Hacker News Reader

Comment by askonomm | Hacker News Reader

Up to 100k per bank account is secured by the European central bank though, so for most Europeans, the money cannot just simply disappear and you never get it back. And if you have over 100k per bank account, you probably should look for banks with better insurances anyway.

View on HN

I would need to look into this again, but I am not sure this is actually true.

Something like the underlying account(s) used by the FinTech are secured in this way, but your account with the FinTech is not.

This is why Revolut for example have accounts which are something like "vaults", which are in fact accounts which are covered, because they are actual accounts, one per person, with a normal bank.

That sounds incredible, it needs to be checked, about to leave the house so can't right now.

Revolut/Wise etc. make it quite clear they are not "bank accounts", and therefore their accounts don't come with the normal protections associated with bank accounts. I think there is some form of regulatory protection, but it's much less than for banks.

Revolut is an actual bank if you’re in the EU! https://help.revolut.com/en-EE/help/accounts/what-does-uk-ba...

Edit: and apparently they’re now setting up a bank in the UK as well: https://help.revolut.com/help/more/legal-topics/is-revolut-a...

Wise is not, and it might be more difficult to get the money out if they are insolvent. For the customers in the EU, they’re a Payment Institution in Belgium: https://wise.com/help/articles/2932693/how-is-wise-regulated...

Perhaps surprisingly, PayPal is a bank too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com