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> Though the only real new Bank in the UK to do well, traction wise would be Metro Bank

This probably indicates that you are not in fact as well exposed to bank marketing as you suspect - it's hard to argue that Monzo and Revolut have not done well.

Or starling bank for that matter

I'm aware of those two at least, but from people I know, not one had them and basing around that aspect of traction - sure that may well not represent the market, but at least I'm aware of them, unlike this N26.

That's so strange/interesting because pretty much everyone I know in London uses Monzo. Granted, my circle is like "young tech/agency workers in London", but I notice people using it at cafes and stuff all the time.

Banking is hard; and growing in Banking is hard. Monzo have only recently started advertising [1]; their word of mouth campaign had people sitting in virtual queues over 100k long.

[1] https://www.marketingweek.com/monzo-first-ad-campaign/

According to a quick search - Monzo had 3 million customers as of Sept ‘19 [1] vs Metro Bank’s 1.7 million in May ‘19 [2].

[1] https://monzo.com/blog/2019/09/16/three-million

[2] https://www.metrobankonline.co.uk/about-us/press-releases/ne...

I live in the London area, have a Revolut account and am aware of Monzo but have never heard of N26. I agree with the above poster that their advertising cannot have been very good.

When they came out in 2018 I remember they advertised heavily for a few months. But since then I have not seen any advertising in the last year or so.

Worth noting Revolut do not have a UK banking licence, and your funds with them are not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

They have an EU bank licence and funds are thus protected under the EU-wide protection scheme.

Let's look at various banks' total assets, as listed on this random website i found [1], in millions of pounds:

  Monzo                 139.82
  Starling              206.64
  Marks & Spencer      5569.90
  Ulster              11641.00
  Metro               21647.00
  Co-operative        23102.80
  Coutts              34280.00
  Clydesdale          43583.00
  HSBC (retail)      238939.00
  Barclays (retail)  251305.00

On that measure, at least, Metro Bank is a hundred times bigger than either Monzo or Starling. Assets are not the whole story, of course; i'd be interested to see numbers for customers, revenues, and some sort of measurement of payment flow.

But i think the lesson here is that if you live in the London tech bubble, it's easy to think that Monzo are huge. Many of my friends bank with Monzo, and i see plenty of Monzo cards being tapped on the readers at the tube station. But we are not representative of the country at large.

[1] https://thebanks.eu/banks-by-country/United-Kingdom

This would be a more compelling argument if I lived in London ;-)

    Monzo                 139.82

From the same website — N26:

    428.86 mln EUR

According to the website, that Monzo stat is two years old. monzo.com shows the current customer count - 3.8 million ie 10% of the adult population of the UK.

According to https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-7647253/M... Monzo has over half the challenger bank market share

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 as a schadenfreude for the people affected? I don't get it.

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.

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-tel...

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!

At that time it was not certain that Brexit would be equal to no deal (at least for finance services). Now that this is the most probable outcome they have to take action.

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

He's also saying that because he didn't know about them, they must not be well known, which isn't a great way to make a point.

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.

I think the point of parent's comment is that hardly anyone in the UK has heard of N26, so perhaps we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that it's all due to Brexit. Let's be honest, if they had a market here worth saving, they'd apply for the licence.

> if they had a market here worth saving, they'd apply for the licence.

That basically amounts to a tautology: if getting a license would be worth it, they would get a license.

It's not a tautology at all, it's the patently obvious. The only business reason they have to not apply for the licence is that they won't have any profits left over afterwards. Ergo they aren't very profitable, unless you're claiming that the licence is designed to be so costly as to keep foreign companies out, which I highly doubt, given that Britain (and especially the Conservative party) like to attract foreign investment.

Opportunity cost is another obvious reason to leave money on the table. If the company is small enough then they might rather focus on the EU first, esp. if they thought their specialty was “doorway to EU banking”.

That aspect does make more sense, and perhaps longer term with a divergence in regulation and with, makes sense short to mid term and may be an avenue they try again market wise and until then, best focus on growth area's.

But equally, they started in the UK in October 2018, and perhaps they may of gambled that the UK would stay more aligned or in the EU is my thoughts upon this as well.

They had 200_000 customers in the UK according to the BBC.

I recently split a restaurant bill with 7 other early-twenty-somethings. I think 5 of us had Monzo (making things much easier). They have been immensely successful among the younger demographic. Monzo have been doing a lot of advertising on public transport in my city (can't speak about online ads because I don't see them).

I know one person who uses N26 but he's from Germany, where I believe it's a lot more popular.

Starling, Monzo, Revolut and N26 seem to basically be at feature parity with each other and their apps are incredibly similar.

> As somebody who lives in the UK (London area), I've never even heard of this company N26, let alone aware that they had UK operations.

They've had ads plastered all over central London tube stops.

Both Monzo and Revolut have over 3m customers compared to 1.7m for metro bank. Starling is over 1m. So plenty of traction all for the challenger banks.

How many of those users are using Monzo/Revolting as their main bank though?

I have Monzo for small expenses when travelling in Europe but my main accounts remain with Barclays. I am guessing a lot of people do similar although, I concede, it's hard to find numbers that will corroborate this?

Monzo is my main bank where my salary comes in, my purchases are made and my bills come out.

It works great and unless they start going South I wouldn't look back.

I don't know but I started using Monzo as a more convenient alternative to Barclays and as Monzo added features (and Barclays didn't) I switched my pay to go into Monzo. It's nor particularly hard to email your employer and let them know some new bank details, and the Barclays experience (particularly their slow balance updates) makes it easy to want to use something different.

> As somebody who lives in the UK (London area), I've never even heard of this company N26, let alone aware that they had UK operations.

Funny and surprising you say this since I just saw a large N26 billboard in the London Tube Station at Angel Station; very unmissable as a Londoner using the tube these days.

Yes, reading few comments about adverts, but none I saw, or recalled. Oh well, maybe I did see them and preglazzed - just wished that happened with all adverts, but alas no. Might be they created the perfect advert un-eye-catching for some demographics - certainly has me more curious now, maybe I just missed them. But many other adverts I saw and can't unsee, oh well.

Their adverts used to be all over the tube. That’s the only reason I know of them (most people in know IRL opting for Revolut or Monzo)

Yes I remember these, 'fast banking' was their motto.

They also had a card with a transparent part - if you were eating with friends and someone had one everyone would be "ohhhh, what's that?"

Amex was issuing translucent cards in the UK in the 90s. By far the best looking card they ever did.

My Amex Rewards card is translucent, got it last year.

Interesting. Maybe it's a demographic blind spot? I do all of my UK banking on Transferwise, and so have heard of or researched Revolut, N26, Monzo... In fact, I think that both Monzo and Transferwise are UK based, and I've definitely seen their ads in the tubel, know people who work there, etc.

They also offered a solid metal card and lounge-access perks, so I suspect that their core demographic are young-ish "digital nomads". Maybe that's where most of their marketing went to?

> As somebody who lives in the UK (London area), I've never even heard of this company N26, let alone aware that they had UK operations.

They're a huge presence in mainland Europe, especially Germany, where they're the de facto bank of choice for all non-European immigrants living in Berlin, Munich, etc.

Is there a specific reason for that, do they offer easy intl transfers or are very welcoming with support in many languages etc? I've vaguely known they exist but have only a few days ago seen one of their ads on public transportation (which doesn't say much, I'm not in the city a lot, but still).

> Is there a specific reason for that

They're the only one that allows you to enter a second name via "care of"[0] in the address, and German postal services won't deliver mail if no name on the envelope matches the person registered at that address. In other words, you end up in a catch-22 where you can't sign a lease because you don't have a bank account, and you can't get a bank account because you don't have a legal address yet.

There are other ways to resolve this, but the easiest is "find a bank that will let you accept mail at the address where you're staying, even if you're not on the lease", and the only bank that does that is N26.

[0] I forget the German term, but basically

    Ms. Alice Foo
    c/o Bob Bar
    Baz Straße 14
    99999 Nowhere
    Germany

"c/o" is fine, I've used that before.

[edit – wrong:] The German-language equivalent (that most young people won't even recognize anymore) is "z. Hd." ("zu Händen" – "to the hands of").

The German equivalent would be p. Adr. (although I haver never seen that much in the wild). z. Hd. is used in the opposite way, i.e. you write the actual recipient after it, not the address provider.

Ah yes, that was stupid of me. Although it can be used pretty much the same. "A c/o B" is in practice not much different from "B z.Hd. A", although it's legally different (when it comes to who is authorized to accept the mail if a signature is needed etc.).

I haven't actually seen "p. Adr." ever in my life.

The post doesn't care who is registered at the address (there is not even a convenient way for them to check). They just look at whatever is written on the actual mailbox.

But yes, many banks want to send mail to your registered address only by default. They actually check your registration document.

The other banks in Germany have quite bad user experience compared to N26 which has a great app and is in English if you want.

They are the most funded neobank in all of Europe. I don't even live in Europe and have heard of them.

> Though the only real new Bank in the UK to do well, traction wise would be Metro Bank

I'm not in the UK, but isn't Monzo also doing quite well?

Indeed - Monzo has 50% of challenger bank market share. N26 was almost behind Revolut and Starling and had little traction in the UK.

Source: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-7647253/M...

Revolut has ~10m customers. Not all in the UK, but Revolut and Monzo both have enough accounts to be inside the top 10 current account providers in the Uk

I had heard of them, but only because their adverts on the tube were so bad that I couldn't work out what or who they were for.

This could, in fact, be their stab at marketing at least for EU countries they will still operate in.