Banking: the overdraft is no longer a safety valve. It is becoming a financial product.

For decades, the bank overdraft was a kind of silent pact between the customer and the bank. A safety valve. A buffer between two due dates. Not an ideal solution, but a human reality: life does not wait for the date of the transfer.

But starting in November 2026, the overdraft will no longer be an adjustment. It will become a consumer credit. Officially. Legally. Commercially. And that shift, beneath its technical appearance, says something profound:

We will not help you. We will lend to you.

The veneer of "protection"

The government talks about preventing over-indebtedness. About protecting the consumer. About transparency on the APR and the repayment terms.

But the reality lies elsewhere: behind the good intentions, the point is to turn fragility into a regulated market.

From 200 € onward, the bank will have to assess creditworthiness, examine income, consult the incident registers. A 400 € overdraft may be enough to make a file ineligible if the debt ratio exceeds 30 %.

In other words: if you have little, you will have even less access to this small safety net. And you will have to justify why you are poor.

An outsourcing of social policy

What was already striking is that banks profited from overdraft fees. What is happening now is a normalization of that mechanism. A framework. A set of rules that does not come to relieve, but to write the need into a logic of scoring, of profitability, of compliance.

The State no longer plays its part. It does not protect. It delegates. It regulates poverty instead of fighting it.

It is a transfer of responsibility, clean and silent: it is no longer public policy that supports, it is banking contracts that sort.

What this measure reveals

Credit is not the problem. The problem is what we are trying to replace with it.

France could have invented a republican mechanism, temporary, automatic, to answer modest unforeseen events. A right to a social advance. A short-term solidarity.

Instead, it chose to standardize debt. It offers banks a new product: the management of the end of the month. And too bad for those who do not have the right file.

A proposal: a right to an advance, not a credit

We could do it differently. Create a social advance fund accessible with no interest, guaranteed by the State, triggered automatically for small amounts and capped at essential uses (rent, health, food). A tool for economic breathing room, not a disguised annuity.

It would be simple. Fair. Transparent. And above all: human.

But as long as we confuse protection with compliance, we will address hardship with a barrage of regulations. And the margins of survival will keep feeding the product lines.

Learn more about Christophe Mazzola