They did actually support saved payees in the end (but definitely should have done on day one and didn’t), and the other things you mention were also essential.
To be honest, the whole thing just seemed like N26 did no market research before launching in the U.K., assumed that British banking was going to be the same as German banking which is known for being bureaucratic and backward, and therefore thought their product - as it was in the mainland European markets - would be streets ahead and a massive success.
They didn’t bank on the differences of the U.K. market at all - particularly that Monzo + Starling were strong home-grown competitors with a better more full-featured product, but also that even the average mainstream bank now has a fairly decent app which does at least as much as their app did, so switching away would be a hard sell.
The offering just wasn’t working here and they knew that, which I believe is the reason they ultimately shut down. Brexit was largely a convenient excuse.
They faced the choice of cutting their losses or seriously investing in their U.K. operation to add features and make up the ground on competitors, to try and claw out some market share. Going for the first option would be costly, and require developing features which would only add value to the U.K. app - like cheque imaging which would mean joining the ICS - this was development time they couldn’t justify as the majority of their market, and their overall focus, was the European version of the product. Once they realised all this, and quickly concluded that it was always going to be an uphill battle, they decided to get out.
It’s exactly this. Their European app, even compared to the UK app, is very feature rich but European banking is very consistent feature-wise whereas the UK seems to operate completely separately to the European banking system.
It’s a shame because they had the right ideas but for the UK it just wasn’t worth it. Especially with the uncertainty of Brexit it’s just not worth the hassle.
That’s how I feel. The Brexit excuse wasn’t a complete lie, I think.
It’s just that the N26 management realised that the U.K. banking system was already significantly different to the standardised EU way of doing things in Euro countries (with IBAN transfers, etc) and, with Brexit, this divergence was likely to increase if anything.
That would increase the work they would have to do to cater to UK customers, and given it was clearly making them no profit to be in the U.K. market they decided it wasn’t worth it?
That’s how I see it anyway, we’ll never know if it’s the truth.
There’s that plus there’s the slightly more recognisable names of Starling and Monzo who are directly competing with them more so that other banks and they already have a much more complete feature set with Starling even offering the Euro account.
If I ever find myself in Europe for an extended period I’ll definitely go to N26.
Exactly, especially with being a late entry to the market N26 had to have a USP to be successful.
The “major” Fintechs, Starling and Monzo, were more feature rich for everyday banking, and other slightly more minor players had USPs for particular things - Revolut for foreign exchange, Monese for the unbanked or euro account, Glint for gold, dozens for investments and savings, even the premium tiers would be better value at Revolut or Curve.
N26 had no single niche feature that either nobody else already had or where N26 did it better. Compounding that problem of appeal was the generally irritating set of niggles in the product.
The more you used it, the more annoying it got. Every 30 days, you would have to “re-enable” biometric login. You initially couldn’t save payees. You couldn’t used it as a main account since it didn’t support direct debits. I think it didn’t support BACS at all, so most people couldn’t have their salary paid in directly either. Even when you signed up, the address form was displayed in an odd (obviously German) format which made inputting a standard British address difficult. It really had no market here at all. I don’t know who it was supposed to appeal to? People who had heard of N26 from the EU but not Starling or Monzo?
I’d agree with all of that, having opened my N26 account on Day 1. It was only about a month before the closure announcement that I suddenly realised direct debits and saved payees were in fact supported (albeit pretty badly – there was no way of telling my own accounts apart) and it took months for the notifications to be time stamped in GMT rather than CET.
The innovations (drag and drop money transfer into a Pot) were confounded by arbitrary limitations (only allowing two Pots unless you paid!) and N26 backed the wrong premium providers (looking at you WeWork).
A shambles, which was a shame because I enjoyed the design aesthetic and I think N26 will be a pretty big player around the world. Who knows, maybe in a couple of years it’ll rejoin the UK market or merge with something like TransferWise.
I also signed up on day one, not because anything about the product at that stage was compelling but because I’m interested in FinTech and was aware of N26 in the EU from following the FinTech market in general, so expected that big things would soon follow in the U.K. with (what everybody at the time seemed to think) a soon-to-be major competitor, and I wanted to follow their development. Unfortunately, N26 never showed that much promise and the issues which I thought would be quickly resolved soon after launch never seemed to go away. Finally, just before the closure announcement when saved payees turned up I thought we might be seeing a renewed interest in the U.K. product from the development team (it felt like they forgot about us, frankly, so little in the way of improvements had been made to the app). Obviously that was dashed in very short order when the announcement was abruptly made that they were exiting the U.K.
On a positive note, though, I too enjoyed the aesthetic (especially the picture of a nice drink which I think was used for transactions categorised as income?) and the novel transparent card so it’s a shame that it’s gone.
It’s hard to believe they won’t be a significant international player, too, as you say because they have such traction in mainland Europe. Never say never on a UK re-entry, perhaps, although my gut feeling is that this initial failed foray into the market will have proved to be such an expensive experiment that they won’t give it another go lightly‽
It’s hard not to think that with a bit more market research and pre-launch planning, and a better sense of direction and clearer country-level management, things could have been very different. Although I’m sure this is just the benefit of hindsight.
It wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve had a few cheques in the past from closed utility accounts that were for almost £0. Certainly way less than what it cost to post them.
In which case I will be taking @ndrw up on their very kind offer of splitting it
It could be somebody sent you some money to the closed N26 account details by accident instead of your other accounts?
I think it’s still possible to login and download N26 historic statements for your records too, I can’t remember now but I did it after my account was closed just in case I ever needed the details of transactions.
Cheers I’ll try and login. I don’t think I gave anyone those account details, I barely used it.
I’ve fired an email to them to ask. I’ve also sent the cheque into Monzo, and in my excitement at just writing Freepost Monzo on the envelope, I forgot to put my account number on the cheque
I reckon it’s a mistake and I’ll get nothing. There seems to be a bit missing from the first sentence, maybe how much they are sending me?
