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Comment by tatoalo | Hacker News Reader

>By the way, if you're in the EU, bunq is a similar mobile challenger bank but based in the Netherlands and serving all of SEPA (if you're in the Eurozone you can use them as your main bank; I live in a non-Euro EU country so hold an account just for the hell of it).

I've considered bunq but couldn't really make sense out of their monthly fee (at least for me) once compared to N26. At the moment I've got them as my main bank account and Revolut for exchanging money quickly with friends and family.

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What was confusing about their monthly fee? I used to work for bunq so I can pass on the feedback.

At first glance to me at least, it's not clear if there's actually only a "business" and a "premium" plans?

Does that mean that for individuals there's only a "premium" plan but not standard plan? So premium (with 25 accounts and three cards!) is actually the standard plan?

There's a "standard" free plan but it's enabled once, after the first month trial, you decide not to pay a monthly fee.

Once downgraded:

- All your cards will be deactivated. They will be reactivated if you decide to go back to Premium.

- All features exclusive to bunq Premium (such as Apple Pay and Android Tap & Pay) will be blocked.

- You won't be able to open new bunq bank accounts as long as you are using bunq Free.

- Your API keys will be deactivated.

- You will still have access to all your bunq bank accounts and will be able to send, receive and request money normally.

So it's not really a common "standard" plan if you ask me.

Nothing was "confusing", but, again, IMHO the features provided don't really make sense under a monthly fee. They could have easily created a free basic account with those exacts same things and offer a pro upgrade for the "25 accounts" and related IBANs + joint accounts.

There is no feature comparison between Business and Premium.

I was under the understanding that the 9,99 would be all inclusive, but at the same time it seems there is a fee for "Paying a direct debit.", not sure what is comprised within that term, does that mean every time we pay with a card?

> but at the same time it seems there is a fee for "Paying a direct debit.", not sure what is comprised within that term, does that mean every time we pay with a card?

No - a "direct debit" in banking is where you give, e.g. Vodafone, your bank details and permission that they may debit your account once a month to pay your phone bill. For completeness, a "standing order" is similar - a monthly recurring payment to someone else.

The primary difference is that, with a direct debit, the company can change the amount to be paid each month - e.g. if you go over your plan and incur extra changes, they can just debit those from your account automatically.

All business bank accounts in the NL include those transaction fees. Consumer ones (as in Premium in bunq) do not.

You're running a business and don't know what a Direct Debit is?

Didn't know that term, English is not my first language.

That's the first time I've ever seen a per-direct-debit fee, it's quite unusual. The average person probably has 5-10 direct debits on their account, every month, for bill payments.

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