Hacker News Reader

Comment by alibarber | Hacker News Reader

I've recently moved from the UK to another European country, and whilst I despise the way the politics is going back home - I'm amazed at how much better banking is back in the UK. It's free to have an account and debit card, often with a modest free overdraft. And transfers are really instant. As in I can transfer from Barclays to Santander and by the time I've double-tapped between bank apps the money will be there cleared, at any time of day.

Here it's 'transfer before 2pm and we'll send it the same _working_ day!!' And that's once you've made your appointment a week out to open an account, and maybe received everything after a few weeks (if they like you that is)...

I got the impression that N26 was mainly to challenge the latter way of working. I didn't understand what their offer was even for a free account that was better than even a 'legacy' bank in the UK (and I'm not sure they even support direct debit - which would have made it useless for any super-cheap energy/phone etc deals).

In all - yes Brexit sucks, yes they may have stayed in the UK without it (although I wouldn't have expected them to introduce anything new), but I don't think they can blame any lack of success in the UK on it.

View on HN

Oh. My. God. YES!

I moved from the UK to [redacted] in 2018 (in part due to Brexit but that is a longer story) and dear god the banking systems here are utter shit.

I am with HSBC and I can't even change the PIN on my debit card! Hell I couldn't even get my card and cheque book (yes they still use cheques here!) delivered to my address as it was a temporary one so I had to collect it from my branch in person.

If I buy something on my card it takes at least three days before it is listed in the HSBC mobile app or web site.

I generally use cash so it isn't a huge issue for me (check my post history for some explanation on why I mostly use cash) but god is banking frustrating here.

The only positive is that I do have an actual account manager (as in the same person) who I always deal with and he is excellent at sorting my problem. I have to say I do like that consistent human content. Obviously if it is an emergency I use their emergency line (lost card, etc) but for general inquiries that don't require instant action my account manager is my go to.

(thank you for bringing this up I feel I needed this quick rant!)

> If I buy something on my card it takes at least three days before it is listed in the HSBC mobile app or web site.

That's actually the case for my HSBC UK account too. It's impossible to know accurately what the balance of it really is at any time too; both the real balance and the available balance fluctuate wildly with no obvious relation to the transactions, which are delayed by a variable 1-3 days (presumably depending on the type of transaction). They seem to be about ten years behind all the startup banks.

It seems to be a thing for all the incumbent UK banks I've tried. CYBG/B (now the second incarnation of Virgin), Lloyds, Halifax, NatWest -- all have that 3-day delay.

Instant update was the killer feature that swung me to Starling. Well, that and Natwest calling some random guy (who later found me to tell me what happened) for a sales call, only to give him the transaction data for my last five transactions....!

(obFD: no pecuniary interest, just a happy customer)

Ex-HSBC customer in France here. It was one of the worst banking experiences possible - incredibly expensive debit cards with very low ceilings, etc.

The "plus" that you mention, having a dedicated account guru can swing both ways: mine left my local branch for another branch 10km away, and I would not perform any significant operation without their presence.. which was no longer in the branch.

Boursorama or N26.

Do you know anything about Hello Bank ?

I looked at it and got the impression that it was BNP's low cost product, aimed at a younger audience, perhaps with no banking record.

I use Boursorama Bank in France and they're pretty good. Setting up the a/c and transferring over from HSBC FR was relatively painless, though they dropped a few of the direct debit mandates that I had to recreate manually. I think the account is free as long as you actually use it actively.

um - why hasn't anyone mentioned www.transferwise.com/borderless yet ?

Orange Bank is another option in France which is free for basic current account activities, although they don't offer Livret etc.

The best way to do this in France seems to be to keep a "legacy" bank just for handling savings without a current account (that way you don't pay for current account, card etc.), and use one of the free challenger banks for current account, direct debits etc.

It sounds like Bunq would be right up your alley.

> Hell I couldn't even get my card and cheque book (...) delivered to my address as it was a temporary one so I had to collect it from my branch in person.

Of course! Doing manual pickups with proper ID checks avoids a lot of problems.

My bank will only send stuff to my 'official' address that I have registered with the tax authorities. If I want a OTP-dongle or debit card in some other way, I can pick them up in a branch of my choosing.

I see this as being safe, not as being inflexible or old-fashioned.

I understand the why but when moving country I would have thought (hoped?) they would have some sort of more flexible process. We had to go back to see our account manager no less than 5 times in the first two weeks of having our HSBC account to collect different items. We couldn't get the card and PIN at the same time for "security" so had to get the PIN first, then the card two days later?!

I fully understand their need to protect against mail interception and fraud but I think there are better solutions than getting me to go all the way into the centre (about half an hour of my time each way on public transport) to pick up a cheque book is a little extreme.

Funny thing with the OTP generator. They posted that to us! FFS you can't make it up!

If you've substantial sums sitting in your accounts, your French HSBC relationship manager will eventually start calling you to sell their investment products. Actively managed investment funds that enrich the fund manager at your expense. French Livret accounts, however, are a good use of deposit funds, but everything else sold by the bank is to be avoided.

On another note, I had my ING Luxembourg account (6 figures on deposit) closed by them because, in their own words over the telephone, "I wasn't buying any of their products". They'd call me every few months trying to persuade me to invest in high charge, managed investment products, which I always declined. I explained that I was keeping the money on deposit to pay for my dad's Alzheimer care, but they just sent me a registered letter telling me to take my business elsewhere. I'm sure this breached some banking regulation, but I hadn't the energy to fight it.

This is on the EU roadmap though, for what it's worth. Sometime in the next few years, we should see instantaneous transfers within the EU.

I have had SCT Instant for approximately a year. However, only around half of the target banks I send money to support it currently.

Actually the EU request the law to be adopted much earlier. The countries that blocked its early implementation were Germany and France.

The reason being a banking-sector that is deeply entangled with politics. When it comes to checking accounts co-op run banks have 26% marketshare in Germany, while statebanks and communal-run Sparkassen have 41% [0]

Needless to say, they are not the most efficient and are even less prone for innovation.

[0] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/38041/umfrage...

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 are old ones, large ones, cheap ones, upper-classy ones, spin-offs and startups. Sparkassen and co-ops are seldomly a startup e.g.. So depending on their clients and considering that SCT in DE has still low adoption amongst clients compared to direct debit mandates, a commercial bank or a startup may very rightfully choose to de-prioritize SCT adoption.

> 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!?

The market is dominated by large commercial banks in US, but banking here is still so very backwards even compared to Europe.

> Needless to say, they are not the most efficient and are even less prone for innovation.

I think the main problem is that both co-ops and Sparkassen are very decentralized, you're looking at literally thousands of tiny and not-so-tiny-but-hardly-big banks that are all completely independant. That makes innovation very slow - of course they have pooled resources to have a somewhat centralized IT infrastructure, but the power to decide on innovations is ultimately still with the thousands of member banks.

Amazing how left leaning politicians don’t make this their battle cry. If they want to fight for government working, it has to work in these cases of obvious corruption. The same thing happens in the US

"Obvious corruption"? Based on this thread, it looks like "this would be hard for us, so we object to the requirement". There are a number of ways you could slam that... but corruption?

I wouldn't disagree. The fact that they can force the government to do their bidding is corruption in my eyes too.

The carmakers in Germany shut down various attempts to incentivize electronic cars and inquiries in their criminal behavior in the cheating scandals.

I think there is a fine line between lobbying and being downright criminal. I think most companies have actually crossed the line.

Deutsche Bahn after privatization let the train tracks in Hamburg rot for a long time. Now that they've passed the safety threshold they decided not to renew the tracks but instead move the train station somewhere else.

I've been involved in a government construction project and the way the contracts are handed out are on the surface to the highest bidder, but it's hard to call it anything but corrupt.

Lobbying is one thing, but threatening consultants and employees with repercussions and lawsuits for wanting to inform people about lies that led to these contracts is in fact criminal. I had a good lawyer, but nothing happened to the leadership on either side and nothing probably ever will.

The EU generally talks to the industry affected by some regulations, this is generally to prevent deploying a regulation or law that doesn't really work in practise and to find a reasonable compromise (of course, sometimes multiple industries end up at the table, some with more political power than others, which is how you get the EU copyright reform pushed by newspapers and yellow journalists)

The effect is more often, and I think more accurately, termed 'regulatory capture' than corruption. The other side of it is that the incumbents work to ensure that regulation presents a very high barrier to entry for any would-be competitor.

Well, in this case it's not about competitors, it's about newspapers and publishers wanting to extract money from Google for displaying the <title> attribute of their website.

To be fair, I can remember when it was 3 days in the U.K. and it only changed because the government put its foot down and stipulated that 2 hours should be the limit for most transactions

Some parts of the UK banking are good,some are bad, and some are outright fully fledged idiocy. In mainland Europe it varies a lot depending on a country, i.e. Scandinavian banks in Baltics are pure shit.I had some funny situations with banks since I moved in to the UK: Barclays refused to open a bank account because the letter from the job centre( Confirmation of National Insurance Number application) had its logo in black and white instead of color. Santander issued some random card that is even more limited than simple debit card. Walked into Metro bank to pay a bill and asked how much it'd cost me- the guy's jaw dropped on the floor and then he replied that it's free( then my jaw dropped on the flor because that was undheard of for me). A guy I used to know walked into a branch of Santander with his employment contract with Starbucks asking to open a bank account.They refused.Walked out and went to the nearest branch of the same bank- they opened an account immediately. And the list goes on and on.

Ah yes, after spending a lot of effort to open a bank account to receive your monthly pay; it ended up some weird account were you could only use your debit card at their ATMs. Madness. UK banks are weird

I think that’s been illegal for over 20 years

Really interesting

> In mainland Europe it varies a lot depending on a country, i.e. Scandinavian banks in Baltics are pure shit.

Would you please elaborate? I have had quite a good experience with those banks.

I didn't really understand why there were so many banking startups in the US until I found out that simple bank transfers cost money over there.

Bank transfers of money generally don't cost money. They are just slow.

Oh, really? Last time this came up people were saying you couldn't send $50 to your friend's bank account without something crazy like a $15 fee, and hence everyone apparently used a third-party app like Venmo.

There are three relatively common ways to send money electronically between two US bank accounts:

Zelle: effectively instant, requires both banks to be on the network, free. Relatively new and many people who could use it don’t.

ACH: a few days, effectively ubiquitous, very small underlying charge infrequently marked up to ~$3 by the bank.

Wire transfers: not quite instant but close during banking hours, effectively ubiquitous by institution but often a pain for retail users to access due to risk profile, underlying cost is about $5 and often marked up to $15~$20.

The UX of the P2P payment apps is much, much better than any of the above, and would be what I’d reach for for a transfer in the $X0 range contingent on my counterparty being likely to use apps.

Rest of the world: looks like Zelle most of the time (some occasions it's +1 day)

Banks in Europe: There might be a fee in some cases but I don't remember paying one (or it's <$5). Rent or similars are just recurring SEPA payments (it's a push - not a direct debt)

But can people (not business) initiate ACH transactions?

But can people (not business) initiate ACH transactions?

Yes. I used to do it to move money between checking accounts at different institutions. I don't think I've ever had an account that charged for ACH transfers. Meanwhile Zelle isn't supported by exactly one financial institution I use (but not one I use for banking).

Interesting, thanks for the clarification.

I've never been charged for ACH between bank accounts at different banks.

https://www.mybanktracker.com/checking/faq/ach-transfer-fees...

Not even close.

The banking startups are collecting account holder information so they can turn around and upsell you on credit cards and other products.

But it gets better ...

There is no such thing as a startup bank in the US because the government doesn't grant bank charters anymore. All those new companies aren't banks at all. They piggyback on top of an existing bank or the ACH network.

That's why none of them say FDIC-approved, since they can't be part of FDIC.

Sure, but you need a reason for people to sign up in the first place, right? And if their current bank is already great they'd be less likely.

> government doesn't grant bank charters anymore

Is this true? Why is this the case? How long has it been like this?

New banks are getting FDIC approval[0]. Latest one was approved last Friday.

Perhaps you meant something else?

[0]: https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/bankdecisions/depins/i...

This really depends on the country you moved to. Banking in Germany will be much shittier while what you describe is norm in other countries for example.

Not Germany, but one that in many other ways is very efficient and forward thinking. I think the banking issues are more historical and due to having a small population with generally conservative attitudes towards money and financial institutions. But my point is that N26's offering is just not going to cut it across the whole EU(+UK), and any risk introduced by Brexit (or anything else that might happen) probably wasn't worth it for them, but claiming that they were pushed out by it is pushing it a bit.

As a side, in sites such as this (HN), especially when comparing things to the US there is defintitely a tendancy to make sweeping statements such as 'in the EU $thing is [blah]...' but actually there are huge differences across the continent, which I think is actually the news story here.

yeah, in the US here is no expectation of a same day free transfer between banks. Only a "maybe" in the same bank. And you can sometimes game the ACH debit system to make things occur in "technically the same 24 hour time period".

there are a couple tiers of paid wire transfers, but still no guarantees that you will have liquid settled cash in the same business day.

the mere concept of the SEPA system in the EU is pretty nice

Transferring money using Zelle [0], between participating banks, is pretty much instantly, at least in my experience. The limit is up to 20,000 monthly for me. YMMV.

(0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service)

Might not be people's first choice, but Facebook is instant. Like, the money is a non pending deposit seconds after the sender clicks send. Slick, and not a silly extra checking account like venmo.

Why don't you just say where you moved to? It's quite interesting in context of your earlier comment.

Finland if we believe his LinkedIn, no idea if it's up to date though

Correct. It felt a bit impolite to moan about it, as I’ve found that once you get established and figure out the system everything else here works very well. That said all the natives that I know don’t exactly love their banks - so it’s ripe for disruption but I feel the market is always gonna be quite limited, due to inertia and size.

Online banking is also _the_ identity service for logging into official and semi official systems here (unless you’re a nerd and want to hook up a smart card reader and your [optional] ID card - which I totally am) and I guess there’s a heap of compliance to deal with to enter this space, which would further limit entry to the market.

Banking being the identity verification provider for everything (including governmental services) does add hoops, mainly the requirement for in-person identity verification when opening new accounts. As far as I understand the law doesn't allow strong identification to be provided using accounts that were opened with online identity verification.

> Finland

Weird. Transfers were instant when I moved over there almost 20 years ago, and you could already do them online if you wished (there was a system of codes on a paper or a card, on top of login+password). And that was in very traditional banks like the Postal Bank (Postipankki/Leonia/Sampo: it changed name at least 3 times during my stay). I cannot imagine it can have gone worse during the last 10 years.

Opening an account was no problem and quasi-immediate. The only annoying thing is that as a foreigner I had to stay 2 years before getting a regular credit card (I didn't care about the 'credit', since in my home country we don't use credit cards but only debit cards, but for 2 years I was only allowed the Visa Electron which was not well accepted or perhaps not accepted at all abroad, so it was limited even as a debit card).

In Estonia transfers went from instant to slow after enforcing the SEPA payments. Same made transfers faster in other EU countries. Different starting points. Probably similar case in Finland.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

Hmmm... the introduction dates would match me leaving from there, so that would be a possible explanation. On the other hand, the existing system was already using IBAN and stuff, so as an ignorant customer, SEPA looks like an acknowledgement of what was already in use, not requiring any change in the process. Dunno.

In your case, when you say slow, how slow has it become?

Bank transfers in Estonia did get slower when SEPA first arrived, but not horrendously so. I think the transfers used to be every 15 minutes and during most of the day. With SEPA it got downgraded to every hour and only during normal working hours. However nowadays we've already moved on to SEPA Instant Payments which take about 10 seconds and are EU-wide, provided the other EU bank isn't dragging its feet with implementing it.

"Banking in Germany will be much shittier"

Don't know mate. I don't know the UK banking system so well. But if I take HK experience with HSBC and SC and Newcomers in the UK like Revolut then I doubt your statement will make any sense.

It really depends, Slovakia and Czech Republic usually have very modern banks. I can do everything through the app, I don’t remember the last time I had to go to an actual bank office. Apple Pay / Google Pay is almost everywhere, fast and easy bank-wire transfers, modern and secure apps with face/touch id...

Exactly - so I wouldn't expect N26 to have a particularly large customer base there (could be completely wrong though) if what they are offering isn't particulalry innovative by their standards.

Ehm, in czech republic the bank transfers are still not instantaneous...

All this seems really very biased.

I think Germany has instant transfers for a fee but I am not sure. There was never a need for it.

Czech has instant transfers already? Great. The CZ Bank I know charges 6 Euro per incomming EU Euro transaction.

I don't know if this is a recent thing, but my CZ bank charges nothing on incoming/outgoing SEPA payments (mbank). Regarding instant transfers, already supported by many banks in CZ (not mbank though, so can't tell if there is a fee), see https://www.mesec.cz/aktuality/okamzite-platby-umi-prijimat-...

Sounds strange to me, I have a free account with N26 in France with free debit card, and also most banks here do instant transfers now.

What?! How can it possibly be worse than in the UK?

I've lived in the UK and another European country, and if I didn't recognize brands like "HSBC" and "Barclays" I would have thought they were failed non serious players.

The UK is quite literally decades behind some other countries, in banking.

> The UK is quite literally decades behind some other countries, in banking.

In what ways?

Introduction of second factor. Reporting. Statements. Investment platforms (just try the stocks or the fund platforms with HSBC). Design. And some interfaces require you to have pen and paper because the transfer webpage can't show you you own accounts, so you have to type your sort code and account number into a blank form. And just plain keeping the message-of-the-day actually refer to things that happened this year.

For a start.

You havent been on the receiving end of all the automation, like having your bank account frozen for no reason, bank card frozen just because the security services feel like it, because I'm related to someone who was the highest Cat A prisoner whose Parkhurst prison break came in at number 3. All this automation means I darent speak in front of a laptop, dont have a mobile or bank account and havent worked for nearly ten years. Gave up the driving licence so I no longer have any photo ID. Dont even have a GP, not that I can afford prescriptions, as I'm not classed as unemployed. Cant get my records removed from the NHS despite the UK Govt selling them to US companies because like Google, "the UK population is the product". The UK security services are terrible because they make your life shit, I've had that online jihadist provocation that so many muslims who end up getting suicided by police guns end up and its always made to look like its your fault when they mess with your exam results (you never get exam papers back to independently check your paper against text books) so they can mess with you lives in so many ways. Criminals run the UK and keep lapping up the bullshit from tech surveillance industry in all its guises including banking.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com