N26 will be leaving the UK

Re:N26 will be leaving the UK by s_dev on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:26PM (#22301026)

>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.

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Re:N26 will be leaving the UK by p0llard on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:35PM (#22301161)

> 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 don't think that's really addressing the point though: Monzo/Starling/et al. are also all free, have a great app and savings up to £85,000 (€100,000) are guaranteed by the UK government.

The fact that they have an order of magnitude fewer customers in the UK than Monzo, for example, seems like strong evidence of their failure to compete; it seems hard to find a compelling reason to use them, especially when they were so late to the market.

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Re:N26 will be leaving the UK by afroboy on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @04:27AM (#22307308)

N26 does operate more than one country, and even does allow people from non operating countries to sign up.

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Re:N26 will be leaving the UK by Hamuko on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:28PM (#22301056)

>and because it's German all savings up to €100k are guaranteed by German gov.

Same applies to all banks in the EU.

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Re:N26 will be leaving the UK by mpweiher on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @02:15PM (#22301603)

So which banks are no longer in the EU...?

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Re:N26 will be leaving the UK by Hamuko on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @03:27PM (#22302453)

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/

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?

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Re:N26 will be leaving the UK by johneth on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @02:44PM (#22301957)

UK banks are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme[1] - basically the same thing.

[1] https://www.fscs.org.uk/

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Re:N26 will be leaving the UK by danpalmer on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:28PM (#22301061)

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.

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