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N26 will be leaving the UK

n26.com

341–350 of 517 posts

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#341

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)

I'd strongly recommend having two: Nationwide as your base and a challenger for international wires/multi currency (I use revolut but there are lots of others).

I use Monzo as my main account but I have got a Nationwide Flex Plus account which gives you really good phone, travel and breakdown insurance for £13/month

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#342
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Italian, I understand this... but the obvious question is: why didn’t you open it at a branch more convenient for you?

Do people not move in Italy or something? I've encountered the same thing in Germany, when I log in I use the branch number of where we opened the account? Why? Who gives a shit about that? I certainly don't. But the bank does, for some unfathomable reason. For each way German banks are better than American ones, it seems like there's a way in which they're backwards or overly conservative.

Not very much, no... we call it ’campanilismo’: the tendency for people to live out their lives within earshot of their town’s church’s bell-tower (campanile).

Side-story: southern Italians who relocated to the industrialising North during the ‘Italian Economic Miracle’ of the 1950s to 1970s referred to the process as ‘emigrating’. Until it was looked down upon by more modern sensitivities, they were referred to as ‘immigrants’, and their offspring referred to as first- and second-generation immigrants.

It really is a rather static society, though now there’s a significant and constant flow of young graduates from the hideously unemployment-afflicted South towards the North, or abroad since the Great Stagnation set in about fifteen years ago.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your Goldman link shows Goldman selling their UK headquarters and leasing it back. A headquarters they planned before Brexit. It provides no information as to whether Goldman plan on sub-leasing. The financing of one of their buildings tells you nothing about hteir operations.

Your second claim- that the EU commission would 'ban' EU companies from trading with 'British financial' in the wake of Brexit. I'd love to see a source. You know, a source that doesn't caveat things like "if Britain diverged too far". Oh by the way, I work for a finance company that's moved its legal entity to Amsterdam- so those scare stories are literally what has happened.

I'd love to see any reference you have to what you were claiming would happen with Brexit in 2016. Any reference, because I bet you whatever you thought would happen is wrong. But I'm sure you've got good sources for your conspiracy theory that everyone who points out a problem with Brexit is secretly pushing an ulterior motive. Talk about the damage brexit is doing? you must be 'monumentally incapable' - or, you know, actually running a business.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually the EU request the law to be adopted much earlier. The countries that blocked its early implementation were Germany and France.

The reason being a banking-sector that is deeply entangled with politics. When it comes to checking accounts co-op run banks have 26% marketshare in Germany, while statebanks and communal-run Sparkassen have 41% [0]

Needless to say, they are not the most efficient and are even less prone for innovation.

[0] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/38041/umfrage...

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#346
post #128
post #21

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> Though the only real new Bank in the UK to do well, traction wise would be Metro Bank This probably indicates that you are not in fact as well exposed to bank marketing as you suspect - it's hard to argue that Monzo and Revolut have not done well.

I live in the London area, have a Revolut account and am aware of Monzo but have never heard of N26. I agree with the above poster that their advertising cannot have been very good.

When they came out in 2018 I remember they advertised heavily for a few months. But since then I have not seen any advertising in the last year or so.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually nearly every German bank has offered API access to accounts to their customers since forever...20 or 30 years or so. It was called HBCI, then it was renamed to FinTS, and it was the most advanced and well-supported API to bank accounts with practically no parallel anywhere in the world. The killer feature was that it was standardized rather well, and every bank supported it, so it was no problem to get progr…

another issue for businesses is that you pay lot more per transaction or batch when you use the api services of banks. For example we pay 2.50 euro for a sepa batch via ftp. For the same batch via the api we pay a monthly fee of 500 euros plus 4 euros per batch. The api provides instant payment processing. The ftp is a daily batch processing. We still use the ftp way, because the api one is too expensive

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#348
post #113

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.

At least in the US more productive states like New York and California heavily subsidize less productive states like New Mexico. I think there was real fear that Brexit was required to avoid a similar situation developing in the EU.

The big difference was we don't share a currency with the rest of the EU and were never likely to do so.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#349

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/

I suspect we won't see that because there has been too much publicity about it already. Workers rights are a different matter though.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does TW have a banking license? I seem to recall they don't, so your money wouldn't be insured in the same way, or something like that.

True - I don't think so. There are regulatory assurances that they ringfence the money and you should be able to get it all back should they go under, but yeah I would be wary of using them as the only place to keep my money or substantial sums. They are super useful for receiving and sending money to/from different countries though, reasonabble fees.

they absolutely are, I've used it for something like 6 or 7 years, and have had almost zero issues. I even paid for my wedding celebrations with transferwise-moved money :)
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