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N26 will be leaving the UK

n26.com

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Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#261

Post by scalesolved »

kristianc wrote: post #241
scalesolved wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comm…

> As a customer of N26 and Natwest/Barclays I feel that N26 in my experience has won in every category. And if NatWest were the only competition in this market, I’m sure N26 would have done fine. Monzo, Starling and Revolut all have far superior products and market offerings however.

Oh for sure, Monzo and Starling I've heard very good things of. Revolut doesn't have a banking license so hesitant to include them here.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#262

Post by Daniel_sk »

alibarber wrote: post #216
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've recently moved from the UK to another European country, and whilst I despise the way the politics is going back home - I'm amazed at how much better banking is back in the UK. It's free to have an account and debit card, often with a modest free overdraft. And transfers are really instant. As in I can transfer from Barclays to Santander and by the time I've double-tapped between bank apps the money will be there…

It really depends, Slovakia and Czech Republic usually have very modern banks. I can do everything through the app, I don’t remember the last time I had to go to an actual bank office. Apple Pay / Google Pay is almost everywhere, fast and easy bank-wire transfers, modern and secure apps with face/touch id...

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#263

Post by spiderjerusalem »

alibarber wrote: post #216
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've recently moved from the UK to another European country, and whilst I despise the way the politics is going back home - I'm amazed at how much better banking is back in the UK. It's free to have an account and debit card, often with a modest free overdraft. And transfers are really instant. As in I can transfer from Barclays to Santander and by the time I've double-tapped between bank apps the money will be there…

This is on the EU roadmap though, for what it's worth. Sometime in the next few years, we should see instantaneous transfers within the EU.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#264

Post by sveme »

ianai wrote: post #208
jfengel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your skepticism, but it's important to note that Brexit being pushed back implied that it might not happen, or that it might be very soft. It wasn't certain until a couple of months ago, when the vote effectively reaffirmed Brexit (or at the very least, that the Remain vote was so badly confused as to make it a fait accompli). So there is almost certainly more going on here than Brexit, but there's also…

Really, as a pure outsider, I think anytime you redo a vote on something like this as many times as they did you increase the odds of success (leaving the EU) to 1. People will eventually switch their vote just to not have to vote any longer. It’s not necessarily a ringing nor deep endorsement of the change.

There were two referenda on EU membership in the UK in the last fifty years.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#265

Post by pimeys »

luckylion wrote: post #110
chimeracoder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. They're a huge presence in mainland Europe, especially Germany, where they're the de facto bank of choice for all non-European immigrants living in Berlin, Munich, etc.

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).

The other banks in Germany have quite bad user experience compared to N26 which has a great app and is in English if you want.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#266

Post by alibarber »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #262
alibarber wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently moved from the UK to another European country, and whilst I despise the way the politics is going back home - I'm amazed at how much better banking is back in the UK. It's free to have an account and debit card, often with a modest free overdraft. And transfers are really instant. As in I can transfer from Barclays to Santander and by the time I've double-tapped between bank apps the money will be there…

It really depends, Slovakia and Czech Republic usually have very modern banks. I can do everything through the app, I don’t remember the last time I had to go to an actual bank office. Apple Pay / Google Pay is almost everywhere, fast and easy bank-wire transfers, modern and secure apps with face/touch id...

Exactly - so I wouldn't expect N26 to have a particularly large customer base there (could be completely wrong though) if what they are offering isn't particulalry innovative by their standards.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#267

Post by scarejunba »

crusso wrote: post #145
scarejunba wrote: post #61

The comments here are odd. N26 isn't making any political statements. They're just saying they don't want to apply for a UK banking licence now that they can't use an EU one. The response "they're only doing this because they can't make enough money in the UK" seems kind of vacuous. Of course that's why they're doing it. The cost of requiring a UK licence outweighs the benefit of being there. There seems to be some s…

There seems to be some sort of desire to say "Brexit didn't cause this" You can look at it from the other side too, ie. why is this the top story on Hacker News? This isn't even a mildly interesting technology, development, startup, or hacker article - but a bunch of people saw something that could be blamed on Brexit so they hit the upvote button.

I'm sure there's quite some "Brexit is bad" piling on, which is silly since this is a small company. I did find it interesting to note that they wouldn't harmonize EU banking licences as valid in the UK or grandfather them in or something.

I haven't lived in the UK for a few years now so I was surprised since the last time I voted there I recall minimizing disruption was a goal.

Found it interesting on that note. If I were setting up an international business I'd surely do more research than just going off random press releases on HN but it's useful to get the mood of businesses.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#268

Post by easytiger »

user5994461 wrote: post #242
eat_veggies wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my paycheck paid into my monzo. They don't require a proof of address, so I was able to open an account from my hotel room and have my card sent to my new workplace before I had my own flat.

+1 Monzo doesn't ask for proof of address, while other banks will need something like a utility bill. As a newcomer to the UK, one is pretty much obliged to open a bank account with Monzo.

How is that legal under KYC laws etc?

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#269

Post by thu2111 »

Traster wrote: post #166
tablloyd wrote: post #18

I'm skeptical of Brexit being the reason that N26 is withdrawing from the UK. They started operation in the uk in October 2018, over 2 years after the referendum result and 6 months before the UK was meant to leave until the date got pushed back.

This is the problem, no one believes the draw backs of leaving the EU even when businesses are literally pulling out of the country and directly saying it's because of regulatory divergence. It used to be that you could access 500m customers with one set of regulations. Now you can access 450m customers with one set of regulations, and you can access 60m with another, as yet undefined, set of regulations that are gua…

You're correct. Nobody believes them because so many of these so-called drawbacks have turned out to be lies.

For instance, Goldman Sachs repeatedly claimed they'd be moving their business to Frankfurt in the case of a Leave vote. They even funded the Remain campaign. Now they leased their HQ in London for 25 years: https://news.sky.com/story/goldman-sachs-commits-to-uk-despi... - apparently not planning to leave the country after all.

The EU Commission said it would ban EU companies from trading with British financial in the wake of Brexit. The IMF said it would "cripple" the UK. Brexit supporters said that cutting off the EU from all British financial services would be so self-defeating the Commission wouldn't do it. I was skeptical personally, but so far they were proven right. The Commission keeps extending the so-called "financial passport": https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/12/02/eu-threats-c...

N26 say they're leaving because of Brexit, but chose to enter after they knew Brexit had been voted for and the process was well under way. How likely is it this is true, vs N26 failing in the market but being run by a bunch of Remainers who want to deliver a "fuck you"? If they really only just realised now Brexit was happening then they are a monumentally incapable company.

By the way, the EU's unified financial regulation creates problems as well as solutions. For instance it prevented British regulators from stepping in to prevent the foreseen collapse of Icelandic banks. The Icelandic government ended up not having sufficient funds to bail them out. It's discussed here:

https://leftfootforward.org/2016/09/brexit-is-the-financial-...

The government's recommendations after that incident were basically to introduce caveats and more regional control over financial regulation.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#270

Post by greatpatton »

crusso wrote: post #145
scarejunba wrote: post #61

The comments here are odd. N26 isn't making any political statements. They're just saying they don't want to apply for a UK banking licence now that they can't use an EU one. The response "they're only doing this because they can't make enough money in the UK" seems kind of vacuous. Of course that's why they're doing it. The cost of requiring a UK licence outweighs the benefit of being there. There seems to be some s…

There seems to be some sort of desire to say "Brexit didn't cause this" You can look at it from the other side too, ie. why is this the top story on Hacker News? This isn't even a mildly interesting technology, development, startup, or hacker article - but a bunch of people saw something that could be blamed on Brexit so they hit the upvote button.

Really N26 is the leading virtual bank in Europe. So I hope that by that same standard we stop to hear about PayPal, square or any other US/rest of the world fintech companies....
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