<story><title>N26 will be leaving the UK</title><url>https://n26.com/en-de/blog/leaving-uk-does-not-change-our-global-vision-to-transform-retail-banking-for-the-better</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danpalmer</author><text>Businesses pulling out of the UK based on the Brexit process is bad for the UK, and I&amp;#x27;m sure this was indeed mainly motivated by N26&amp;#x27;s need for a UK banking licence, which is a costly and difficult process to go through. However, it&amp;#x27;s worth noting that they are pretty small in the UK (~200k users).&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I&amp;#x27;ve heard), but in the UK we have generally very good banking infrastructure – payments are normally instant and free, and there&amp;#x27;s a lot of consumer protection with things like the current account switching service guarantee.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;N26 on the other hand just didn&amp;#x27;t have a compelling offering. They charged for most&amp;#x2F;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alibarber</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve recently moved from the UK to another European country, and whilst I despise the way the politics is going back home - I&amp;#x27;m amazed at how much better banking is back in the UK. It&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;ve double-tapped between bank apps the money will be there cleared, at any time of day.&lt;p&gt;Here it&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x27;transfer before 2pm and we&amp;#x27;ll send it the same _working_ day!!&amp;#x27; And that&amp;#x27;s once you&amp;#x27;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)...&lt;p&gt;I got the impression that N26 was mainly to challenge the latter way of working. I didn&amp;#x27;t understand what their offer was even for a free account that was better than even a &amp;#x27;legacy&amp;#x27; bank in the UK (and I&amp;#x27;m not sure they even support direct debit - which would have made it useless for any super-cheap energy&amp;#x2F;phone etc deals).&lt;p&gt;In all - yes Brexit sucks, yes they may have stayed in the UK without it (although I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have expected them to introduce anything new), but I don&amp;#x27;t think they can blame any lack of success in the UK on it.</text></comment>
<story><title>N26 will be leaving the UK</title><url>https://n26.com/en-de/blog/leaving-uk-does-not-change-our-global-vision-to-transform-retail-banking-for-the-better</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danpalmer</author><text>Businesses pulling out of the UK based on the Brexit process is bad for the UK, and I&amp;#x27;m sure this was indeed mainly motivated by N26&amp;#x27;s need for a UK banking licence, which is a costly and difficult process to go through. However, it&amp;#x27;s worth noting that they are pretty small in the UK (~200k users).&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re very successful in Germany where banking is a very slow, difficult, manually run industry (from what I&amp;#x27;ve heard), but in the UK we have generally very good banking infrastructure – payments are normally instant and free, and there&amp;#x27;s a lot of consumer protection with things like the current account switching service guarantee.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;N26 on the other hand just didn&amp;#x27;t have a compelling offering. They charged for most&amp;#x2F;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Nursie</author><text>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 &amp;#x27;challenger&amp;#x27; banks.</text></comment>