N26 Discussion

It’s not clear why you’d switch away from a legacy bank with a decent app for N26, or why you’d choose it over a rival challenger bank. That said, for those overwhelmed by the constant new features on show at the likes of Monzo, N26 could be a simpler option to dip your toe into modern banking.

Fair enough review. Have an N26 account since the waitlist, but don’t use it

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Just closed my N26 account
Lacking features

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Received this today.

We’re writing to inform you that you’ll be required to re-verify your identity by 08 10 2019. We are legally obligated to verify our customers at regular intervals to make sure your information is kept up to date with the authorities. This is a routine procedure, and the process will only take a couple of minutes.

Once you initiate the re-verification process in the app you’ll be able to use your account as normal with some exceptions, which we’ve listed below. Please be prepared for this before beginning re-verification.

Please be sure to re-verify your identity by 08 10 2019, otherwise we are obliged to cancel and close your account.

Safe to say I will let the account run it’s course…

I find N26’s ID policy very excessive

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Ditto. I’ve withdrawn my money (all £25 of it!) and will just let it die a very cold, lonely death.

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I wonder if everyone at N26 will shit themselves when they see how many let their accounts shut down rather than faff about with the reverification?

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I don’t think they quite understand the psyche of the British public at all.

The onboarding process has been a pain for some, then they hassle you for your ‘taxation’ number, now they want to reverify your id.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I sure as hell don’t want multiple copies of my personal data floating around the internet just because a bank’s policies are screwed up.

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I haven’t been asked for any of this.

I have not been asked either

In fairness to N26, they are a foreign bank who have to report to the FSA about which British people have accounts with them. The easiest method to link you to HMRC is your NI number. When I opened an account with KBC Ireland, they wanted my NI number too.

This is very true. I have accounts with banks in other places much further away and they still require my NINo for tax ID. Not one of them referred to it as my National Insurance number though most places call it a TIN (tax identification number) and expect you to know that it’s your NI no.

Do they really report anything? For euro accounts they require tax ID but don’t make any reporting to the countries

I’m pretty sure they’re obligated to report to any member countries of the CRS where you’ve listed tax residence.

They say they don’t and given that my N26 account doesn’t appear on my account map, which is the report from the Portuguese central bank showing all accounts one has, they really do not report it

They said to me that they are required by law (German law?) to ask for it, so they just ask for it but don’t do anything with it

You can look at this for further information:

Your account isn’t held in Portugal so I’m not certain the Portuguese central bank would have the information, though your local tax authority will probably have it. N26 are legally obligated to collect and share this information the same way as any other bank does too. There’s lots of countries included in this such as the US, China, all of Europe etc.

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I got asked to reverify. I have asked them to close my account and told them why,

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Am I right in thinking N26 has about 3.5m accounts vs 3m for Monzo? Is Monzo growing at a faster rate?

N26 has been around a lot longer and has significantly more presence around the world than Monzo so they’ve got a much larger audience. Monzo is almost definitely growing faster though.

It was big news last tax season that of all fintech banks none had reported their Portuguese clientes to anyone here in Portugal so people had to report it themselves, manually. I’m afraid you’re wrong that they do any reporting

Banks have to report bank account information to the tax bodies where they are based who then share the information with each other - it’s called Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI).

Portugal is on the list so will get this information, even though the banks don’t tell Portugal directly

See

Portuguese bank secrecy laws mean that CRS info for accounts with a balance less than 50k is sealed and can’t be used without judicial order as part of an investigation

This was debated in parliament a couple of months ago and it’s unrelated to report the accounts that exist and their holder to the central bank