directly accessible. You will not be able to use the blocked account to pay for rent or cover your daily expenses with a card like you would with a normal current bank account ('Girokonto' in German). You will also not have a debit/credit card coming with your Blocked Account.
This is why you must set up a personal bank account (a so-called current account) in Germany, or an other SEPA country, in order to receive your monthly Blocked Account payouts.
You will find some recommendations of convenient current account providers in your Expatrio User Portal.
When activating your Blocked Account, you will need to confirm the IBAN of your SEPA account and the BIC/Swift code of your bank. Please make sure that your bank account is activated and ready to receive funds, otherwise your bank will return the transfer and you will get your funds with a delay.
German address
Besides the current account details, you will also need to confirm your address in Germany.
Activating the Blocked Account
Step 1
Visit the Expatrio User Portal and go to the 'Blocked Account' page. If you already have the necessary funds in the blocked account you will have an 'Activate' button on this page. You have to click on this button to start the activation process.
Step 2
Once the activation page has opened, click NEXT to proceed.
From this page on, you will be asked to provide relevant information and possibly some documents necessary for your blocked account activation. Please follow the instructions carefully and submit the correct documents and information.
Please note that you may not be asked for all of the documents listed below. Whether you will need a document or not will depend on your personal data and account type. Our activation tool will ask you for the document only if it is applicable in your individual case.
- Visa document:
- it can be:
- a valid Germany visa document
- a valid Germany residence permit
- address registration form (Anmeldung, can not be older than 3 months)
- enrollment certificate from a German university for the current semester
- it can be:
- Passport entry stamp:
- entry stamp from your passport from when you arrived in Germany
- in case you did not get this, but our activation tool asks for it, you can upload a copy of your flight ticket or similar documents as proof of your arrival date
- Proof of address:
- the document has to have your full name and your German address
- it can not be older than 3 months
- it can be:
- a utility bill
- a letter from your insurance company
- a rental agreement
- an official municipality document (for example the Anmeldung/address registration form or a letter from Deutsche Rentenversicherung)
- Passport
Step 3
Expatrio verifies activation requests every workday (Berlin calendar) and processes them the following day.
As soon as it has been verified that your information and documents are sufficient, we will activate your account. You will then receive your first monthly payout within 2 business days.
Should you have transferred more than the required Total Blocked Amount, you will receive the excess amount with the first disbursement.
The following payouts are scheduled automatically. We send the funds for each usage month on the last days of the previous month.
Your buffer will be transferred with the last disbursement.
Once all the monthly payouts are done, your blocked account will be automatically closed.