In the UK - that's simply untrue. Many accounts will stipulate in the T&Cs that you use the account to deposit your salary and 1 or 2 utility payments from, or they might levy a charge or remove benefits (free overdraft, fee free card usage abroad etc) - this is pretty easy to game though. It is fairly common for people to have more than one current account.

That's just what Nationwide told me when I was in the UK. I guess it is a common myth. If I google it, it sounds like it is

It does sound like you were mis-informed, and sadly that seems to be common with banks all over.

The only account that is legally restricted that I can think of is the ISA which offers good tax incentives for saving but with a limit to how much can be contributed in a year, and I think you can only open with one provider in a given tax year.

> In the UK you are legally only allowed 1 current account afaik

If that's anything like the truth, absolutely nobody here knows about it. In an effort to get customers, banks will often give you "introductory" rates which are better than the market, but only for a fixed amount of time (6 months or a year). I know people who have accounts at basically every major bank.

I live in the UK and have multiple current accounts.

For the UK it is the first time I hear that. I am pretty sure it's not the case.

I am in Germany, and I have several free bank accounts (I have DKB, ING, and Revolut, but I could easily also get e.g. N26 or comdirect). A quick Google search for "freies girokonto" results in a comparison between the 31 best offers here: https://www.biallo.de/girokonto/ratgeber/kostenloses-girokon... (no affiliation), so I have no idea what you mean by that.

The online banks are very risky though, but that is true they are often free. The physical banks are almost always not, unless you want the extremely basic account for people with no address registration

What do you mean by risky here? DKB is owned by the Bayerische Landesbank (mostly owned by the state of Bavaria). Their online security measures seem at least as good as my Sparkasse account, too. I use a physical TAN machine to authenticate transactions for both.

There is basically no customer support if anything goes wrong

What about N26? The UK also has a couple of options like Starling and Monzo. I know some of these "challenger" banks have their own issues but as secondary/ backup accounts they work well. They are cheap and easy to set up.

N26 is free, I think DKB might also still be (though they arbitrarily with a minor update decided to block every rooted android user, so I wouldn’t trust them). Most others require a certain influx of money every month to be free IIRC.

I don’t know where you got that from but in the UK you can have as many current (or savings or whatever) accounts a you like

Some banks try and entice people with nice offers (£100 cash, free overdraft for months etc). To get the offer, you need to start paying your salary into the account and use it for bill payments.

Without the deal, there's no restrictions.