N26

N26 offers its services in 24 European countries.[25] In Austria, Germany and the Netherlands customers can additionally request a Maestro card.

N26 closed its business in April 2020 in the UK. In November 2021, they also announced that they would pull out of the American market from January 2022 closing all (approx.) 500,000 accounts there.[26]

Some parts of the website and customer service are provided in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish regardless of the customer's residency.[27]

N26 customers in several of its markets can use their smartphone for in-store purchases. N26 supports Google Pay in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden, while it supports Apple Pay in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Greece, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia, Estonia, Belgium, Poland, Norway, Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland.[28][29] Additional countries are added as both Google Pay and Apple Pay gradually expand throughout N26's markets.

N26 has a basic account with no monthly fee and charges no fees for basic banking transactions or credit card payments in foreign currencies. In the Eurozone (except Austria and Italy) ATM withdrawals are limited to five per month for primary account holders and three per month for others. N26 charges a €2 fee for any additional withdrawal.

ATM withdrawals in foreign currencies are also subject to a 1.70% fee for basic accounts and are free for N26 You and Metal account holders.

German customers can also withdraw and deposit money at retail locations. While there is no fee for withdrawals up to €999, deposits are subject to a 1.5% fee.

Customers can lock and unlock their MasterCard through the mobile app without having to contact N26 support. They can also enable and disable it for usage abroad or online usage and modify the daily limits for cash withdrawals and card payments. Funds held in N26 accounts are also covered by all the requisite statutory requirements of a licensed bank, and are protected up to 100,000€ under the German Deposit Protection scheme.[30]

The N26 app can scan the users' contacts in their smartphones and identify other N26 account holders. Using a service called Moneybeam an N26 customer can send funds to these contacts without having to fill in their IBAN. Moneybeam transfers are executed instantaneously at no cost.

Following an inquiry made by several German medias reporting that it was possible to quickly open an N26 account with fake identity documents, the bank is in German financial regulatory authority BaFin's sight since 2018.

In May 2021, BaFin demanded that N26 take actions to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing. And in June 2021, the bank was fined 4.25 million euros by BaFin for weaknesses in its anti-money laundering system. At least 50 transactions were suspicious and occurred between 2019 and 2020. The bank was too slow to report them to BaFin which prevented an efficient inquiry.[31] BaFin also installed a supervisor in the bank.[32]

In December 2016, Vincent Haupert, a research fellow in computer science from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, demonstrated how he could take advantage of security vulnerabilities in order to get access to N26 users' accounts.[33] Haupert had already notified N26 of the vulnerabilities back in September 2016.[34] N26 acknowledged the issues and claimed that they had been fixed before they became public, adding that no user account had actually been compromised.

In March 2019, German media reported that customers who had their account credentials stolen found it difficult to contact the bank and resolve the situation. Customer advocates reported that there was a growing number of complaints from phishing victims who were unable to access their accounts and found it difficult to contact the bank. In a widely reported case N26 took more than two weeks to restore access for a customer who had €80,000 stolen from his account. The reports raised the question if the rapid growth of the bank had left it ill-equipped to deal with the increasing number of support cases.[35][36][37]

In August 2020, N26 management drew public criticism for opposing the election of works councils for its Berlin-based subsidiaries N26 GmbH and N26 Operations GmbH. After employees announced a company-wide meeting to form an election committee, N26 obtained a temporary injunction to postpone the works council election, arguing that the hygiene concept did not meet the legal requirements.[38]

To protect the named employees from further legal action, the trade union Ver.di stepped in to host the meeting at an outside venue. After N26 filed another injunction targeting Ver.di, IG Metall, another trade union organizing workers in the tech sector, called for the meeting instead.[39]

On the day of the meeting, the police were called to the location but found no violations of the current safety measures, allowing the selection of an election committee to go forward. An N26 spokesperson said that they had no knowledge of anyone at the company calling the police on workers. [40]

After the works councils were established, CEO Valentin Stalf apologized in a blog post, stating that N26 supports the right of employees to formal representation.[41]

In May 2022, the employees elected a works council for the second time. According to a media report, members of the works council subsequently drew a positive balance.[42]