Number26/N26 Mastercard/Account now for Irish Residents

Yggr of Asgard

N26 is closing its US business for good on the 11 January 2022:

https://n26.com/en-us/blog/n26-us-operations

jrmb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118185297#Comment_118185297

Yeah, no government service has ever had any trouble using my N26 account.

jrmb

During lockdown, the DSP explicitly said that N26 and Revolut accounts could be used.

wassie

No one here is suggesting it couldnt.

I think your all missing my original point which was around IBAN discrimination & why I still need an Irish current account.

My N26 is my daily transaction account which is nix for between roughly 60-100 transactions a month.

I keep an AIB current account to handle a few direct debits by firms that insist on an Irish IBAN ...AND the odd cheque I get occasionally issued out by organisations.

Using both accounts this way for me means that for less than a fiddy a year, I dont waste my time faffing around fighting providers that have IBAN discrimination every time I want to switch a service.(As I review all my service providers & insurers annually) - YMMV!

unkel

No firms should insist on Irish IBAN. This is illegal, they should be reported.

Yggr of Asgard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228269#Comment_118228269

Might be illegal but unlike in other countries where the Government put an enforcement against this including significant financial fines, our government just have done the usual, implement it sort off and leave it to quangos to sort out which all don't want to take primary responsibility and just play ping pong with complaints.

And companies know it and hence don't care.

irishgeo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228286#Comment_118228286

Can’t you complain to Europe.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228286#Comment_118228286

Yes you're right of course, it's exactly what happened to me, see a few pages up. We should still try and educate those dinosaur people and dinosaur companies that what they are doing is illegal. And report them anyway. Hopefully things will change in due course. Before all the Irish banks are gone in about 10-20 years anyway 😂

Yggr of Asgard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228389#Comment_118228389

Depends, if you are an EU Citizen from outside of Ireland than you have more rights and can use something like solveit to complain about both the company and the CCPC/CBI ping pong directly to the EU and you home country.

If you are an Irish Citizen, it's a little bit more complicated as you first have to exhaust your Irish Complaint process (God luck with that).

It took what 2.5 years and the EU Commission threatening a heavy fine for Leap Card (a government quango) to finally accept Non-Irish IBAN's. A lot of people complained and followed through, so it got fixed.

But there are still companies out there, which just don't implement it or only implement it partly. For example, you cannot sign up to most mobile phone providers online with a Non-Irish IBAN because of "credit history" and "fraud protection" as excuse, but once you have a subscription you can change to a Non-Irish IBAN by putting it in writing. Now to me that is also illegal yet neither Comreg nor CCPC is doing anything about.

In other countries they hand out significant fines for that kind of behaviour.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228286#Comment_118228286

Can you please post some links on this? Thank you.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228389#Comment_118228389

Complaining is not very practical though. Most people want cheap or free, no hassle banking, they don’t want to spend time filling complaints nor fighting with vendors. And on the other side, making such a fundamental change to an accounting system is not risk free and some vendors will consider the risk of loosing business and paying fines is the lesser of the to.

daheff

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228520#Comment_118228520

Do these same mobile phone providers do the same in other EU countries by they operate in?

ED E

Anyone had issues with pre-authorisations on N26 and Amazon? Never had issues before but 99% of the time things would dispatch right after the order was placed, this is something on back order. Looks like N26 rejected Amazon pushing the payment twice based on emails I received. Flipped it to BOI and seems fine now (still pending dispatch).

jester77

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118312225#Comment_118312225

As in getting charged twice? I noticed that today on an order I have with Google, the money was taken when I placed the order last week, and they took the same amount again this morning.

Suckit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118315565#Comment_118315565

Not sure if that is what they are talking about, as I have often had that happen to me, it's not really taken, and it rectifies itself. I think there is a name for it.

I think what ED E may be referring to is that the money is seemingly blocked by N26 for instant payments. Not sure if it has anything to do with their SEPA fee.

I know nothing... But have noticed top ups that used to be immediate, seem to be stopped now. Revolut is the only one I can top up with instantly.

ED E

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118315565#Comment_118315565

Not quite. AFAIK, the way Amzn do things is they charge you at dispatch. So if you order on the 1st they do a pre-authorization to ensure the card is valid. Then say on the 6th they dispatch and do the real charge.

Suckit

Anyone having issues with SEPA transfers? I am trying to transfer since last night, but the option to pay the 99cents and send an instant bank transfer is greyed out. Beneatht the transfer types it says:

Unfortunately, your recipient's bank doesn't support instant bank transfers. Please try making a standard bank transfer instead.

I have tried with a few different banks, same thing.

28064212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118370125#Comment_118370125

No Irish banks support SEPA Instant

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118370137#Comment_118370137

Not just Irish banks, many banks don't support it. And whether they ever will is debatable. To be of use most banks across Europe would need to support it and that would mean major changes to transaction system and that is expensive. For instance process MLA exceptions would need to be done in almost in real time etc...

Suckit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118370137#Comment_118370137

Thanks, the banks are in Germany, UK and Switzerland. I have used both the German and the UK ones before to send instant.

I got on to chat, it seems that I hadn't activated payments abroad in the app (I just got a new phone and downloaded the latest app). I hadn't heard of that before, she activated it for me, and told me it can be found in settings -> Limits.

I went back after she did that and I could send to one of the banks but not to another. I will try again later.

user1842

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118370298#Comment_118370298

Most of the banks in the euro areas big countries already support SCT Inst (instant payments). Irish banks are outliers.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/groups/erpb/shared/pdf/15th-ERPB-meeting/Status_update_on_SCT_Inst_scheme.pdf?b2afb8eeeba23e0045c53608a0925d4c

In addition I think the EU Commission may soon legislate to ensure SCT Inst is available.

https://www.regulationtomorrow.com/eu/commission-roadmap-on-eu-wide-instant-payments-scheme/

AB7

Any word on when they will reopen the option to sign up for free accounts again?

wassie

There is a monthly limit to new signups. If you want one suggest you sign up with them straight away so you are offered one when they open up for the next month.

This is from the N26 website - the PR Dept putting their spin on things:

With the overwhelming demand for N26’s digital banking products, we will be making a temporary limitation to the number of new bank accounts that we can offer each month.

The real story (from the FT back in October)

German banking watchdog BaFin has imposed a draconian cap on N26’s client growth in a rare intervention that will slow down the expansion of the Berlin-based online bank. The measure was imposed by BaFin in early October after the regulator became increasingly dissatisfied with organisational flaws at the fast-growing bank.As a result, N26 will only be able to accept 50,000 and 70,000 new customers a month until it has fixed a number of specific issues flagged by BaFin, down from the average of 170,000 clients it had been taking in this year.

Brian201888

The lads in the chat are quite useless, just telling me the same thing again and again.

I set up a premium account yesterday with the plan to move from KBC and have a shared space with my wife for bills but have now discovered that the separate IBAN for each space is only available in Germany at the moment.

Does anyone know of a timeframe to roll that out further? Chat just tells me it's only available in Germany again and again

jester77

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118420017#Comment_118420017

They sound confused. I don't know if separate IBANs for spaces are available outside of Germany, but shared spaces with IBANs are not available anywhere yet. You can only apply an IBAN to a non-shared space.

First bullet point here:

https://support.n26.com/en-eu/app-and-features/spaces/what-are-ibans-for-spaces-subaccounts

cuttingtimber22

How do dollar transfers work into an N26 account? Will they have their own space?

jrmb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118420017#Comment_118420017

I have a premium account and I can't have IBANs for my spaces. They've given me a spare debit card with separate details, but both debit cards draw from my main current account.

Edit: If it's a regular payment (e.g. the phone bill is a regular €50), you could set up an automatic transfer into your current account in time for the direct debit. It's a workaround that shouldn't be necessary though.

jrmb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118438072#Comment_118438072

As far as I know it all gets covered into the currency of your main account.

Wise lets you have wallets in different currencies, but weirdly, when I bought something with my Wise debit card, it deducted part of the money from my euro section and another part from my sterling.

jrmb

I've got a persistent problem where Chip and Pin terminals reject my N26 MasterCard without asking for the PIN. It's happened in a few different places over the past 2 weeks.

Similarly, my Amazon Prime subscription is being declined even though the card details are correct and I have sufficient funds. In my local supermarket, the terminal says something like "Code file missing" when I insert my card, but the payment goes through anyway.

I've raised both with N26 but they really don't seem to have enough staff with the skills to check these things out. I've been able to manage without an Irish current account until now, but I've joined Bank of Ireland out of frustration with N26 and I won't renew my paid subscription.

I get the code file missing on terminals in a lot of places too but the transaction always goes through.