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N26 will be leaving the UK

n26.com

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Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#431

Post by rkachowski »

tnolet wrote: post #122
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)…

Interestingly, N26 here in Germany advertises with “no hidden charges” and then goes on to charge you for almost everything. Like using an ATM more than 3 times a month. What?

it was free until around 4 years ago, and they shut down accounts that were making too many withdrawals (to large public backlash) https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/29004/number26-closed-a...

it was around this point that DKB also realised they could do this and stopped allowing atm withdrawals less than 50 eur

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#432

Post by kweks »

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…

A what card? Credit cards essentially do not exist in France.

Traditional French banks have a penchant for issuing debit cards with monthly fees and low daily, weekly (!) and monthly (!) limits.

I had a HSBC business account where I had to pay 45EU a month to lift the 300EU per week limitation.

Likewise, French banks refuse to issue chargebacks. The last time I tried, I was told to lodge a police complaint for theft to take the unknown entity who hit my card to .. court ..?

N26 etc have been a breath of fresh air in France.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#433

Post by kweks »

tsukurimashou wrote: post #291
Glawen wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 are very bad, from my experience at least and I've had 6 different banks over 8 years, got kicked from one because I was working at a startup and the boss gave checks to employees with no money on the company account, so the checks would get rejected a few days / weeks after the salary arrived (which was usually one month late and not at a fixed date which already made it difficult with bills). The catch…

Oh yeah, the "received a bad cheque so you're outta here" rule, similar to "you can't get an overdraft on your business account, but if you're a fonctionnaire (civil servant) you can live a -800eu for perpetuity"..

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#434

Post by SirHound »

wdb wrote: post #381
cosmodisk wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some parts of the UK banking are good,some are bad, and some are outright fully fledged idiocy. In mainland Europe it varies a lot depending on a country, i.e. Scandinavian banks in Baltics are pure shit.I had some funny situations with banks since I moved in to the UK: Barclays refused to open a bank account because the letter from the job centre( Confirmation of National Insurance Number application) had its logo i…

Ah yes, after spending a lot of effort to open a bank account to receive your monthly pay; it ended up some weird account were you could only use your debit card at their ATMs. Madness. UK banks are weird

I think that’s been illegal for over 20 years

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#435

Post by patio11 »

Nition wrote: post #427
tylerhou wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bank transfers of money generally don't cost money. They are just slow.

Oh, really? Last time this came up people were saying you couldn't send $50 to your friend's bank account without something crazy like a $15 fee, and hence everyone apparently used a third-party app like Venmo.

There are three relatively common ways to send money electronically between two US bank accounts:

Zelle: effectively instant, requires both banks to be on the network, free. Relatively new and many people who could use it don’t.

ACH: a few days, effectively ubiquitous, very small underlying charge infrequently marked up to ~$3 by the bank.

Wire transfers: not quite instant but close during banking hours, effectively ubiquitous by institution but often a pain for retail users to access due to risk profile, underlying cost is about $5 and often marked up to $15~$20.

The UX of the P2P payment apps is much, much better than any of the above, and would be what I’d reach for for a transfer in the $X0 range contingent on my counterparty being likely to use apps.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#436

Post by Lio »

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…

Manually balance? That’s not true.

In the UK you can write “direct debit” in the minimum payment amount on your credit card application and it will be linked to another account to be payed off in full every month. This will avoid interest charges.

This arrangement allows me to run my credit card accounts for free with no monthly charges.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#437

Post by smnrchrds »

redis_mlc wrote: post #416
Nition wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't really understand why there were so many banking startups in the US until I found out that simple bank transfers cost money over there.

Not even close. The banking startups are collecting account holder information so they can turn around and upsell you on credit cards and other products. But it gets better ... There is no such thing as a startup bank in the US because the government doesn't grant bank charters anymore. All those new companies aren't banks at all. They piggyback on top of an existing bank or the ACH network. That's why none of them s…

> government doesn't grant bank charters anymore

Is this true? Why is this the case? How long has it been like this?

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#438

Post by IndrekR »

cosmodisk wrote: post #379
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…

Some parts of the UK banking are good,some are bad, and some are outright fully fledged idiocy. In mainland Europe it varies a lot depending on a country, i.e. Scandinavian banks in Baltics are pure shit.I had some funny situations with banks since I moved in to the UK: Barclays refused to open a bank account because the letter from the job centre( Confirmation of National Insurance Number application) had its logo i…

> In mainland Europe it varies a lot depending on a country, i.e. Scandinavian banks in Baltics are pure shit.

Would you please elaborate? I have had quite a good experience with those banks.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#439

Post by pgeorgi »

kayoone wrote: post #232
ThePhysicist wrote: post #212

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…

Due to PSD2 every bank in Germany/EU has to offer APIs for 3rd parties to access the data, but they all do it in their own way so the open banking standards like the UK has are still better, but it's something.

See HBCI/FinTS, but there's more money to be made by locking users to your API only...

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#440

Post by pgeorgi »

tpush wrote: post #294
briandear wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No they didn't: https://wayback.archive-it.org/11980/20200128075524/https://...

Main statements for visibility: "The only restriction is on the class denomination, and as such cucumbers are categorised by class with reference to specific standards for each class, including the degree of curve."

"It must be made clear that the demand for these standards came from the industry itself"

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