Hacker News Reader

Comment by s_dev | Hacker News Reader

I'm with N26 -- tried signing up with Revolut as I heard they had some cool features I didn't have with N26 e.g virtualized cards and crypto currency support.

Signed up with my Passport and transferred €50 to the newly created Revolut account. I wait a week still no money in the Revolut account -- contact support. They explain I'm not registered and that I have to register first -- I'm at a loss as they could issue me an IBAN and I'm still not "registered" -- apprently I have to present a passport that isn't American because "they don't accept US passports" even though they did during my onboarding -- since I didn't have another passport available (my Irish one) I asked them to return the money and close the account. It took them 8 weeks to return the €50 with me chasing them everyday for the last two weeks.

I don't understand why N26 accept US passports and Revolut don't.

View on HN

Because Revolut dones't want to have to manage FACTA and other US extraterritorial laws. Here is Switzerland having a US passport is a good reason to be banished from your physical bank very quickly. US passport holders are seen as a liability and not as a customer. That's also one of the reason that make renouncement of US citizenship quite popular in Switzerland if you have dual citizenship.

This. This is the right answer

I've been told it's not just being US citizen but also, for example, being US tax resident for the current year

US citizens and us tax residents are essentially the same burden here. Nobody wants to deal with that unless the potential profits outway the additional costs of the admin

>Because Revolut dones't want to have to manage FACTA and other US extraterritorial laws.

So this is a competitive advantage of N26 over Revolut?

maybe they just don't know yet that they don't want to accept people with US passports :-)

N26 have been pretty solid for me and they have a number I can call if I need something. N26 is where I keep my money and Revolut is what I use for day-to-day stuff, but I still had enough money that the fraudster managed to steal 1k :/

I have switched to N26 now.

Sorry to hear about your trouble. For me the deal-breaker for Revolut when I was looking at my options was that it's not really a bank, while N26 is (which means deposits are protected up to 100k). So I went with them and have no regrets so far.

From one evil to the other then? I would definitely not keep my life savings in some virtual "start-up" bank.

Get a serious one and automatically transfer some money onto your fancy cards every month, if you like their service for everyday payments.

Looks like it :/ I don't store my life savings there, certainly, I just had "more" money in N26. You're right, though, I should transfer just as much as I need to them.

N26 is an actual bank that offers actual current accounts, unlike Revolut.

I know this was the case but both N26 and Revolut have EU banking licences -- as of the past year.

The reason I went with N26 is because they're German -- the German government will guarantee all savings up to €100k -- this is not the case with the others hence why Revoluts "EU banking licence" doesn't offer as much consumer protection as simply being a German bank. It just means they get more access to EU markets by abiding by certain terms.

N26 is also known to not help you when you're a fraud victim (https://heise.de/-4355970). And they're currently on a watchlist because they usually fail to prevent money laundering (https://heise.de/-4429143).

I was victim of a fraud (a shop factured me twice, then they refused the pay me back the money) while paying with N26. They helped me to get my money back, so from my point of view they help fraud victims.

N26 refused to update my name in the account when one letter changed. They requested documentation my country cannot issue, and just sending them two passports, old and new wasn't enough.

That took them more than a month to figure. More than a month of a constant email ping-pong where they were requesting more and more documents, some of them multiple times over and over.

I work there, It sucks. I can imagine being a customer

Their crypto support is a joke. You can only buy and sell with them. You can't transfer in or out. So in effect, you don't have any crypto. You are just paying them to convert money into something you can't use.

They are pretty clear in their terms about what you are doing when trading crypto. Trading crypto in Revolut is like trading contract for difference on stocks.

Because our government decided to play 1000 pound gorilla about our citizens hiding money in foreign countries.

Never mind that the big fish they are really after wouldn't have it in their own name and thus are basically unaffected. It's a lot easier for companies to simply say no US customers than have our idiots in Washington after them.

They only let you buy and sell crypto, you can't send it anywhere.

FACTA might be the answer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com