N26 customers feel betrayed by the German digital bank’s decision to quit the UK
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Switching bank accounts in the UK is dead easy. Open the new bank account, give them your old bank account reference and they do all of the switching for you, port over the scheduled and direct debit payments.
N26 is not competitive in the UK compared to Monzo, Starling and Revolut. Just pick one and you're good to go.
"we are writing to share the news that we will be leaving the UK and closing all accounts."
this is what you write when you've gone out of business, not when you re-focus on the US for example. own your failure, explain what you did wrong and move on.
especially when you've basically told everyone a year ago that everything's going great.
Let me explain that:
Get a picture taken on a Blackberry of a DHL package with containing notice of account closure notice, when it was going through the counter for delivery, before delivery, as proof sent to the head office of the company. And bang! Accounts, thousands of regular/netting/sweeping accounts for a reasonably large company, are instantly closed around the world while the CFO of the customer is sleeping. The money's not gone, it's Nostro'd, but the liquidity is. A desperate call from the relationship manager of a client that woke up, realised they didn't check their emails for a couple of months while this was in the planning, and found their client has a serious business problem. You're talking of paying employees, suppliers, rent, of staying in business.
Forced account closure is never nice, it is brutal. One of the reasons I left banking, well, that company, I do have strong faith in how banks and a well run, ethical financial system can facilitate our lives. Two months notice, whatever the reasons, Brexit, or not, is pretty OK.
N26 were also one of the few challenger banks that actually had a website aside from a phone app, a bit sorry to see that leave.
Also worth noting many of the challenger banks do not yet report to any/all of the three main credit reference agencies.
Starling report to Equifax and TransUnion, but not Experian.
I don’t believe Revolut report to anyone.
And yet I've heard brits will more readily divorce, than change their bank account. Apologies if this is just an unsubstantiated urban myth.
this year: "With the UK having left the EU at the end of January, we will in due course no longer be able to operate in the UK with our European banking licence. Therefore, we are writing to share the news that we will be leaving the UK and closing all accounts."
translation: "not enough signed up in order for us to apply to the UK regulators."
honestly, this was by far the worst kind of response any startup can have. really amateurish.
Here, considering that they are faring poorly and that they launched in the UK after the EU referendum many people think (rightly IMO) that they are taking the piss by blaming Brexit.
It's also not clear whether a full bank licence is required to offer basic current accounts. I believe that Revolut operated for years without one and that the bank licence they have now is in fact an EU licence.
They seem to want to focus on the US, that's their choice.
If there hadn't been brexit, their banking license would have been EU wide, so they'd only have to look at their EU wide user numbers in total.
In short, brexit is certainly one of the reasons.
It's really not clear where this volatility would be coming from, or what that actually means precisely, or why it'd be an issue now and not when they entered the market, or why they'd find it so hard to get a UK banking license if they did end up needing one. The costs of getting a banking license are high if you're creating a new bank, because there are so many policies and laws to comply with that require infrastructure e.g. AML enforcement.
But if you're already operating the costs of getting a license would pretty minimal. So many of the requirements are about demonstrating you could run a bank in theory, that a process for converting an EU-recognised license to a UK-recognised license would certainly be very streamlined. This is doubly true because the UK has focussed on making it much easier to create new banks in the past 10 years. The banking application process is far easier than it used to be.
That is to say, they could have continued operating in the UK until at least 31st December 2023 with minimal overhead and no actual British bank licence.
This is why there is no panic or rush in the banking sector. Those who are announcing that they are leaving were already contemplating leaving for purely commercial reasons and are simply doing it now to simplify things (that way they don't need to look into the new regime or temporary regime at all).
duh. it should not be something you have to say. the opposite would be surprising and would be worth stating. my point is the default for banks is that brexit will affect their licence to operate in the UK
No, they are faring poorly in a very competitive, crowded market and have simply decided to focus on the US.
This is really as far from crazy as you can get - it's just saying different people have different opinions and priorities, so the government should reflect that.
The fact that this stance has been consistently painted by Europhiles as "crazy", "impossible", "racism" etc is one reason the UK is leaving. The variety of ways in which this simple desire for local government gets insulted and traduced indicates a severe problem with the EU and its associated belief systems.
But since then they've launched in the US and investment money does not grow on tree. They've probably concluded that it was game over for them in the UK unless they launched a major investment push but they obviously decided to push in the US instead.
key quote: "we are 100% focused on ensuring minimum disruption to our customers whatever the outcome or timing of Brexit"
(Edit: I am not nor have I ever been an N26 customer, just curious.)
Without it they could have coasted along for a while longer with not much extra effort.
- when receiving a new card due to upgrade the old one becomes void but there's no mention anywhere of this
- the login didn't work consistently (faceid today, tomorrow password)
- no extra features, or very poorly implemented
the general feeling I got from N26: not up to standard. it's a poor app with poor customer support.
- Sounds reasonable?
- FaceID works for 30 days, after that you have to enter your pass again for FaceID to work another 30 days, it says so when activating FaceID
- I agree that there are no really nice "extras"
No IBAN support in the UK.
really bad startup, avoid.
- No 3DSecure, renders it useless for most online transactions.
- No personal IBAN, uses some janky shared IBAN that is not tied to your name, which is required for many online depositing service like Coinbase.
Revolut have had this since August 2019: https://blog.revolut.com/3ds-secure-payments/
> - No personal IBAN, uses some janky shared IBAN that is not tied to your name, which is required for many online depositing service like Coinbase.
this, unfortunately, depends on the jurisdiction/currency :(
> - Sounds reasonable?
Experience shows that postal deliveries might be really slow, so no guarantee when it arrives. Some deliveries just gets lost or stolen. Some people are travelling and not physically near their postal address for awhile. A lot of students and long-distance commuters really have two places they live so might not be staying very often where the card gets delivered. A lot of people (me) just don't open letters straight away, and certainly don't put the new card in my wallet straight away.
Which is why established banks know you need a month or so overlap. And modern banks know how to notify the customer properly that a new card is available. And progressive banks know to only deactivate the old card once the new one has been used.
Its not as black and white, as usual with banking nonsense.
Monzo and Revolut are too:
If that means they fall bank to not issuing accounts with Deposit protection in the UK, I'm not sure, or if it means they are just waiting to see what happens; sugested here : https://blog.revolut.com/how-we-protected-our-customers-from...
It's not sure. But either way, if there are not enough people in the UK market to warrant the hassle of re-investing in the UK, I don't see the issue.
The EU feel betrayed by Brexit too.. :(
Revolut has permission to operate a bank but currently does not actually do so. It has the license but doesn't offer full current accounts.
It is!
Before brexit N26 could keep doing business in the UK with an european banking license, even if growth was slower than ideal.
Now they cannot anymore, and have to apply for an expensive uk-only banking license.
If it was because of low market share, they would have quitted earlier.