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N26 will be leaving the UK

n26.com

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Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#481

Post by felixfbecker »

mrpelz wrote: post #467
therealmarv wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a German only thing. It's called SEPA ICT (Instant Credit Transfer) and institutes on booth sides need to support it. Then it works also from one EU country to another within seconds. List of banks with SEPA ICT: https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/sites/default/files/p...

In Germany, SEPA ICT is normally offered as a fancy “premium” service. All customers have just accepted that transfers might take up to three (!) working days and everyone just seems to be fine with that. My bank charges 0.50€ per ICT transfer.

Sparkassen offer it for free. A non-ICT transfer takes one business day, and I think only because of anti-money-laundry law stuff.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#482

Post by bloodm »

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…

Yes. Banking is very cheap, you can get a free bank account. Transfers are cheap, EC card Payments is cheap for Merchants. What is there to complain about? Try to send money in the US... Send a check and scan it!

Based on my experience with HSBC and SC (from HK) I doubt that they are really outstanding. Revolut? Well, you can buy crypto. But the App is terrible.

Most critique here is basically about Apps not being good in EU/Germany. This may be the case but honestly I have zero interest in doing Banking via an app, except for transaction code generation (actually this was terrible at HSBC and SC). It is much more convenient to do this on my computer. If I want to use an app, it should be like WeChat or Alipay. But a banking App? I personally have no need for this.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#483

Post by bloodm »

zorked wrote: post #138
gadjo95 wrote: post #70

Rumor is that they are also going to cancel their launch in Brazil. I think they are just re-focusing and trying to make money instead of burning it. Launching in a new market is always expensive.

TBH the neobank market in Brazil is kind of crowded and N26 doesn't have anything over those that started sooner.

Would you be so kind to give an overview over it (Brazil, both banks and brokers), incl. a recommendation? Thx

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#484

Post by philpem »

Retric wrote: post #102
parsimo2010 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Regulations are not a single homogeneous entity. They could remove 5% or 95% of EU regulations and have kept their promise as long as the changes where a noticeable net positive.

They could claim to have removed the regulations on the shape of fruit (which don't really exist in the way they were described) and secured some kind of fishing deal and call it a success.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#485

Post by imtringued »

threeseed wrote: post #130
ahmedalsudani wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The further the UK diverges from EU rules, the harder it will be to trade across the two zones. That’s going to cause ambitious companies to leave for the massive opportunity in the EU, not to set up shop in the UK.

Actually that's now really how it works. Customs controls need and are going to be imposed whenever there is no official agreement in place (and overseen by the ECJ) for regulatory alignment. And the ECJ oversight is a hard red-line for the UK. Which means that it isn't a sliding scale. It's black or white. Either you fully align with oversight or you don't. And if you don't then you are hit with the full suite of cu…

Companies don't have to care about customs controls if their products pass the controls 95% of the time.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#486

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

woodpanel wrote: post #464
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just that all co-op banks and Sparkassen have implemented SCT Inst (instant payment), while quite a few "commercial" banks have not (though the big two have). Though some of them do charge fees, some even outrageous fees, for the privilege of non-stone-age transfers (but then, others don't).

Almost all commercial banks offer SCT. And most of them for free while most co-op/sparkassen charge a fee (some of them even for receiving an instant payment which is rediculous). Sparkassen failed at numerous attempts to come up with an online payment system that gets any traction and it took considerably longer for them to adopt apple pay. I think it's also not good to paint commercial banks as one entity: There ar…

> Almost all commercial banks offer SCT.

Of course they do. That's the normal, slow money transfer, aka "SEPA Credit Transfer". I suppose you mean SCT Inst?

Even of the bigger retail banks, Consors and ING do not offer SCT Inst.

> And most of them for free while most co-op/sparkassen charge a fee (some of them even for receiving an instant payment which is rediculous).

While it is included at Deutsche Bank proper, both Norisbank and Postbank charge between 0.50 and 1.00 EUR for outgoing SCT Inst, Commerzbank proper charges 1.50 EUR unless you are in one of their premium plans while comdirect (though technically not yet fully part of Commerzbank) is free, Hypovereinsbank is free for all non-business accounts except the cheapest ones, where it's 0.50 EUR.

So ... erm, no, not even close to "most of them for free"?

Also, on the other hand, there are co-op banks that offer free accounts with free SCT Inst nationally.

But who is charging for receiving SCT Inst payments? I hadn't heard of that before, that's indeed beyond ridiculous!

> Sparkassen failed at numerous attempts to come up with an online payment system that gets any traction and it took considerably longer for them to adopt apple pay.

And yet, they (all) implement SCT Inst!?

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#487

Post by imtringued »

ars wrote: post #48
princekolt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still trying to understand the point of your comment, but regardless: You haven't heard of it. So what? People will be affected by this. This will also not be the only company who will have to leave the UK because they've deemed the cost of legalising their business there after Brexit is not worth the benefits. So you're either in denial about that fact or you think it doesn't matter, which perhaps works for you…

He's saying the reason they failed is nothing to do with brexit and everything to do with the fact that no one knew about them. But they are blaming brexit instead of their own failure.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Nobody is blaming anything. Brexit means that the N26's EU banking license will not be recognized in the UK. How is that a failure? It sounds more like they expanded to countries that they didn't really care about and once there are signs that those countries become even less attractive than expected they just stop operating there.

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#488

Post by imtringued »

Zenst wrote: post #295
greatpatton wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it has to do with the fact that when you have a smaller customer base and additional cost when running on razor-sharp margin, it doesn't make the cut. So yes it has to do with the Brexit as this is the reason for future additional cost, especially today when EU negotiator said that it will be very unlikely for the UK to get financial services equivalence. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/11/barnier-t…

They started in the UK in October 2018 - more than two whole years after the UK voted to leave the EU. It's as if they never knew what the UK people voted for!

They voted for increased political instability that is unfriendly to foreign business?

Re: N26 will be leaving the UK

#490

Post by imtringued »

thawaway1837 wrote: post #370

Our company has opened several new Amsterdam offices thanks to Brexit already. Currently they have probably added low double digit jobs in Amsterdam, and cut single digit jobs in the UK (explicitly related to Brexit...net jobs in the UK are probably even). This may not sound like a lot, but for a company that operated in every EU country, but only had a single office, in London, that employs 1000s of really well paid…

The initial step is always the hardest. Choosing a suitable location for your EU presence can be a difficult task and if you can do everything from your HQ there is no reason to even find one. But once you have paid that cost upfront then you can arbitrarily choose to expand in either UK or EU (whichever makes the most sense).
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