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Businesses pulling out of the UK based on the Brexit process is bad for the UK, and I'm sure this was indeed mainly motivated by N26's need for a UK banking lic

Businesses pulling out of the UK based on the Brexit process is bad for the UK, and I'm sure this was indeed mainly motivated by N26's need for a UK banking licence, which is a costly and difficult process to go through. However, it's worth noting that they are pretty small in the UK (~200k users). They're very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I've heard), but in the UK we have generally very good banking infrastructure – payments are normally instant and free, and there's a lot of consumer protection with things like the current account switching service guarantee. Startups such as Monzo and Starling started in this great infrastructure and now offer relatively compelling products, while the incumbents are getting to grips with modern tech and doing better than many people realise. N26 on the other hand just didn't have a compelling offering. They charged for most/all of their accounts (explicit charges for accounts in the UK are uncommon), they lacked features, and their marketing was unremarkable compared to the competition.

_n_b_ 7y ago
N26 is also very successful in France, whose banking industry is--I can confirm--very much slow, difficult, and _very_ manually run. They can charge fees for accounts because their fees are still so much lower than the incumbents they're displacing. (And you can do stuff without having to talk to your bank counsellor, at your one specific branch, in person... how novel!) So I can see how their model wouldn't be very good, or very disruptive, in places with more consumer-friendly banking options.
- danpalmer 7y ago
  Exactly. I can fully understand how they might be a paradigm shift from that sort of banking ecosystem. For us it was just a bank that lacked features and had charges, without a memorable brand.
- davidw 7y ago
  > at your one specific branch, Italy is the same way and it is awful. We signed up for our bank account at one specific branch of a bank in Padova, Italy, and it's impossible to do much besides withdraw some cash at other branches. It's so dumb.
  - qubex 7y ago
    As an Italian, I understand this... but the obvious question is: why didn’t you open it at a branch more convenient for you?
    - davidw 7y ago
      We lived in one place, then moved. We got our mortgage via the one close to us prior to the move. Now we live in the US and it doesn't matter so much as trying to do anything with the bank from here is pretty much impossible. We had asked about having everything moved over to the branch closer to our home, but apparently the logistical requirements are close to those for sending a manned mission to the moon.
      - jaclaz 7y ago
        I can tell you that, in Italy, there is not a "standard", in the sense that not all banks are the same, and often one that excels in something is terrible in another aspect. With home-banking these differences are even more marked, some sites have "reasonable" possibilities offered to the customer, some other have next to none (besides checking your account) some have relatively simple workflows some other are so stupidly complex that you give up. More or less all of them (the sites) have an inane amount of meaningless dashboard/graphics, and very poor tools (as an example to download some data). However, when it comes to "serious" matters things are seemingly "random" in the way they change from bank to bank, personal anecdata, a few years ago when an old relative died, to access the accounts it took the heirs (with exactly the SAME documentation): Bank #1: 3 days <- exceptionally fast Bank #2: 10 days <- I would say "appropriate" or "logical" Bank #3: 7 months (or 210 days) <- completely "crazy"
        davidw 7y ago
        Be curious to hear the banks' names.
        jaclaz 7y ago
- Glawen 7y ago
  French banks are slow, but they provide good services. When i lived in the UK, i had only a debit card (maestro). If you wanted a mastercard you needed a credit card account where you needed to manually balance at the end of the month. Mind you this was 10 years ago, when the UK was Just introducing PIN code for every card transaction, a security feature found in France since the 90s. In France you get mastercard as debit card or credit card bound to your current account.
  - wjoe 7y ago
    This is pretty standard in the UK these days, most debit cards are Visa/Mastercard - 10 years ago most debit cards were Maestro or Visa Electron, although I still didn't have much difficulty getting a Visa debit card for travelling. I found it very odd when I was in Germany that this wasn't the case, Visa/Mastercard were entirely considered credit cards, and debit cards used some entirely different system. I couldn't use my debit card to pay for a Berlin subway ticket, as the machines only took German bank cards.
    - _-___________-_ 7y ago
      > debit cards used some entirely different system Maestro is pretty common, but there's also something called EC-card or similar. However, the Berlin subway machines now take visa/mc too.
    - laurencerowe 7y ago
      UK debit cards used to be either Switch/Maestro or Visa Delta/Visa Debit depending on who you banked with. The Switch/Maestro cards were then phased out around 10 years ago and replaced with either Visa Debit or Debit Mastercard. I used to travel frequently to Germany at the time so it was super annoying not to be able to use my card anywhere but a cash machine. Visa Electron was in a different category with Switch Solo. I think they tended to be issued on accounts with no overdraft facility. (I had a Solo card as a teenager and it was only accepted at a handful of places.) I remember being really annoyed when my
  - briandear 7y ago
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  France has had good online banks for years now, with free accounts/cards/transfers and everything managed online. You just have to choose your bank carefully. Boursorama or Fortuneo are typical decent examples.
Karishma1234fff 7y ago
Next step for UK is to reduce regulations compared to EU to make it easier for people to setup shop in UK compared to EU.
- mellosouls 7y ago
  Depends on whether those regulations are socially useful or not. It's not a given that should be the next step.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    We were repeatedly told that wouldn't be the case before the referendum. It's hard to see the point of Brexit otherwise though.
    - Retric 7y ago
      At least in the US more productive states like New York and California heavily subsidize less productive states like New Mexico. I think there was real fear that Brexit was required to avoid a similar situation developing in the EU.
      - CraigJPerry 7y ago
        I thought Germany was already propping up the less productive countries? They haven’t raised domestic salaries but their productivity remains high so they have a massive trade surplus which then then use to provide cheap loans to consumers in other euro countries who buy more German goods (because, stereotype or not, German stuff is generally damned good). At least that was my understanding of today.
        lottin 7y ago
        The mechanism through which wealth is redistributed among EU countries is the EU budget. The wealthier countries (Germany and several others) are net contributors to the EU budget, whereas the more economically challenged nations are net receivers of EU funds. However the EU budget is quite tiny in relation to the EU economy, so the redistribution of wealth among EU members that takes place in this way is modest.
jotm 7y ago
My first German bank account was with Sparkasse, and I had to request a MasterCard separately (the main card was Maestro I think? useless for online payments). It wasn't even attached to the account, I had to transfer money to it (so, a prepaid card) and couldn't even see the remaining balance (I really tried). Terrible experience, but they were the only option for me at the time.
- hef19898 7y ago
  Then you choose the wrong account type. EC cards are standard and attached to the account. Obviously, credit cards are separate because you have to pass through Visa, Master Cards or whom ever. Not picking a prepaid credit card is one additional document to fill out. Having a regular income would result in, at least, a credit limit of 2.5k €. Had that very same experience with Sparkasse, Postbank and my Amazon credit card.
- mpweiher 7y ago
  Yes, Germany uses the Maestro cards, not Credit Cards like MasterCard or Visa. Since that's what all the shops + ATMs take, that's the card you want.
  - skrause 7y ago
    No, Germany doesn't use Maestro, it uses Girocard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard
avh02 7y ago
I was with hsbc for a year in the uk, I'd definitely not call it "generally very good" (ridiculous app and login infrastructure), but I have a sample size of one.
- blibble 7y ago
  hsbc's app and website are the worst of any bank I've used nationwide and natwest have much better apps and websites
  - laurencerowe 7y ago
    HSBC's current online banking website is much clunkier than the version they had 10 years ago. That said, I can still do everything through it and compared to the US making payments is an absolute breeze.
  - cmsj 7y ago
    Kudos to natwest for adopting things like TouchID for authorising app logins, much earlier than anyone else. I still ditched them for Monzo though, mostly because natwest's anti-fraud system was reliably triggered by my mostly-online transactions, 3-4 times a year.
    - ubercow13 7y ago
      Yep, same for me with Nationwide - the antifraud measures made my account completely unusable years ago now. Think every card transaction being blocked and my card and account being locked multiple times a year with no communication to me.
- danpalmer 7y ago
  Yeah same. HSBC have struggled to improve their tech but they are improving now. They released a completely new app and got rid of that terrible login flow last year and apparently it's much better. You can still send a payment from HSBC, for free, instantly, to any other UK bank account. You can also just about do most things in their online banking. This more than can be said for some other parts of Europe.
s_dev 7y ago
>N26 on the other hand just didn't have a compelling offering. They charged for most/all of their accounts (explicit charges for accounts in the UK are uncommon), they lacked features, and their marketing was unremarkable compared to the competition. I'm not buying any of this. I'd speculate that N26 was denied a banking licence in order to look after the "British challenger" banks who already operated in the EU with their EU licence. Having been denied the licence makes operating in the UK post Brexit impossible. I use N26 -- it's free, great app and because it's German all savings up to €100k are guaranteed by German gov.
- Hamuko 7y ago
  >and because it's German all savings up to €100k are guaranteed by German gov. Same applies to all banks in the EU.
  - mpweiher 7y ago
    So which banks are no longer in the EU...?
    - johneth 7y ago
      UK banks are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme[1] - basically the same thing. [1] https://www.fscs.org.uk/ https://www.fscs.org.uk/
    - Hamuko 7y ago
      UK banks are safe (for the time being). >As a result of the implementation period, FSCS expects there will be no changes to the scope of its protection before 31 December 2020 resulting from the UK’s exit from the EU. https://www.fscs.org.uk/about-us/brexit/ https://www.fscs.org.uk/about-us/brexit/ I mean, I guess there's no EU directive forcing the UK to keep doing this, but what's the likelihood that they want to take this away?
- danpalmer 7y ago
  The process for getting a banking licence in the UK is actually pretty accessible. I highly doubt they were denied a banking licence, there are other non-UK companies with UK banking licences.
Nursie 7y ago
Anecdote time - the only person I know who had an account (I work in London fintech at the moment) never used it and only opened it for the fancy translucent card. He seems to have accounts with all the 'challenger' banks.
- the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
  Of all the challenger banks Revolut seems to be the most used one across countries. Not as main account but quickly sending money around.
  - jackdh 7y ago
    Interesting I would say Monzo is by a mile. Edit, I had a quick look at Google play downloads as a benchmark (Not great I know) but looks like you're right. Monzo is 1m~ Revolut is 5m~
    - rogy 7y ago
      Monzo is much bigger in the UK, but less than Revolut outside
      - cmsj 7y ago
        Perhaps because Monzo is still relatively weak for sending/receiving money internationally.
        ubercow13 7y ago
        Don't Monzo just use Transferwise for that? And Transferwise are better than Revolut for it
    - wjoe 7y ago
      I hear of Revolut more in the context of using it as a service for sending money internationally, but I know plenty of people who use Monzo for day to day banking (although most also still have an account with a normal bank). It doesn't surprise me that more people have used Revolut at some point, but I would still expect that Monzo has more active users. Edit: This is in the UK, I understand Monzo isn't quite as well known elsewhere.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
They are using Brexit as a scapegoat. The referendum was almost 4 years ago and only last year they were talking about expanding in the UK. Some people might have been in denial but considering the political force of a referendum result and the glaring absence of any political alternative for years now, any other Brexit outcome was a fantasy and remaining in the single market never realistic. As you say the reality is that they are not doing very well in the UK and they are also investing in the US, and so made a commercial decision not to invest further in the UK. Edit: As far as I know a full banking licence is not compulsory to offer purely electronic current accounts in the UK. Revolut only got a banking licence in 2018, and it is from Lithuania, so they are also at risk of losing it for their operation in the UK. Just saying...
- threeseed 7y ago
  I think you should follow UK politics more closely. Referendum was 4 years ago. But only until the recent election i.e. Dec 2019 did Johnson have the numbers in Parliament to actually "get Brexit done". And this week for the first time in 4 years, UK government is formerly advising businesses that there will be a hard Brexit: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-confirms-plans-to-introduce-import-controls https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-confirms-plans...
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    I am in the UK, I know all about Brexit and British politics ad nauseam. The point remains that this isn't the key reason behind their decision. I guess it's easier to blame Brexit than to explain to your customers that you're closing their accounts because of good old business. They launched in the UK after the Brexit referendum and they don't even need that bank licence to offer electronic current accounts in the UK (Revolut did that for 3 years and their current bank licence is also an EU one so may also become useless in the UK).
    - n4r9 7y ago
      Brexit affects business; they're not cleanly separable. Companies that were competitive before may not be anymore. The only real test would be to take projected metrics (in terms of business closures, job losses etc) from before the vote and compare to reality.
felixfbecker 7y ago
SEPA transfers in Germany are both free and instant too. Not saying it's not a slow and manually run industry in general, but I have nothing to complain about transactions.
- reubenmorais 7y ago
  I moved from Brazil to Germany last year and if you consider this instant I have bad news to share. At least with Commerzbank it's slow as molasses. In Brazil for same bank transfers I'd get an SMS in my phone at the same time as the sender got the confirmation that the transfer went through on their phone. Transfers between banks would typically clear in 2 hours or less. With cash withdrawals I got an SMS in my phone before the ATM was finished counting the notes. Here in Germany I have to reverse engineer what the entries on my transaction history were from vague hints in the business name, because they take days to show up in my account. Cash withdrawals from an ATM run by my own bank sometimes take 5 days to show up in my transaction history. I regularly do SEPA transfers to Portugal and it arrives at the end of the next business day, at the earliest. SEPA transfers in Germany sometimes clear same day, after several hours, but usually some point in the next day.
  - gigatexal 7y ago
    The neobanks like Monzo or N26 are light years ahead of the domestic banks.
  - pzumk 7y ago
    Earlier this week I sent money from ING to N26, took them 55 minutes. Then I sent money from Postbank to N26 and it took them 24 hours. This is not “instant”, but 1 hour is much better than 1 day.
    - nullandvoid 7y ago
      That's crazy my transfers between large traditional banks to internet ones in the uk is < 5 seconds
- 7y ago
tnolet 7y ago
Interestingly, N26 here in Germany advertises with “no hidden charges” and then goes on to charge you for almost everything. Like using an ATM more than 3 times a month. What?
- pzumk 7y ago
  Which is not a hidden charge because they tell you in their app and via email, also when registering an account. N26 wants you to use their cards (or Apple Pay), and to be honest I have not been withdrawing any money from an ATM for 5+ months. I’m from Hannover, Germany.
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    Visit Berlin some time and you'll see why someone in Germany might want to take cash out more than 5 times a month :)
- Hamuko 7y ago
  My free N26 has five free ATM withdrawals per month. However, that is about five more than I use in the median month, so I don't really care about it. I really only need cash when buying second-hand and really even second-hand transactions are increasingly turning to mobile payments.
  - tnolet 7y ago
    I'm in Berlin. Cash is king here.
    - Tainnor 7y ago
      unfortunately, this is true.
- rkachowski 7y ago
  it was free until around 4 years ago, and they shut down accounts that were making too many withdrawals (to large public backlash) https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/29004/number26-closed-accounts-because-customers-made-too-many-atm-withdrawals https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/29004/number26-closed-a... it was around this point that DKB also realised they could do this and stopped allowing atm withdrawals less than 50 eur
mpweiher 7y ago
>in the UK we have generally very good banking infrastructure Have you banked in both the UK and Germany? I have, and it was no contest, UK was horrible, expensive, slow and unresponsive.
- ubercow13 7y ago
  This is a strange comment to me, though I haven't banked in Germany. Current accounts and transfers are almost universally free in the UK. Transfers are so quick that I transfer money to my account from my phone as I'm standing at the ATM with a queue behind me, knowing it will be there instantly. Which parts were slow and expensive?
kinnth 7y ago
That's a bang on description of N26. Well done.
zenlot 7y ago
There are enough banks in UK. If a company cannot operate globally, not a big loss, plenty of others to choose from. Nothing bad to UK, only for the company itself.
underthensun 7y ago
I'm looking forward to see N26 in south america. Really hope they get there. I'm pretty sure banking in the south america is far worse than in Germany.
ThePhysicist 7y ago
German/European banking is not so bad, you can transfer money in one business day to any other EU/SEPA country without charge. You also have debit cards that are widely accepted and allow you to pay directly from your bank account, which is also nice. There are not so many banks that offer APIs (only Commerzbank and N26 I think) but there are other interfaces that allow you to export transactions to third party systems. Could be worse I think.
- _the_inflator 7y ago
  Nope, Deutsche Bank as well: https://developer.db.com/ https://developer.db.com/
- kayoone 7y ago
  Due to PSD2 every bank in Germany/EU has to offer APIs for 3rd parties to access the data, but they all do it in their own way so the open banking standards like the UK has are still better, but it's something.
  - pgeorgi 7y ago
    See HBCI/FinTS, but there's more money to be made by locking users to your API only...
- geff82 7y ago
  A bit late but: instant money transfer are now possible at almost every bank in Germany.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    But they charge extra, no? Last month, I paid a bill through SEPA money transfer from a Volksbank account and it offered a checkbox for "instant transfer" (don't remember the exact wording). I was quite surprised to see a charge of 0,21 € for that in my account statement last week.
- Slartie 7y ago
  Actually nearly every German bank has offered API access to accounts to their customers since forever...20 or 30 years or so. It was called HBCI, then it was renamed to FinTS, and it was the most advanced and well-supported API to bank accounts with practically no parallel anywhere in the world. The killer feature was that it was standardized rather well, and every bank supported it, so it was no problem to get programs and apps that could speak to your 5 banks where you have 8 accounts and merge those into a single UI (there were even open-source implementations of the protocol to build bank support into your own applications). You could fetch transactions, but also trigger transactions, with no bank-specific website and - very important - no other middlemen of any kind involved. Then came all those new app-based banks like N26, and instead of implementing FinTS, they decided to just offer their proprietary app, and that's it. Some later implemented some kind of proprietary API as an alternative to FinTS (maybe FinTS wasn't hipster enough, because it's a bit old-school, XML-based instead of another REST-style HTTP thing with JSON), but those always lacked the core feature of FinTS, which is broad support of the same standard by many banks. And now we're getting PSD2, which in some ways wants to establish broad (mandated by law) support over many banks again, but not by specifying an API designed to be used by customers, but by businesses only. Hence what we in Germany were able to do as customers for a long time - magically access dozens of accounts at different banks from a single application and without ANY middlemen involved - is now gradually becoming an ability that only corporations will have, because as a private individual it's practically impossible to meet the requirements to get access to PSD2 APIs (even though they basically do the same as FinTS already did for decades), and banks are already toying around with the idea of shutting down their FinTS API gateways somewhere in the future, because that other protocol is legally mandated and FinTS isn't.
alibarber 7y ago
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.
- bbbobbb 7y ago
  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.
  - alibarber 7y ago
    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.
scalesolved 7y ago
As a customer of N26 and Natwest/Barclays I feel that N26 in my experience has won in every category. Superior support when I need it on demand, the tech and apps seems solid, intuitive analysis and usage, the ability to have multiple sub-accounts and the ability to create rules to route money between them. Natwest in particular seem stuck in the past, I cannot count the amount of times I've opted in for digital communication only and always continued to get letters to which I can never get through to support.
- kristianc 7y ago
  > As a customer of N26 and Natwest/Barclays I feel that N26 in my experience has won in every category. And if NatWest were the only competition in this market, I’m sure N26 would have done fine. Monzo, Starling and Revolut all have far superior products and market offerings however.
  - scalesolved 7y ago
    Oh for sure, Monzo and Starling I've heard very good things of. Revolut doesn't have a banking license so hesitant to include them here.
    - kristianc 7y ago
      That’s not completely accurate. Revolut has a specialized banking license, which means they can offer a limited range but not investment banking services.
      - thesimon 7y ago
        >Revolut has a specialized banking license Do you have more details on that? FCA only lists a e-money license.
        andylynch 7y ago
        Revolut also has a Lithuanian retail banking license. They were planning to become a UK bank as well but I haven’t seen anything about the recently.
deleted 7y ago
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allhacks 7y ago
I’m with you. I don’t buy the lack of UK license argument. Surely they can apply for one and get it approved in time—just like other banks will have to. But it might have not been worth the time given the small user base and limited differentiation factors.
moooo99 7y ago
> They're very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I've heard) You are absolutely right. Banking here in Germany is ridiculously slow. Transferring money between banks often takes 1-2 working days, so if you're sending money on a Friday evening, the transfer usually takes until Monday to be finished (although this depends a bit on the bank). Some banks have instant transfers as an option, but they usually cost extra and don't work for every bank. This is so annoying, that my friends and I always end up paying each other with PayPal since it is by far the easiest and most convenient way. Another reasons N26 I think makes N26 is so popular is, that they are one of the few banks with actually good apps. At my bank, I'd have to pay (!) to receive notifications when there is a transfer from or to my bank account.
richard78459 7y ago
For whats worth the service was really good with N26, sad they had to move out of UK. I hope other companies does not follow their footsteps.

_n_b_ 7y ago

N26 is also very successful in France, whose banking industry is--I can confirm--very much slow, difficult, and _very_ manually run. They can charge fees for accounts because their fees are still so much lower than the incumbents they're displacing. (And you can do stuff without having to talk to your bank counsellor, at your one specific branch, in person... how novel!) So I can see how their model wouldn't be very good, or very disruptive, in places with more consumer-friendly banking options.

danpalmer 7y ago
Exactly. I can fully understand how they might be a paradigm shift from that sort of banking ecosystem. For us it was just a bank that lacked features and had charges, without a memorable brand.
davidw 7y ago
> at your one specific branch, Italy is the same way and it is awful. We signed up for our bank account at one specific branch of a bank in Padova, Italy, and it's impossible to do much besides withdraw some cash at other branches. It's so dumb.
- qubex 7y ago
  As an Italian, I understand this... but the obvious question is: why didn’t you open it at a branch more convenient for you?
  - davidw 7y ago
    We lived in one place, then moved. We got our mortgage via the one close to us prior to the move. Now we live in the US and it doesn't matter so much as trying to do anything with the bank from here is pretty much impossible. We had asked about having everything moved over to the branch closer to our home, but apparently the logistical requirements are close to those for sending a manned mission to the moon.
    - jaclaz 7y ago
      I can tell you that, in Italy, there is not a "standard", in the sense that not all banks are the same, and often one that excels in something is terrible in another aspect. With home-banking these differences are even more marked, some sites have "reasonable" possibilities offered to the customer, some other have next to none (besides checking your account) some have relatively simple workflows some other are so stupidly complex that you give up. More or less all of them (the sites) have an inane amount of meaningless dashboard/graphics, and very poor tools (as an example to download some data). However, when it comes to "serious" matters things are seemingly "random" in the way they change from bank to bank, personal anecdata, a few years ago when an old relative died, to access the accounts it took the heirs (with exactly the SAME documentation): Bank #1: 3 days <- exceptionally fast Bank #2: 10 days <- I would say "appropriate" or "logical" Bank #3: 7 months (or 210 days) <- completely "crazy"
      - davidw 7y ago
        Be curious to hear the banks' names.
        jaclaz 7y ago
Glawen 7y ago
French banks are slow, but they provide good services. When i lived in the UK, i had only a debit card (maestro). If you wanted a mastercard you needed a credit card account where you needed to manually balance at the end of the month. Mind you this was 10 years ago, when the UK was Just introducing PIN code for every card transaction, a security feature found in France since the 90s. In France you get mastercard as debit card or credit card bound to your current account.
- wjoe 7y ago
  This is pretty standard in the UK these days, most debit cards are Visa/Mastercard - 10 years ago most debit cards were Maestro or Visa Electron, although I still didn't have much difficulty getting a Visa debit card for travelling. I found it very odd when I was in Germany that this wasn't the case, Visa/Mastercard were entirely considered credit cards, and debit cards used some entirely different system. I couldn't use my debit card to pay for a Berlin subway ticket, as the machines only took German bank cards.
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    > debit cards used some entirely different system Maestro is pretty common, but there's also something called EC-card or similar. However, the Berlin subway machines now take visa/mc too.
  - laurencerowe 7y ago
    UK debit cards used to be either Switch/Maestro or Visa Delta/Visa Debit depending on who you banked with. The Switch/Maestro cards were then phased out around 10 years ago and replaced with either Visa Debit or Debit Mastercard. I used to travel frequently to Germany at the time so it was super annoying not to be able to use my card anywhere but a cash machine. Visa Electron was in a different category with Switch Solo. I think they tended to be issued on accounts with no overdraft facility. (I had a Solo card as a teenager and it was only accepted at a handful of places.) I remember being really annoyed when my
- briandear 7y ago
benhurmarcel 7y ago
France has had good online banks for years now, with free accounts/cards/transfers and everything managed online. You just have to choose your bank carefully. Boursorama or Fortuneo are typical decent examples.

Karishma1234fff 7y ago

Next step for UK is to reduce regulations compared to EU to make it easier for people to setup shop in UK compared to EU.

mellosouls 7y ago
Depends on whether those regulations are socially useful or not. It's not a given that should be the next step.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  We were repeatedly told that wouldn't be the case before the referendum. It's hard to see the point of Brexit otherwise though.
  - Retric 7y ago
    At least in the US more productive states like New York and California heavily subsidize less productive states like New Mexico. I think there was real fear that Brexit was required to avoid a similar situation developing in the EU.
    - CraigJPerry 7y ago
      I thought Germany was already propping up the less productive countries? They haven’t raised domestic salaries but their productivity remains high so they have a massive trade surplus which then then use to provide cheap loans to consumers in other euro countries who buy more German goods (because, stereotype or not, German stuff is generally damned good). At least that was my understanding of today.
      - lottin 7y ago
        The mechanism through which wealth is redistributed among EU countries is the EU budget. The wealthier countries (Germany and several others) are net contributors to the EU budget, whereas the more economically challenged nations are net receivers of EU funds. However the EU budget is quite tiny in relation to the EU economy, so the redistribution of wealth among EU members that takes place in this way is modest.

jotm 7y ago

My first German bank account was with Sparkasse, and I had to request a MasterCard separately (the main card was Maestro I think? useless for online payments). It wasn't even attached to the account, I had to transfer money to it (so, a prepaid card) and couldn't even see the remaining balance (I really tried). Terrible experience, but they were the only option for me at the time.

hef19898 7y ago
Then you choose the wrong account type. EC cards are standard and attached to the account. Obviously, credit cards are separate because you have to pass through Visa, Master Cards or whom ever. Not picking a prepaid credit card is one additional document to fill out. Having a regular income would result in, at least, a credit limit of 2.5k €. Had that very same experience with Sparkasse, Postbank and my Amazon credit card.
mpweiher 7y ago
Yes, Germany uses the Maestro cards, not Credit Cards like MasterCard or Visa. Since that's what all the shops + ATMs take, that's the card you want.
- skrause 7y ago
  No, Germany doesn't use Maestro, it uses Girocard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard

avh02 7y ago

I was with hsbc for a year in the uk, I'd definitely not call it "generally very good" (ridiculous app and login infrastructure), but I have a sample size of one.

blibble 7y ago
hsbc's app and website are the worst of any bank I've used nationwide and natwest have much better apps and websites
- laurencerowe 7y ago
  HSBC's current online banking website is much clunkier than the version they had 10 years ago. That said, I can still do everything through it and compared to the US making payments is an absolute breeze.
- cmsj 7y ago
  Kudos to natwest for adopting things like TouchID for authorising app logins, much earlier than anyone else. I still ditched them for Monzo though, mostly because natwest's anti-fraud system was reliably triggered by my mostly-online transactions, 3-4 times a year.
  - ubercow13 7y ago
    Yep, same for me with Nationwide - the antifraud measures made my account completely unusable years ago now. Think every card transaction being blocked and my card and account being locked multiple times a year with no communication to me.
danpalmer 7y ago
Yeah same. HSBC have struggled to improve their tech but they are improving now. They released a completely new app and got rid of that terrible login flow last year and apparently it's much better. You can still send a payment from HSBC, for free, instantly, to any other UK bank account. You can also just about do most things in their online banking. This more than can be said for some other parts of Europe.

s_dev 7y ago

>N26 on the other hand just didn't have a compelling offering. They charged for most/all of their accounts (explicit charges for accounts in the UK are uncommon), they lacked features, and their marketing was unremarkable compared to the competition. I'm not buying any of this. I'd speculate that N26 was denied a banking licence in order to look after the "British challenger" banks who already operated in the EU with their EU licence. Having been denied the licence makes operating in the UK post Brexit impossible. I use N26 -- it's free, great app and because it's German all savings up to €100k are guaranteed by German gov.

Hamuko 7y ago
>and because it's German all savings up to €100k are guaranteed by German gov. Same applies to all banks in the EU.
- mpweiher 7y ago
  So which banks are no longer in the EU...?
  - johneth 7y ago
    UK banks are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme[1] - basically the same thing. [1] https://www.fscs.org.uk/ https://www.fscs.org.uk/
  - Hamuko 7y ago
    UK banks are safe (for the time being). >As a result of the implementation period, FSCS expects there will be no changes to the scope of its protection before 31 December 2020 resulting from the UK’s exit from the EU. https://www.fscs.org.uk/about-us/brexit/ https://www.fscs.org.uk/about-us/brexit/ I mean, I guess there's no EU directive forcing the UK to keep doing this, but what's the likelihood that they want to take this away?
danpalmer 7y ago
The process for getting a banking licence in the UK is actually pretty accessible. I highly doubt they were denied a banking licence, there are other non-UK companies with UK banking licences.

Nursie 7y ago

Anecdote time - the only person I know who had an account (I work in London fintech at the moment) never used it and only opened it for the fancy translucent card. He seems to have accounts with all the 'challenger' banks.

the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
Of all the challenger banks Revolut seems to be the most used one across countries. Not as main account but quickly sending money around.
- jackdh 7y ago
  Interesting I would say Monzo is by a mile. Edit, I had a quick look at Google play downloads as a benchmark (Not great I know) but looks like you're right. Monzo is 1m~ Revolut is 5m~
  - rogy 7y ago
    Monzo is much bigger in the UK, but less than Revolut outside
    - cmsj 7y ago
      Perhaps because Monzo is still relatively weak for sending/receiving money internationally.
      - ubercow13 7y ago
        Don't Monzo just use Transferwise for that? And Transferwise are better than Revolut for it
  - wjoe 7y ago
    I hear of Revolut more in the context of using it as a service for sending money internationally, but I know plenty of people who use Monzo for day to day banking (although most also still have an account with a normal bank). It doesn't surprise me that more people have used Revolut at some point, but I would still expect that Monzo has more active users. Edit: This is in the UK, I understand Monzo isn't quite as well known elsewhere.

mytailorisrich 7y ago

They are using Brexit as a scapegoat. The referendum was almost 4 years ago and only last year they were talking about expanding in the UK. Some people might have been in denial but considering the political force of a referendum result and the glaring absence of any political alternative for years now, any other Brexit outcome was a fantasy and remaining in the single market never realistic. As you say the reality is that they are not doing very well in the UK and they are also investing in the US, and so made a commercial decision not to invest further in the UK. Edit: As far as I know a full banking licence is not compulsory to offer purely electronic current accounts in the UK. Revolut only got a banking licence in 2018, and it is from Lithuania, so they are also at risk of losing it for their operation in the UK. Just saying...

threeseed 7y ago
I think you should follow UK politics more closely. Referendum was 4 years ago. But only until the recent election i.e. Dec 2019 did Johnson have the numbers in Parliament to actually "get Brexit done". And this week for the first time in 4 years, UK government is formerly advising businesses that there will be a hard Brexit: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-confirms-plans-to-introduce-import-controls https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-confirms-plans...
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  I am in the UK, I know all about Brexit and British politics ad nauseam. The point remains that this isn't the key reason behind their decision. I guess it's easier to blame Brexit than to explain to your customers that you're closing their accounts because of good old business. They launched in the UK after the Brexit referendum and they don't even need that bank licence to offer electronic current accounts in the UK (Revolut did that for 3 years and their current bank licence is also an EU one so may also become useless in the UK).
  - n4r9 7y ago
    Brexit affects business; they're not cleanly separable. Companies that were competitive before may not be anymore. The only real test would be to take projected metrics (in terms of business closures, job losses etc) from before the vote and compare to reality.

felixfbecker 7y ago

SEPA transfers in Germany are both free and instant too. Not saying it's not a slow and manually run industry in general, but I have nothing to complain about transactions.

reubenmorais 7y ago
I moved from Brazil to Germany last year and if you consider this instant I have bad news to share. At least with Commerzbank it's slow as molasses. In Brazil for same bank transfers I'd get an SMS in my phone at the same time as the sender got the confirmation that the transfer went through on their phone. Transfers between banks would typically clear in 2 hours or less. With cash withdrawals I got an SMS in my phone before the ATM was finished counting the notes. Here in Germany I have to reverse engineer what the entries on my transaction history were from vague hints in the business name, because they take days to show up in my account. Cash withdrawals from an ATM run by my own bank sometimes take 5 days to show up in my transaction history. I regularly do SEPA transfers to Portugal and it arrives at the end of the next business day, at the earliest. SEPA transfers in Germany sometimes clear same day, after several hours, but usually some point in the next day.
- gigatexal 7y ago
  The neobanks like Monzo or N26 are light years ahead of the domestic banks.
- pzumk 7y ago
  Earlier this week I sent money from ING to N26, took them 55 minutes. Then I sent money from Postbank to N26 and it took them 24 hours. This is not “instant”, but 1 hour is much better than 1 day.
  - nullandvoid 7y ago
    That's crazy my transfers between large traditional banks to internet ones in the uk is < 5 seconds
7y ago

tnolet 7y ago

Interestingly, N26 here in Germany advertises with “no hidden charges” and then goes on to charge you for almost everything. Like using an ATM more than 3 times a month. What?

pzumk 7y ago
Which is not a hidden charge because they tell you in their app and via email, also when registering an account. N26 wants you to use their cards (or Apple Pay), and to be honest I have not been withdrawing any money from an ATM for 5+ months. I’m from Hannover, Germany.
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  Visit Berlin some time and you'll see why someone in Germany might want to take cash out more than 5 times a month :)
Hamuko 7y ago
My free N26 has five free ATM withdrawals per month. However, that is about five more than I use in the median month, so I don't really care about it. I really only need cash when buying second-hand and really even second-hand transactions are increasingly turning to mobile payments.
- tnolet 7y ago
  I'm in Berlin. Cash is king here.
  - Tainnor 7y ago
    unfortunately, this is true.
rkachowski 7y ago
it was free until around 4 years ago, and they shut down accounts that were making too many withdrawals (to large public backlash) https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/29004/number26-closed-accounts-because-customers-made-too-many-atm-withdrawals https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/29004/number26-closed-a... it was around this point that DKB also realised they could do this and stopped allowing atm withdrawals less than 50 eur

mpweiher 7y ago

>in the UK we have generally very good banking infrastructure Have you banked in both the UK and Germany? I have, and it was no contest, UK was horrible, expensive, slow and unresponsive.

ubercow13 7y ago
This is a strange comment to me, though I haven't banked in Germany. Current accounts and transfers are almost universally free in the UK. Transfers are so quick that I transfer money to my account from my phone as I'm standing at the ATM with a queue behind me, knowing it will be there instantly. Which parts were slow and expensive?

kinnth 7y ago

That's a bang on description of N26. Well done.

zenlot 7y ago

There are enough banks in UK. If a company cannot operate globally, not a big loss, plenty of others to choose from. Nothing bad to UK, only for the company itself.

underthensun 7y ago

I'm looking forward to see N26 in south america. Really hope they get there. I'm pretty sure banking in the south america is far worse than in Germany.

ThePhysicist 7y ago

German/European banking is not so bad, you can transfer money in one business day to any other EU/SEPA country without charge. You also have debit cards that are widely accepted and allow you to pay directly from your bank account, which is also nice. There are not so many banks that offer APIs (only Commerzbank and N26 I think) but there are other interfaces that allow you to export transactions to third party systems. Could be worse I think.

_the_inflator 7y ago
Nope, Deutsche Bank as well: https://developer.db.com/ https://developer.db.com/
kayoone 7y ago
Due to PSD2 every bank in Germany/EU has to offer APIs for 3rd parties to access the data, but they all do it in their own way so the open banking standards like the UK has are still better, but it's something.
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  See HBCI/FinTS, but there's more money to be made by locking users to your API only...
geff82 7y ago
A bit late but: instant money transfer are now possible at almost every bank in Germany.
- majewsky 7y ago
  But they charge extra, no? Last month, I paid a bill through SEPA money transfer from a Volksbank account and it offered a checkbox for "instant transfer" (don't remember the exact wording). I was quite surprised to see a charge of 0,21 € for that in my account statement last week.
Slartie 7y ago
Actually nearly every German bank has offered API access to accounts to their customers since forever...20 or 30 years or so. It was called HBCI, then it was renamed to FinTS, and it was the most advanced and well-supported API to bank accounts with practically no parallel anywhere in the world. The killer feature was that it was standardized rather well, and every bank supported it, so it was no problem to get programs and apps that could speak to your 5 banks where you have 8 accounts and merge those into a single UI (there were even open-source implementations of the protocol to build bank support into your own applications). You could fetch transactions, but also trigger transactions, with no bank-specific website and - very important - no other middlemen of any kind involved. Then came all those new app-based banks like N26, and instead of implementing FinTS, they decided to just offer their proprietary app, and that's it. Some later implemented some kind of proprietary API as an alternative to FinTS (maybe FinTS wasn't hipster enough, because it's a bit old-school, XML-based instead of another REST-style HTTP thing with JSON), but those always lacked the core feature of FinTS, which is broad support of the same standard by many banks. And now we're getting PSD2, which in some ways wants to establish broad (mandated by law) support over many banks again, but not by specifying an API designed to be used by customers, but by businesses only. Hence what we in Germany were able to do as customers for a long time - magically access dozens of accounts at different banks from a single application and without ANY middlemen involved - is now gradually becoming an ability that only corporations will have, because as a private individual it's practically impossible to meet the requirements to get access to PSD2 APIs (even though they basically do the same as FinTS already did for decades), and banks are already toying around with the idea of shutting down their FinTS API gateways somewhere in the future, because that other protocol is legally mandated and FinTS isn't.

alibarber 7y ago

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.

bbbobbb 7y ago
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.
- alibarber 7y ago
  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.

scalesolved 7y ago

As a customer of N26 and Natwest/Barclays I feel that N26 in my experience has won in every category. Superior support when I need it on demand, the tech and apps seems solid, intuitive analysis and usage, the ability to have multiple sub-accounts and the ability to create rules to route money between them. Natwest in particular seem stuck in the past, I cannot count the amount of times I've opted in for digital communication only and always continued to get letters to which I can never get through to support.

kristianc 7y ago
> As a customer of N26 and Natwest/Barclays I feel that N26 in my experience has won in every category. And if NatWest were the only competition in this market, I’m sure N26 would have done fine. Monzo, Starling and Revolut all have far superior products and market offerings however.
- scalesolved 7y ago
  Oh for sure, Monzo and Starling I've heard very good things of. Revolut doesn't have a banking license so hesitant to include them here.
  - kristianc 7y ago
    That’s not completely accurate. Revolut has a specialized banking license, which means they can offer a limited range but not investment banking services.
    - thesimon 7y ago
      >Revolut has a specialized banking license Do you have more details on that? FCA only lists a e-money license.
      - andylynch 7y ago
        Revolut also has a Lithuanian retail banking license. They were planning to become a UK bank as well but I haven’t seen anything about the recently.

deleted 7y ago

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allhacks 7y ago

I’m with you. I don’t buy the lack of UK license argument. Surely they can apply for one and get it approved in time—just like other banks will have to. But it might have not been worth the time given the small user base and limited differentiation factors.

moooo99 7y ago

> They're very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I've heard) You are absolutely right. Banking here in Germany is ridiculously slow. Transferring money between banks often takes 1-2 working days, so if you're sending money on a Friday evening, the transfer usually takes until Monday to be finished (although this depends a bit on the bank). Some banks have instant transfers as an option, but they usually cost extra and don't work for every bank. This is so annoying, that my friends and I always end up paying each other with PayPal since it is by far the easiest and most convenient way. Another reasons N26 I think makes N26 is so popular is, that they are one of the few banks with actually good apps. At my bank, I'd have to pay (!) to receive notifications when there is a transfer from or to my bank account.

richard78459 7y ago

For whats worth the service was really good with N26, sad they had to move out of UK. I hope other companies does not follow their footsteps.