Earlier quoted context omitted.
A credit card that pays 2% back on all purchases is pretty easy to get in the US. Since cashback isn't taxed this is close to 3% in pre-tax dollars. If having a balance on the card and money in the bank is too confusing you could just pay it daily on days that you use it. I'd say the minimal effort is worth the reward in this case.
> pay it daily Unless I can automate this it’s still an extra step I can’t be bothered to do.
N26 will be leaving the UK
391–400 of 517 posts
Re: N26 will be leaving the UK
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
My free N26 has five free ATM withdrawals per month. However, that is about five more than I use in the median month, so I don't really care about it. I really only need cash when buying second-hand and really even second-hand transactions are increasingly turning to mobile payments.
I'm in Berlin. Cash is king here.
Re: N26 will be leaving the UK
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking more broadly than just challenger banks: https://www.which.co.uk/money/banking/bank-accounts/best-and... Top of the list (as it often has been for decades) is First Direct. This is a challenger bank in its own way - it was launched in 1989 to pioneer telephone banking, a disruptive technology at the time! It now has phone and internet banking, but still has no physical branches. Monzo and Starling, the proper…
>The Co-operative Bank is, as the name suggests, a co-operative. It's no longer a co-op and its relationship with the Co-Operative Group will end later this year.
[any fintech enthusiasts trying to think of a challenger bank niche the UK hasn't already got multiple heavily-marketed competing alternatives in might like to go down the ethics route...]
Re: N26 will be leaving the UK
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't you just say where you moved to? It's quite interesting in context of your earlier comment.
Finland if we believe his LinkedIn, no idea if it's up to date though
Weird. Transfers were instant when I moved over there almost 20 years ago, and you could already do them online if you wished (there was a system of codes on a paper or a card, on top of login+password). And that was in very traditional banks like the Postal Bank (Postipankki/Leonia/Sampo: it changed name at least 3 times during my stay). I cannot imagine it can have gone worse during the last 10 years.
Opening an account was no problem and quasi-immediate. The only annoying thing is that as a foreigner I had to stay 2 years before getting a regular credit card (I didn't care about the 'credit', since in my home country we don't use credit cards but only debit cards, but for 2 years I was only allowed the Visa Electron which was not well accepted or perhaps not accepted at all abroad, so it was limited even as a debit card).
Re: N26 will be leaving the UK
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't. Why can't you use banks that agree to follow rules you like and be monitored by people you trust while I can use banks that agree to follow rules I like and be monitored by people I trust?
I don't know, let me think. Ah, right, 2008!
Re: N26 will be leaving the UK
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not Germany, but one that in many other ways is very efficient and forward thinking. I think the banking issues are more historical and due to having a small population with generally conservative attitudes towards money and financial institutions. But my point is that N26's offering is just not going to cut it across the whole EU(+UK), and any risk introduced by Brexit (or anything else that might happen) probably w…
yeah, in the US here is no expectation of a same day free transfer between banks. Only a "maybe" in the same bank. And you can sometimes game the ACH debit system to make things occur in "technically the same 24 hour time period". there are a couple tiers of paid wire transfers, but still no guarantees that you will have liquid settled cash in the same business day. the mere concept of the SEPA system in the EU is pr…
Re: N26 will be leaving the UK
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may also be that the EU banking system has customer tracking, the UK does not. N26 relies on customer tracking, so you can’t just withdrawal a large amount of money and disappear. It is all brexit related, why can’t you see that? Why else would they suddenly pack up shop? Unfortunately This is just the first to come.
> It may also be that the EU banking system has customer tracking, the UK does not. Can you explain a bit more what you mean by this? Tracking exactly in which sense?
So lets say you have a bank account in the United Kingdom. Now for whatever reason, I am now living in Austria, the bank can ring up my information without additional paperwork.
Now that the UK is in the process of transition, this isn't possible unless a court order is presented yadda yadda. It would be a threat for like N26 to have me as a client but unable to look in to my spending habits. If I had a bank account with loans enabled, I could take a loan and just disappear.
Re: N26 will be leaving the UK
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Italy there's also the problem that most banks don't allow you to receive wire transfers from outside the SEPA area. I had a hard time finding a bank that would allow me to receive transfers from the US. Some of them were actually baffled when I called for information at the idea of someone wanting to receive money from oversea. And let's not even get into keeping an account in another currency. My bank apparently…
Do Italians not invest in US securities at all? Seems kind of strange...
Re: N26 will be leaving the UK
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Re: N26 will be leaving the UK
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Italy there's also the problem that most banks don't allow you to receive wire transfers from outside the SEPA area. I had a hard time finding a bank that would allow me to receive transfers from the US. Some of them were actually baffled when I called for information at the idea of someone wanting to receive money from oversea. And let's not even get into keeping an account in another currency. My bank apparently…
FWIW, fineco will let you have foreign currency accounts, for free, and with minimal conversion fees, it's pretty convenient.