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N26 will be leaving the UK

n26.com

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Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#221

Post by _the_inflator »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #212
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)…

German/European banking is not so bad, you can transfer money in one business day to any other EU/SEPA country without charge. You also have debit cards that are widely accepted and allow you to pay directly from your bank account, which is also nice. There are not so many banks that offer APIs (only Commerzbank and N26 I think) but there are other interfaces that allow you to export transactions to third party syste…

Nope, Deutsche Bank as well: https://developer.db.com/

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#222

Post by briandear »

Glawen wrote: post #163
_n_b_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N26 is also very successful in France, whose banking industry is--I can confirm--very much slow, difficult, and _very_ manually run. They can charge fees for accounts because their fees are still so much lower than the incumbents they're displacing. (And you can do stuff without having to talk to your bank counsellor, at your one specific branch, in person... how novel!) So I can see how their model wouldn't be very…

French banks are slow, but they provide good services. When i lived in the UK, i had only a debit card (maestro). If you wanted a mastercard you needed a credit card account where you needed to manually balance at the end of the month. Mind you this was 10 years ago, when the UK was Just introducing PIN code for every card transaction, a security feature found in France since the 90s. In France you get mastercard as…

French banks provide terrible services. To send an international wire, I had to go into the bank to “set up” the service. Online banking requires ever changing pin codes in the name of “security.” In the US, I can interact almost 100% of the time online. The only time I enter my US bank is if I need a physical cashiers check or counter checks. But that’s very rare.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#223

Post by germanier »

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…

The post doesn't care who is registered at the address (there is not even a convenient way for them to check). They just look at whatever is written on the actual mailbox.

But yes, many banks want to send mail to your registered address only by default. They actually check your registration document.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#224

Post by briandear »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #83
mellosouls wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on whether those regulations are socially useful or not. It's not a given that should be the next step.

One of the Leavers' arguments was that the UK wouldn't be subject to the EU's regulations. They claimed that the EU rgulations were stifling and created too much of a nanny-state. Johnson's parliment is pretty much duty bound to create an environment of reduced regulation, otherwise they would be reneging on one of their most important platforms. Things like blatant crime should still be regulated, but creating an ea…

Didn’t the EU actually regulate the shape of cucumbers and the output of tea kettles?

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#225

Post by scalesolved »

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)…

As a customer of N26 and Natwest/Barclays I feel that N26 in my experience has won in every category.

Superior support when I need it on demand, the tech and apps seems solid, intuitive analysis and usage, the ability to have multiple sub-accounts and the ability to create rules to route money between them.

Natwest in particular seem stuck in the past, I cannot count the amount of times I've opted in for digital communication only and always continued to get letters to which I can never get through to support.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#226

Post by johneth »

mpweiher wrote: post #159
Hamuko wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...?

UK banks are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme[1] - basically the same thing.

[1] https://www.fscs.org.uk/

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#227

Post by Nextgrid »

wikibob wrote: post #209
speedski1 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random question, but I'm moving to London in a few months, do you have any suggestions on banks or "challenger" banks I should go with? (couldn't figure out how to DM you, not sure if it's possible on Hacker News)

100% Monzo. https://monzo.com/blog/technology Also check out all the awesome tech meetups they host at their new office. There's a very strong and small open source 'cloud' tech community in London where everyone knows everyone. Try hard to meet some people and before you know it you'll have a new group of friends.

Kind of disagree.

I was a huge Monzo fan, converted dozens of friends to it and was one of the first ones to get their beta current account (which I immediately started using as my main and only account despite it being in beta).

Nowadays however they seem to have trouble making profit, but instead of focusing on their existing customers they pour money into more marketing even though they can’t actually support all of them and now customer service response times are measured in days. They feel like a bullshit social media company with no real (aka profitable where people are happy to pay for it) product and are just trying to inflate their customer numbers no matter what.

Now I bank with Starling. They aren’t as “nice” as Monzo used to be but are definitely a lot better than the current Monzo both in terms of support and UI (Monzo redesigned their UI and it’s a shit-show now). They also offer business and Euro accounts if needed.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#228

Post by wikibob »

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.

Revolut is toxic:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/3/18248826/revolut-workplace...

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/revolut-trade-unions-labour-...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/02/28/revolut-fa...

Consider Transferwise as an alternative.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#229

Post by walshemj »

speedski1 wrote: post #179
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.

Random question, but I'm moving to London in a few months, do you have any suggestions on banks or "challenger" banks I should go with? (couldn't figure out how to DM you, not sure if it's possible on Hacker News)

Asuming your from outside the UK

Id also open a second backup account with one of the high street banks Satandares fairly good on rates and Nationwide has a pretty good Cash ISA

Longer term I would go for ii if you want to get into Shares ISA's

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#230

Post by briandear »

threeseed wrote: post #123
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were repeatedly told that wouldn't be the case before the referendum. It's hard to see the point of Brexit otherwise though.

But wait until you see the reduced regulations you will end up with. US is demanding regulatory alignment in agriculture and food safety as a condition of the FTA for example. And the US has significantly higher rates of food borne illnesses compared to the UK due to these weaker regulations: https://www.sustainweb.org/news/feb18_US_foodpoisoning/

https://fullfact.org/health/food-poisoning-US-UK/
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