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N26 will be leaving the UK

n26.com

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Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#91

Post by p0llard »

s_dev wrote: post #67
danpalmer wrote: post #11

Businesses pulling out of the UK based on the Brexit process is bad for the UK, and I'm sure this was indeed mainly motivated by N26's need for a UK banking licence, which is a costly and difficult process to go through. However, it's worth noting that they are pretty small in the UK (~200k users). They're very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I've heard)…

>N26 on the other hand just didn't have a compelling offering. They charged for most/all of their accounts (explicit charges for accounts in the UK are uncommon), they lacked features, and their marketing was unremarkable compared to the competition. I'm not buying any of this. I'd speculate that N26 was denied a banking licence in order to look after the "British challenger" banks who already operated in the EU with…

> I'm not buying any of this. I'd speculate that N26 was denied a banking licence in order to look after the "British challenger" banks who already operated in the EU with their EU licence. Having been denied the licence makes operating in the UK post Brexit impossible.

I don't think that's really addressing the point though: Monzo/Starling/et al. are also all free, have a great app and savings up to £85,000 (€100,000) are guaranteed by the UK government.

The fact that they have an order of magnitude fewer customers in the UK than Monzo, for example, seems like strong evidence of their failure to compete; it seems hard to find a compelling reason to use them, especially when they were so late to the market.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#92

Post by laurencerowe »

blibble wrote: post #65
avh02 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with hsbc for a year in the uk, I'd definitely not call it "generally very good" (ridiculous app and login infrastructure), but I have a sample size of one.

hsbc's app and website are the worst of any bank I've used nationwide and natwest have much better apps and websites

HSBC's current online banking website is much clunkier than the version they had 10 years ago. That said, I can still do everything through it and compared to the US making payments is an absolute breeze.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#93

Post by threeseed »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #87
danpalmer wrote: post #11

Businesses pulling out of the UK based on the Brexit process is bad for the UK, and I'm sure this was indeed mainly motivated by N26's need for a UK banking licence, which is a costly and difficult process to go through. However, it's worth noting that they are pretty small in the UK (~200k users). They're very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I've heard)…

They are using Brexit as a scapegoat. The referendum was almost 4 years ago and only last year they were talking about expanding in the UK. Some people might have been in denial but considering the political force of a referendum result and the glaring absence of any political alternative for years now, any other Brexit outcome was a fantasy and remaining in the single market never realistic. As you say the reality i…

I think you should follow UK politics more closely.

Referendum was 4 years ago. But only until the recent election i.e. Dec 2019 did Johnson have the numbers in Parliament to actually "get Brexit done". And this week for the first time in 4 years, UK government is formerly advising businesses that there will be a hard Brexit:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-confirms-plans...

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#94

Post by s_dev »

eugenijusr wrote: post #58

This is not the first market this bank has pulled out from. A couple of years ago they stopped signing up people from two EU markets they previously served (Latvia and Lithuania) without any reason. Granted all existing accounts remained untouched, still these accounts get somewhat crippled functionality and their future is unclear. Although their app is great and I didn't have any big issues with the service itself,…

>I'm somewhat wary of keeping any larger sums of money in my N26 account.

It's German. All savings are guaranteed by German gov up to €100k. This is not the case with Monzo or Revolut.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#95

Post by detritus »

Hamuko wrote: post #51
detritus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mmm, not sure I'd agree with your estimation, but "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and all that. Seems a little form over function to me - I'm not sure how wonderful an idea it is being able to read the three security digits on the reverse. Not sure if I'm just paranoid, but I scrape those off every time I get a new card.

The CVC is behind the MasterCard logo on my N26 card.

That would work!

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#96

Post by dazc »

threedots wrote: post #17
Zenst wrote: post #2

As somebody who lives in the UK (London area), I've never even heard of this company N26, let alone aware that they had UK operations. I do frequent the web, youtube, bus stops, tubes, trains and utterly exposed to all forms of marketing. So from my perspective, this does seem like marketing failure from the start - at least from my perspective. Though the only real new Bank in the UK to do well, traction wise would…

Both Monzo and Revolut have over 3m customers compared to 1.7m for metro bank. Starling is over 1m. So plenty of traction all for the challenger banks.

How many of those users are using Monzo/Revolting as their main bank though?

I have Monzo for small expenses when travelling in Europe but my main accounts remain with Barclays. I am guessing a lot of people do similar although, I concede, it's hard to find numbers that will corroborate this?

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#97

Post by downerending »

avh02 wrote: post #59
danpalmer wrote: post #11

Businesses pulling out of the UK based on the Brexit process is bad for the UK, and I'm sure this was indeed mainly motivated by N26's need for a UK banking licence, which is a costly and difficult process to go through. However, it's worth noting that they are pretty small in the UK (~200k users). They're very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I've heard)…

I was with hsbc for a year in the uk, I'd definitely not call it "generally very good" (ridiculous app and login infrastructure), but I have a sample size of one.

I thought it was just me. HSBC is by far the worst customer technical experience of any financial produce/service I've ever encountered. You really have to try to be that bad.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#98

Post by dabeeeenster »

Karishma1234fff wrote: post #43
danpalmer wrote: post #11

Businesses pulling out of the UK based on the Brexit process is bad for the UK, and I'm sure this was indeed mainly motivated by N26's need for a UK banking licence, which is a costly and difficult process to go through. However, it's worth noting that they are pretty small in the UK (~200k users). They're very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I've heard)…

Next step for UK is to reduce regulations compared to EU to make it easier for people to setup shop in UK compared to EU.

Which regulations?

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#99

Post by ceejayoz »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #87
danpalmer wrote: post #11

Businesses pulling out of the UK based on the Brexit process is bad for the UK, and I'm sure this was indeed mainly motivated by N26's need for a UK banking licence, which is a costly and difficult process to go through. However, it's worth noting that they are pretty small in the UK (~200k users). They're very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I've heard)…

They are using Brexit as a scapegoat. The referendum was almost 4 years ago and only last year they were talking about expanding in the UK. Some people might have been in denial but considering the political force of a referendum result and the glaring absence of any political alternative for years now, any other Brexit outcome was a fantasy and remaining in the single market never realistic. As you say the reality i…

> The referendum was almost 4 years ago and only last year they were talking about expanding.

Last year it looked like Brexit might quietly just never happen.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#100

Post by luckylion »

shadowgovt wrote: post #34
trekrich wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i suspect this is being used as an excuse to leave the UK.

In the sense that "Brexit means N26 needs to now file a lot of license paperwork that wasn't necessary under EU law," yes.

If they believed their business would make them money in the UK, filing paperwork wouldn't be an issue.
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