Number26/N26 Mastercard/Account now for Irish Residents

Basq wrote: »

I'd have preferred the ability to top up via card to be honest.. sending money internationally via AIB required setting up new payees using Card Reader etc which can't be done via AIB mobile app.

Sounds like what you’re looking for is a nice extra payment card like Revolut or Curve; not a full fledged bank like N26. SEPA transfers are the normal way to credit any bank account and N26 is no different.

And yes agree AIB’s implementation of non-Irish SEPA transfers is shameful, but as someone said isn’t it something to complain about in an AIB thread rather than an N26 one? (it has also bothered me with sending money to various other banks across the EU, nothing specific to N26)

One thing I fully agree with you about is that it makes no sense to approve an overdraft transaction for a customer which doesn’t have overdraft facility, and then start charging fees (I understand why it likely happened through: it takes a few days for the transaction to settle and the exchange rate can change in the meantime which likely happened at your slight disadvantage - the difference with Revolut is that Revolut are doing the currency conversion themselves and have control over these things, whereas N26 are relying on MasterCard for the conversion and thus don’t have control).

Having said that you could also have had a sufficient amount on your account for the transaction you decided to make. And right now you could transfer those missing few cents to N26 from your other account with no fee and have this sorted in 5 mins. So you have to admit you aren’t exactly being easy either ;-)

ffocused wrote: »

I had a transaction declined in Argos yesterday on my N26 card from both Apple Pay and with the card & pin.
The app stated it was declined because I have payments abroad disabled.
I was in Naas.

The only guess I can make there is Argos IE is using a UK MSP.

Pleasently surprised to see a SEPA transfer from my TransferWise to N26 happen instantly for me yesterday. Tested sending €1 back to it but its not the same back.

Bob24 wrote: »

And it is free regardless of the amount you send?
If yes, fairplay to TransferWise for implementing this is and not charging for it.

I wish but TW have had small fees for a while, there was a 0.63c charge for sending €135.

blade1 wrote: »

Got an email earlier from transfer wise about their own card.

Can someone tell me how this stacks up against having my N26 account?

Or it's pros and cons???
https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/card

The TransferWise one might be more of a Revolut than an N26 competitor.

It looks like to be the main benefit of the TransferWise one vs N26 is that you can hold money in many currencies and pay directly in those currencies with no conversion. That could be usefull if you have holdings / regular income / regular spendings in specific currencies.

But as a payment card for the average person who gets paid in euros and sometimes makes card payments in other currencies, It might not be that useful.

The benefit of N26 is the fact that it is a licensed bank (if I am not mistaken TransferWise isn’t).

blade1 wrote: »

Are transferwise still behind N26 when dealing with cross border payments?

One time I was buying a car in UK for over 20 grand and N26 messed it up.
No help from N26 so I rang transferwise directly ( think it was Estonia) and they said "don't worry we'll sort it straight away".
Felt very assured by the guy on the phone compared to N26 CS.
Also they did sort it out swiftly.

Eurozone transfers are managed directly by N26 as SEPA transfers. Other transfers are indeed routed to TransferWise.

I believe N26 simply hands the funds and your details to TransferWise from and from that stage everything is managed by TransferWise under your name. So as I understand it, N26 users effectively also become TransferWise customers when they issue non EZ fund transfers.

My experience with TransferWise customer support has been limited; but my anecdotal one matches yours: they were better than the experience I have had with N26.

Just my opinion, but unless there is either something you prefer about the quality of service of TransferWise or you want to hold cash in different currencies to pay with it, I don’t think the card would bring anything additional to you. Not saying it is useless in general though - it is always good to have options, and for someone who is looking for an advanced multi-currency holding/transfer/payment solution or who already is and TransferWise user and doesn’t have such card yet it can certainly make sense.

And yes Revolut or TransferWise cards seem like a good option for your friend. Or if they want to avoid fees but want to be debited for sterling payments directly om their existing bank account, a Curve card could be interesting. Instead if having a separate pot of cash you need to top-up like with Revolut, Curve simply does the conversion on the fly at a cheap rate and forwards the charge to your “legacy” bank card but in euros. Only thing with Curve is that they start changing (small) fees if you spend beyond a few hundred euros per month (just checked their website and the limit is 500 GBP per month - beyond that they start charging something, but still much less than any Irish bank).

I’d say Brexit is a bit of an excuse for other factors (maybe they are facing tougher competition in the UK).

They only launched about a year ago, i.e. it wasn’t exactly hard to know at that stage that the UK would be leaving the EU soon. Blaming Brexit a year later for closing their UK business seems a bit disingenuous, unless they are saying they overlooked the fact that Brexit was coming which would be a pretty strong sign of incompetence :-)

blade1 wrote: »

It wasn't a fact then though.

We are taking about late 2018, not about 2015.

I.e. the referendum was voted, article 50 was triggered, and departure negotiations were bumpy but in progress ... you’d have had to be pretty blind not to see Brexit coming a year ago :-s

markpb wrote: »

If they started operating in 2018, they were probably planning for it for 2-3 years before that. Between 2016 and 2018, most people would have expected that a trade agreement of some sort would be signed and passporting of financial services in both directions would definitely be part of that. Even now, it's hard to imagine the impact on London if there isn't some agreement on that.

If we are saying they made a decision to launch in late 2018 based on some assumption that Brexit would not impact their regulatory environment and they now have to lose the investment they made to enter the UK market because of that incorrect assumption and the lack of a backup plan, I would call that incompetence and poor risk management.

But as I said I personally don’t think this is what happened for a few reasons:
- I don’t think they are that incompetent
- Operating in non-EU markets seems to be something they are Ok with (see their US launch)
- If as you said the decision to launch was based on an assumption that some deal would be signed between the EU and the UK related to financial passporting, why closing the business now just one year after launching? (and while they can still do passporting until the end of this year during which the agreement they are betting on could be signed)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/11/german-digital-bank-n26-pulls-out-of-uk-blaming-brexit

German digital bank N26 pulls out of UK, blaming Brexit


The German digital bank N26 is has blamed Brexit for its decision to pull out of the UK and close more than 200,000 customer accounts.
.....
.....The move comes less than 18 months after the Berlin-based firm launched in the UK. It had about a dozen employees in the UK, with the rest of the business run remotely from the German capital.
.....
...The timings and framework outlined in the EU withdrawal agreement mean that the company will in due course be unable to operate in the UK with its European banking licence.” As recently as October, N26 was publishing blogposts assuring customers that it would continue in the UK after Brexit. Those posts have since been deleted.
The bank – which has 5 million customers in the EU – was relying on passporting rights that allowed it to use its German licence to operate in the UK. It originally planned to take advantage of the British regulator’s temporary permissions regime to continue operating in the country after Brexit. Those rules allow EU financial services firms to continue operating after the transition period ending on 31 December 2020, giving them three years to apply for a formal licence.
However, the Guardian understands the company changed its mind as it believed the costs were starting to outweigh the benefits of staying in the UK market....

https://sifted.eu/articles/n26-brexit-uk/

And btw I think if they want to keep growing and survive in some of their key markets N26 really need to up their game.

I am following the French market a bit, and in response to the likes of N26 and Revolut several pre-existing online banks owned by large legacy banks have launched similar offers with free banking and interbank exchange rates (some of them even offer gold and platinum bank cards for free if you lodge a minimum amount each month, which beats N26), and they also have nice apps. What they offer that N26 doesn’t: saving accounts, reasonably cheap access to the stock market from the apps, local and international investment products, loans, mortgages, etc. To be honest if I was in the market for an online bank in France N26 would now be close to the bottom of my list - they are not offering anything better than the local competition (their 2 selling points were free/cheap fees and a better app, and they are gone as the competition caught-up), and their product range is much more limited.