Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

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In the Netherlands (or the EU) banking is sort of changing, we have some Fintech companies moving into the space (bunq, revolut, N26). I'm a customer at bunq and they are a breath of fresh air, I can:

* Have 25 separated accounts or savings goals

* Share any bank account (or savings goal) with anyone (using bunq)

* On the fly couple my passes to any of the accounts

* Use NFC on my Android phone to pay

* Have a website where people can transfer me money coupled to any account

* Make payment request that are (when accepted) in my account in seconds

* Make 5 virtual MasterCard to route online payments to different accounts

* Choose what they do with my savings to generate interest (I have it set to "invest in green companies")

They are mobile first (the app is first class) but they have an API (and an open source desktop client as a result). All this is more expensive than traditional banks (I pay 8 euro a month) but they do not invest in shady things and promise to respect my privacy. I imagine Libra will do the same and more (but for the privacy part). It will be more like an ecosystem.

Not that I want it. I completely agree with all the sentiments here. I chose bunq because they have the same ideology as I do.

That's all well and good, but can you also anonymously buy some blow with cash when you want to party?

I understand the argument. I guess cash has a usecase where the law is meddling with things it shouldn't.

But there is btc and qr code scanning. I'm not saying we should ditch cash entirely.

"On the fly couple my passes to any of the accounts"

I don't understand what you mean by this?

Shoddy translation from Dutch, but he probably means that you can link any of your Bunq bank accounts to any of the Bunq banking cards you have.

Interesting thanks.

So presumably you link to your beer money account on a night out, expenses account on a work trip, etc, etc, but its all on one physical card.

Sorry for the Dunglish :) Exactly that, we usually use my pass when going out, I couple it to the "beer" account and send everyone a payment request, or just my bunq.me page (like https://bunq.me/freekvh (try adding an amount to the url and then a word and see the page change dynamically, i.e. https://bunq.me/freekvh/10.15/beer_money) and they can fill the beer account (iDeal is the instant payment method in the Netherlands). I set another pin code on the fly for the pass or even choose 2 pin codes to access different accounts with each. But usually one pays "contactless" in the Netherlands.

For work I do the same, create a dedicated account and after a trip I can easily export an overview to get the money back from the company.

In the Netherlands one pays with Maestro cards but for international travel I can couple a (debit) MasterCard, or the new TravelCard which is a real credit MasterCard but backed by your own money. bunq does not do debt.

You can link any of your bank cards to any of your accounts using the mobile app (change is instant AFAIK) You can even configure different pin codes per card, where each pin code corresponds to a different account

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