- Failing to execute standing orders (not acceptable).
- Atrocious 9-5 support.
- Broken fingerprint login on certain android devices.
- Abysmal security [0]
- Couldn't log in few times (outside support hours), app/website unusable.
- A lot of other less severe bugs (categories being wrong in web and reports for example).
I've closed my account with then in October 2017, here's what happened since:
- I still get monthly reports about my closed accounts.
- I get various summaries e.g. the "Your 2017 with N26"
- They reported to SCHUFA (German credit rating agency) a month AFTER my account was closed that I opened an account with them (again).
- After I contact their legal department about a week ago and I demanded my data in accordance with German data protection laws, they started to apparently do something with my account, since now I get emails like that my phone has been unpaired and so on.
- For all the issues I've outlined above after closing my account I've tried contacting support. They ignore me after I clarify that my account should've been deleted.
This is just what I remember from the top of my head. I also paid for their premium N26 Black subscription.
At 24:57 in the talk, there is a specific section about "disclosure and conclusion", where the talker points out that N26 acted very professionally and that all issues have been solved. You can hardly say so about regular banks, which usually just ignore you or send you canned responses (I know, I tried to report some issues to two banks of mine, still unsolved after 3 years).
"Abysmal security" N26 had 0 public security incident, what was reported wasn't actually an incident but a potential one.
the researcher worked with N26 to fix the issues and it was fixed before the talk was scheduled.
Also wouldn't recommend them. I was a early customer, and when they switched over from the underlying 3rd party bank to their own banking license, they had to swap out everyones credit/debit cards. I lost access to my account in the process and only after a very tedious process of going through their support was able to get it back. Just because you are a digital bank doesn't mean you don't have to provide good support.
> In November 2016 customers were asked to transfer their accounts to N26 Bank's infrastructure. As a result, they would have to get a new account IBAN number, while the previous accounts held by Wirecard would be terminated.
Same here, was kind of a early adopter in 2015 and I really want to like them, but they're making it very hard if not impossible.
For a startup that wants to disrupt banking, they have horrible UX (one example, when it was time to change creditcards because they changed the backend bank. A new card was sent and then the App asked for a 8 digit number on the card. I spent 2 days until I figured out, they want the number from the OLD card).
The advertise that everyone gets a small creditline with them (1000 eur, or so), but when I applied for that after 3 years being a customer I was denied completely (just wanted 200 Eur) for 3 Months or so.
The other points like security are already mentioned by the parent post.
I was with them when they were still a frontend to Wirecard Bank and called Number26. Not sure if it's gotten better since then but their support was much more unprofessional than any other German bank I've ever dealt with. It's important to notice that we have so-called direct banks (i.e. without a physical branch) for a few decades now and the competition had a long time to work out their processes.
Number26 was unable to provide actual, immutable account statements. They generated some PDFs for every month but they were often retroactively changed on certain events (e.g. if a merchant cleared a transaction more than seven days later). I was unable to get someone there to even recognize the problem.
Their terms of services stated that foreign currency transactions were converted using a data source made available to both parties. Naturally I asked for access to that data source. The one linked in the FAQ didn't match my actual transactions and was missing some currencies I used completely. Once again, support was unable to understand the problem at all and repeatly said that Number26 doesn't have access to the fx rates they use either. So much for the contract they themselve drafted.
I then closed my account shortly before the switchover to their own bank. The new terms said that transactions might not be processed on certain days announced on a paper at their Berlin HQ which I found pretty amusing (and have never seen in other terms). Hopefully that has changed now as well.
The problem is that the alternatives are even worse. I'm with Deutsche bank, and I fear the stress levels that I get every time I have to do anything with them. They send paper letters for anything. Their login is horrendous, but so is everything inside it (easily 90's look and feel). I cannot get transactions older than 3 months. Customer service (in German, of course; not even in Berlin it's easy to get someone to speak EN) is the worst, even for DE standards. They make sure you feel mistreated, because they only care about big corp accounts. I have a business account that produces some serious revenue for them and they still treat me like I'm bothering them.
I don't use N26 because they don't have business accounts, but I would if they did.
I, and all my friends, are with ING-DiBa. I have nothing but praise for those guys. Great website, good apps for the my phone, amazing and responsive support. Zero fees.
If DB is as crappy as you write, consider giving ING a shot instead?
Just gonna argue the "Abysmal security" part, because there's nothing wrong with their security and the source is bs as explained here: https://youtu.be/PNuAzR_ZCbo?t=634
A lot of people hate in-app support. Revolut (similar concept to N26) for example really screwed this up, someone drank too much AI and bot framework koolaid at a conference and now millions of users (and arguably the pecetion of the business) suffers. Having a email support method is a must.
Yeah I'm not talking about chatbot style support, but real live chat support. They have it on the web UI, it would be nice to have in the app again. But I'd settle for a contact form in the app like they used to have.
Isn't Revolut a pre-paid debit card though? N26, in contrast, is a bank.
EDIT: oh, I see that "On 8 February 2017, Revolut launched UK current accounts, enabling its customers to get a personal IBAN" on their Wikipedia article.
- There is a standardized API for interfacing with banks, HBCI, which almost every other bank supports. Except N26, who stated that they have no plans to do so.
- Their app (which is the only real way to interact with the account - there's a web interface but it's clear that the app is meant to be the main way) used to be really bad. They gradually improved, to the point that I wasn't able to get an error message by just opening it, but the fact that that was a pleasant surprise is not a good sign.
- They repeatedly made misleading statements about the acceptance of their credit card (meaning that I'd be stranded at an airport had I not had another card), their support was generally slow.
- They lured users in with great conditions, then made them progressively worse.
The instant credit card usage notifications work well though, and since it's free... but I don't consider them good enough to use them as my main bank - I expect anything that goes even slightly outside of everyday mainstream transactions to go horribly wrong.
If they manage to gradually fix their issues, they could be great, but as of now, I feel like they're just another startup that wants to "disrupt".
> There is a standardized API for interfacing with banks, HBCI, which almost every other bank supports. Except N26, who stated that they have no plans to do so
Won’t that change when PSD2 comes into full enforcement?
Maybe/hopefully. Does PSD2 mandate a specific protocol? If not, I suspect each bank will just cook up some horrible, incompatible-to-everything-else API, and it will be completely useless.
I'm a big fan of N26 too but I longer go around evangelizing it to my friends and family. I got literally hundreds of people to sign up last year.
I only discovered that support was no longer available in the app when I actually _needed_ support, it was frustrating wasting time trying to find something I was sure I had seen in the app before.
So, I still use my N26 account, and appreciate it in many ways but, if they are capable of making bad decisions like that, there will obviously be more cost-cutting once they have solidified their position in the market. I cannot, in good faith, evangelize a service that may end up being as bad as the traditional banks.
I recently moved to the UK and I now use HSBC personal + business, it is the worst banking experience. The problem is that there is no real alternative yet...
I live in Germany for almost 3 years now and for the first half I just used EUR account of my Polish bank. I only needed an account here, because I moved to a new apartment. And to sign up for Internet connection available provider needed German bank account number. It's prevalent to pay for all recurring costs with Lastschriftmandat. That's totally alien to me. I prefer just to manually pay it myself with bank transfer. Generally it's a form to fill out, sign and send - then they go to your bank and get paid.
Anyways I tried with two other banks first. One did not answer at all. A second one after 4 weeks or so just answered that they will not open an account for me, with no reason why. With N26 it was really fast and pleasant.
From my Polish bank I have Visa card and at least in Berlin it's not widely accepted. N26 gives Maestro card that is accepted a bit wider. However German EC card is a standard one that will be accepted everywhere where cards are accepted, while it's not the same with Maestro. However there are many many places that require cash. N26 gives 3 free withdrawals. My Polish bank gives me free withdrawals everywhere. That's why I still use it. Even more, in Poland cards are very widely accepted. Lately I could get by with just a phone in my pocket - Android pay is supported.
N26 has quite nice application, but it does not even begin to compare to my Polish bank. In Polish bank when I want to setup a transfer it gives ability to fill out everything based on history. In N26 I have to copy the amount and the message, it's tiresome.
Now I think about account in more traditional bank to get EC card and set up join account with my wife, that's also not possible in N26.
mBank. Funny thing is that mBank started as purely as an internet bank. Nowadays it has also stationary branches. I think that most banks in Poland had to up their game, because of mBank.
And you can have cheap transfers in EU between EUR accounts, even when the country does not use euro as the currency. It's around 1.something EUR.
I think a lot of expats in Germany uses N26 because it used to be easy to open an account without a registered address. But unfortunately, the e-postident doesn't work amymore for most of the South Asian passports (https://www.facebook.com/deutschepost/posts/1805883209423283). Hope N26 will introduce more ways of identification.
Yeah I didn't have the smoothest onboarding experience with the identity checking (I'm not from a first world country) - however it eventually worked (Feb 2018).
I originally couldn't even request postident (verification by Deutsche Post at a local post office for those not familiar) - after an app update the option magically appeared to request postident.
What disappointed me was that I was on the phone with their customer support and apparently even if you have a residence ID (I'm assuming this should be considered a legal document proving your identity to the host nation since it's issued by them) that it would not allow me open an account. I really do hope they accept this legal form of identification for those with less luck.
I wouldn't say it's a racist thing, but it's certainly feels extremely personal when you can't open an account with an organization because of your nationality (or your national documents to be precise).
The electronic residence permit is legally not an ID card (even though it looks like one) and they are not allowed to use that as identification as required by banking laws.
I suspected something like this, I'm new here so wasn't definite on that one - in other countries residence cards are (for day to day except at the border) more or less ID proper.
I use N26 as my main bank, but there have been some annoyances/stupid bugs. For example, when I tried to make a transfer and used Greek in the description, the app got in a very weird crashy loop. The website's login screen looked weird on Firefox, the UX is odd (it requires you to confirm a transfer four times), and it takes them forever to fix these things.
Other than that, I really like them, and they're very innovative for a bank, but that's a very low bar. Hopefully they'll step up their game with this funding. Revolut, by comparison, is much more usable, although there are things I don't like there as well.
The key issue with N26 is their poor unit economics. Right now, they are losing money on most of the checking accounts, as they foot the ATM wholesale fee (though they limit it to 3 "free" ATM withdrawals per months).
The issue is that they don't have enough premium services to compensate for the "loss leader" like regular banks do. The hope from Tencent and Allianz is that they will add these now, and then move to great unit economics, but for now they are bleeding red ink.
Well, the business strategy for a bank isn't really rocket science. Right now they focus on grabbing market share, which isn't too hard in countries like Germany. They've also introduced a few products (savings, investment, insurance) as a broker, which allows them to gauge the demand among their customer base and develop popular products in-house in the future.
While I don't expect them to sell mortgages anytime soon, they have many other ways to make profits. And if they manage to keep their footprint low compared to the way big traditional banks are moving online, I'm sure they'll be fine.
Or they could end up being acquired. (I hope they're big enough not to, but consolidation is a real issue in retail banking).
Can someone list the advantages of using this instead of a regular bank+credit card?
1) Monitoring spending in real time or on a weekly basis is useful, and this seems to make it easier. But just a tool for downloading, viewing and analyzing the data from a regular credit card site would suffice, and can be self made.
2) It creates competition for the regular banks, so they potentially would stop being hogs about some of the fees.
3) It's much quicker to get an account. There is absolutely no paperwork involved.
4) Concentrating only on one thing, they tend to get UI and UX much better than old-fashioned banks, who have to still serve clients who are skeptical about online banking and fill in paper-form money transfers and bring them to the bank in person.
1. It's free or being very close to being free. Some European banks charge a quarterly fee unless there is minimum amount of Euros in the account.
2. The partner app you get is easy to use and offers full transparency about how many Euros in the account at that moment in time. This is stark contrast to some Irish banks who can't even give you a Bank statement on your account even if you walk in to the branch that holds your account. Which in this day and age is tantamount to being ridiculous.
3. The cards do look very nice.
4. The on boarding process is smooth and quick. Again in stark contras to some other banks who seem to want to stop you creating an account.
Transfers are faster, at least in Germany. Compared to the Deutsche Bank (my Main Account). Also the notifications are nearly Realtime. But the biggest selling point to me was the convenience of switching online- and foreign payments on and off wihin the app. I Use N26 heavily for travel and online payments.
I love how fast the notifications are with N26. When I am standing at the ATM I can feel my phone vibrating while the ATM still counts the money to give it out to me. Same when I pay with the credit card at a hotel for example, I know the transaction worked before I the credit card-machine spits out the receipt.
I know this doesn't sound like much of an advantage but it fills me with trust in the system and just feels very modern.
Over here I get notifications before I even pull the card out of the reader, and sometimes even before the PIN terminal itself displays "payment accepted".
Also, getting notifications for SEPA transfers that turn out to proceed timely is kind of refreshing when you come from traditional banks with which you feel the cogs of a 20th century mainframe mindset that refreshes accounts (on workdays only FFS!) by performing nightly COBOL/RPG-processed EDI between AS400-or-something machines.
Also also, authenticating using a password of arbitrary complexity of my choosing to log in to my bank instead of an incremental account number and stupid 6 digit PIN that I have to type on a "randomized virtual pinpad" both vulnerable to shoulder surfing and a disaster of accessibility.
Also also also, why the hell can old banks only show me the last month or three of transactions is beyond me in the day and age.
> Can someone list the advantages of using this
That's why I'll skip over the direct advantages and go straight to the indirect one being that N26 & al. may make old banks move their collective ass that is hopelessly stuck in the '90s.
This is true, transactions are entered very quickly compared to most other banks in Germany, and the push notification on a transaction has saved me more than once (being immediatedly notified that Easyjet double charged an airfare, for example).
Having said that, the limited monthly access to ATMs and their bad history (closing multiple peoples accounts with no warning) makes me hesitant to recommend them. I use them as a tool for online purchases and little more.
I mainly use my N26 card here in the US, because I believe the conversion rate is cheaper (I never actually checked).
If you are in the US, the instant notification of credit card swiping is mostly useless in restaurants, since it doesn't show the tip until the transaction is actually processed a long time later. A few restaurants ask you to go in the back with them to type your pin, because they have a chip reader, but they don't yet have the wireless "gameboy" (it just occurred to me that pin+tip might be a tall order, the pin protects the amount too).
Using N26 for last 6+ months. Love no fee on transfers, realtime notifications, their masterkey works worldwide (had no problems in eu, us and canada), easy to block/enable internet or abroad payments and daily limits. I don't do atm withdrawals though.
Overall great deal for me sofar. Would recommend.
The talk has been mentioned in a nearby thread, and includes a specific section about N26 response to the incident, which was deemed quite professional.
Confirmed: using it all the time because banks in France (except Banque Populaire) are hell-bent on not supporting Apple Pay, pushing their weight around for the local clusterfuck that is PayLib.
It would be great to create a new bank from scratch solving basic issues current banks have. The difficult part is the regulatory aspect if they want to operate in different states beyound EU.
I think they aim to expand to the US. I'm an N26 customer and US citizen and they asked me to chat with them (paid) about whether I'd use them in the US, etc. (I quite like them, tbf)
As a US citizen using N26 in the EU, my main complaint is that I can't have any savings accounts (FATCA blah blah blah), so my entire balance is in the checking account that is flashed on the screen when I log in, and linked to my cards.
I don't want something with a high interest rate, or stock picker, just a way of putting a firewall between the cards and my cash.
Huh, FATCA means you can't have a savings account? I'm also a US citizen using N26 in the EU and hadn't realized that - thought it was because I wasn't in Germany. I haven't pursued savings mostly because the rates are pathetic.
Technically, you _can_ have a savings account, but the paperwork burden for the foreign bank is so high that it breaks that product's financial model, so, they don't make it available to Americans.
Living and working in Asia for many years, I always sympathized with the difficulties my American expat friends had in trying to open any sort of local bank account at all, even a current account. Most banks say no the minute they hear you're a US citizen.
Not being able to open a bank account in the country in which you live has serious knock-on effects in terms of getting paid, or renting a home. I am eternally amazed that American citizens, who supposedly value personal freedom, put up with having one of the world's most aggressive tax regimes.
A year ago I had $100 balance and my $50 payment to some cafe turned it into $150. They added money instead of deducting it. That was fixed soon but that's how I still feel about N26.
Maybe banks outside the US are terrible, but honestly in the US I find most "big banks" to be completely fine. JPM Chase, Amex, and Cap 1 started heavily investing in their digital units years ago and IMO it shows. Would not say the experience is perfect but I don't need perfect UX...I need reliability and stability.
One reason I would never move my primary banking to a startup is customer service. There's absolutely no way that a startup is going to have 24/7 online/phone support like the big banks do.
One major advantage of N26 is that they’re the only bank in Germany offering a free credit or debit card without conditions.
All other banks require either > 30€/year fee for the card, or > X€/month income, or > X€/month spending.
Even the Amazon credit card has a 60€/year fee.
EDIT: Regarding the comments suggesting dozens of banks – they all have some conditions. You can’t open an account that only holds a balance for a few days per year, and is only ever used to pay e.g. Namecheap or the Google Play developer fee. Most people don’t want or need a CC in daily life, only to interact with shitty startups or US companies that assume everyone has a CC.
Neither ING-DiBa nor Consorbank charge a fee for their current account with debit Visa nor does DKB for their current account with credit Visa. They also don't require income or spending. There are other free credit cards as well such as those offered by Barclaycard, Santander, or Advanzia.
As discussed in the other subthread, I suggest you open an account with them, do not ever hold any balance on the account, and only transfer a few euros per year in and back out per CC.
I bet they’ll either close your account, or, if you tell them ahead of time, never even allow you to open it in the first place.
Most banks in the US have a free tier, though the catch is usually that you need to deposit a certain amount each month through your job or keep an average balance above $X.
I think Cap 1 is completely free with no minimum balance needed.
Probably the best thing about US banks though is the insanely generous credit card bonuses...I've been churning credit cards for years and have taken many free flights including int'l first/biz and free hotel stays solely on bank credit card bonuses.
I tried getting a credit card with basically every bank, as a student, with no income, but good SCHUFA. Comdirect offered me one if I’d pay 30€/year, DKB required that I have some income – even if it’s just 400€/month.
They do not and that fact is unambiguously stated on both bank's website[0] and price list. It also hasn't changed compared to last time you claimed that on this site.
That’s nice, but it doesn’t change the fact that I tried to get a CC with them, and they said no.
I tried with Commerzbank, Comdirekt, Postbank, DKB, ING-Diba, Hanseaticbank, Wüstenrot, and a bunch more.
Every bank required either some income, or that I pay. I’ve been in bank branches or called their sales every time.
You always say "it’s technically possible", but that doesn’t change the fact that these banks all said they couldn’t offer it.
The fact is, N26 is the only bank that agreed to open an account with me, and offer me a CC, where I hold 0.00€ balance and transfer about 25€ via CC per year.
Which narrows it down. The problem isn't that the offers don't exist (they are successfully used by many people) but that for some reasons almost all banks refuse you as their customers. The only explanation I have is that something is seriously wrong with your credit rating. Have you looked into what Schufa, Infoscore, and Boniversum have on you? Have you asked the refusing banks for your data? (The latter one isn't really well known but possible as well.)
I’ve looked into the credit rating, and asked the bank – the rating is fine, the banks all would take me as normal customer.
But no bank agrees to open an account if I am not going to hold any balance, and only use it for one or two transactions of a few euros per year.
I only need a CC for a handful of shitty US services (namecheap, Google Play developers, etc) that do not take SEPA payments, everything else, including my servers, I run via SEPA Lastschrift.
Have explicitly asked them that question? I see why they would refuse you then. Just don't tell them ahead of time that you will be a money-loosing customer.
My main wishlist for them:
- Allow access to more "raw" data (eg. log of failed payment attempts and why they failed, etc)
- Move support back into the mobile app. It used to be there, now it's a pain to find a phone/email to contact. (The web UI still has live chat)
- Don't expire fingerprint auth after 30 days if I'm actively using it.
- Clarify the differences between the business and personal accounts. It's in a weird state right now.
- More default categories, better tagging, etc. The aspect of tagging your transactions is super cool, it's just a bit hard to use right now.
I'm a huge fan though and 100% recommend it to anyone living in Europe. If someone wants an affiliate invite, shoot me an email (profile).