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N26 will be leaving the UK

n26.com

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Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#151

Post by mpweiher »

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 was with Barclay's and it was a nightmare.

Actually pulled the plug on my UK ltd. pre-Brexit due to Bankxit...

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#152

Post by p0llard »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #115
Nursie wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote time - the only person I know who had an account (I work in London fintech at the moment) never used it and only opened it for the fancy translucent card. He seems to have accounts with all the 'challenger' banks.

Of all the challenger banks Revolut seems to be the most used one across countries. Not as main account but quickly sending money around.

I've always found this slightly odd, since Monzo is an actual bank (and thus receives FSCS protection) whereas Revolut is not (and does not).

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#153

Post by kinnth »

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)…

That's a bang on description of N26. Well done.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#154

Post by Tomte »

chimeracoder wrote: post #125
luckylion wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a specific reason for that, do they offer easy intl transfers or are very welcoming with support in many languages etc? I've vaguely known they exist but have only a few days ago seen one of their ads on public transportation (which doesn't say much, I'm not in the city a lot, but still).

> Is there a specific reason for that They're the only one that allows you to enter a second name via "care of"[0] in the address, and German postal services won't deliver mail if no name on the envelope matches the person registered at that address. In other words, you end up in a catch-22 where you can't sign a lease because you don't have a bank account, and you can't get a bank account because you don't have a le…

"c/o" is fine, I've used that before.

[edit – wrong:] The German-language equivalent (that most young people won't even recognize anymore) is "z. Hd." ("zu Händen" – "to the hands of").

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#155

Post by hypertextcoffee »

felixfbecker wrote: post #105
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)…

SEPA transfers in Germany are both free and instant too. Not saying it's not a slow and manually run industry in general, but I have nothing to complain about transactions.

Instant in Canada too. All banks use INTERAC, and transfers are truly instant.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#156

Post by mpweiher »

jotm wrote: post #53
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)…

My first German bank account was with Sparkasse, and I had to request a MasterCard separately (the main card was Maestro I think? useless for online payments). It wasn't even attached to the account, I had to transfer money to it (so, a prepaid card) and couldn't even see the remaining balance (I really tried). Terrible experience, but they were the only option for me at the time.

Yes, Germany uses the Maestro cards, not Credit Cards like MasterCard or Visa. Since that's what all the shops + ATMs take, that's the card you want.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#157

Post by cmsj »

mietek wrote: post #107
danpalmer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah same. HSBC have struggled to improve their tech but they are improving now. They released a completely new app and got rid of that terrible login flow last year and apparently it's much better. You can still send a payment from HSBC, for free, instantly, to any other UK bank account. You can also just about do most things in their online banking. This more than can be said for some other parts of Europe.

Both HSBC and the HSBC-owned FirstDirect still have absolutely terrible apps.

Trivial anecdote:

My wife is with HSBC and the iOS app doubles as both a banking interface, and the authorisation code response generator.

When she's in a web browser and needs to generate a code for the HSBC website (eg to add a new payee), she has to log out of the phone app to be able to get to the response code UI.

It blows my mind every time she does it. How on earth did they come up with that UX. It's like they're actively trying to be awful.

Apologies to anyone reading this who worked on this at HSBC, but yikes!

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#158

Post by juskrey »

s_dev wrote: post #94
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.

I think he means account can be locked at any moment, and German guarantee doesn't not help much when you are say, on travel or on bills payment day.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#159

Post by mpweiher »

Hamuko wrote: post #75
s_dev wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> and because it's German all savings up to €100k are guaranteed by German gov. Same applies to all banks in the EU.

So which banks are no longer in the EU...?
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