Number26/N26 Mastercard/Account now for Irish Residents

Bob24

I had set-up a standing order which was meant to be processed for the first time this morning, and go the following email in German from N26 (my account is set in English) telling me it couldn't be processed and they will try again later.

Hey XXX,

dein Dauerauftrag in Höhe von 500,00 € an XXX konnte aus technischen Gründen nicht durchgeführt werden.

Wir werden morgen erneut versuchen, diese Überweisung auszuführen und du wirst verständigt, sollte sie erneut nicht erfolgreich durchgeführt werden können.

There are enough funds on the account and the IBAN number is definitely correct as I used it to make a once-off transfer before setting the standing order. So it must be a technical issue with them. A bit of a shame on such a basic functionality, and they should think of translating their notifications email.

Hopefully thy will fix it throughout the day as I intend to use N26 as my main account, but has anyone gotten this before?

Bob24

bertie4evr wrote: »

For now at least. Can't see them keeping original customers grandfathered into free banking forever.

I don't know about forever, but assuming it is not costing them too much they *could* keep it that way for a while to maintain their core group of initial users and avoid bad publicity. It is not uncommon for online techie services to do that with their first batch of customers.

soirish

N26 support is beyond useless, waiting for my card for over 2 months.

Quackster

bertie4evr wrote: »

For now at least. Can't see them keeping original customers grandfathered into free banking forever.

They're still offering free banking to all new customers who verify before April 1st.

Yggr of Asgard

Quackster wrote: »

They're still offering free banking to all new customers who verify before April 1st.

Only if you stay under 5 ATM transactions in € in a month.

They are only waiving the 2.90€ monthly charge for the Mastercard if you sign up before 1 April. Than again, that date has now changes ever since the charge was introduced last year.

If you have more than 5 ATM € withdraws or withdraw in a currency other then € you now have charges.

TireeTerror

Yggr of Asgard wrote: »

Only if you stay under 5 ATM transactions in € in a month.

They are only waiving the 2.90€ monthly charge for the Mastercard if you sign up before 1 April. Than again, that date has now changes ever since the charge was introduced last year.

If you have more than 5 ATM € withdraws or withdraw in a currency other then € you now have charges.

Exactly. I live near the border so shop in both currencies equally. Now I will not have free withdrawals in Sterling like before. Will need to use my Revolut card for that and there is a limit on that each month to be free.

Wonder when the next "free" pretender comes along.

ahbell

TireeTerror wrote: »

Exactly. I live near the border so shop in both currencies equally. Now I will not have free withdrawals in Sterling like before. Will need to use my Revolut card for that and there is a limit on that each month to be free.

Wonder when the next "free" pretender comes along.

Or you could get N26 Black.

TireeTerror

ahbell wrote: »

Or you could get N26 Black.

Thats not free. The reason I joined.

Bob24

Bob24 wrote: »

I had set-up a standing order which was meant to be processed for the first time this morning, and go the following email in German from N26 (my account is set in English) telling me it couldn't be processed and they will try again later.



There are enough funds on the account and the IBAN number is definitely correct as I used it to make a once-off transfer before setting the standing order. So it must be a technical issue with them. A bit of a shame on such a basic functionality, and they should think of translating their notifications email.

Hopefully thy will fix it throughout the day as I intend to use N26 as my main account, but has anyone gotten this before?

For reference, the standing order has now been processed. Strange, the initial failure message was in German while the success message was in English.

ahbell

TireeTerror wrote: »

Thats not free. The reason I joined.

Depending on how much you usually withdraw in £ per month it could be your cheapest option.

Quackster

TireeTerror wrote: »

Exactly. I live near the border so shop in both currencies equally. Now I will not have free withdrawals in Sterling like before. Will need to use my Revolut card for that and there is a limit on that each month to be free.

Wonder when the next "free" pretender comes along.

Another option would be to open a free current account in a UK bank and transfer funds from your Irish account via Revolut. Cumbersome I know but if you are making a lot of sterling ATM withdrawals, it's the only completely free option.

Dodge

TireeTerror wrote: »

Thats not free. The reason I joined.

Use your Revolut card to make Sterling purchases. Take out as little cash as you possible can

(Same applies to your n26 card too I suppose)

Kennek1

Heading to Asia for 8 months so I have ordered both an N26 black card and a revoult card.

I am going to use one personally and the other one will be used for flights/accomadation for myself and my girlfriend.

Which one would you guys recommend to use for each?

Suckit

Exchange rate seems to have gone a bit awry.
I got charged €157.42 for £129
XE puts it at €151. If they start turning into paypal i am gone.

Bob24

Suckit wrote: »

Exchange rate seems to have gone a bit awry.
I got charged €157.42 for £129
XE puts it at €151. If they start turning into paypal i am gone.

Was the transaction made today and definitely paid in GBP? (i.e. not using inline currency conversion from a website or POS terminal)

If yes the figure seems strange as N26 are charging the MasterCard rate with no additional fee, and if you check the MasterCard calculator here it says for a card in euros and a payment of 129 GBP made today with no additional bank charge, the final amount is 150.87 EUR.

Suckit

Bob24 wrote: »

If yes the figure seems strange as N26 are charging the MasterCard rate with no additional fee, and if you check the MasterCard calculator here it says for a card in euros and a payment of 129 GBP made today with no additional bank charge, the final amount is 150.87 EUR.

Yep, I was charged in GBP (I learned from my mistake a few weeks ago), and paypal charged me £129GBP today.
N26 converted that to €157.42.

daddy_boy

closed my acct today not easy - , told them to cancel via chat and was told to send a email to support@n26.com which bounced, so resorted to option 2 cut the card up withdraw my funds on to Revolut and unistalled the app, job done

Suckit

Now I am having issues getting cash from America..
I have been using N26 for well over a year, but i have never used them outside of lodging cash and using it to purchase things.
According to U.S. company they have tried multiple times to send me money, but are getting declined each time.
My account number is appearing as invalid on their system, and they have also said that the problem could be that I am in Ireland and bank acc. is in Germany. 
I am not sure who is at fault here, but it seems like a biggish problem (if i am being told the truth).

Yggr of Asgard

Suckit wrote: »

Now I am having issues getting cash from America..
I have been using N26 for well over a year, but i have never used them outside of lodging cash and using it to purchase things.
According to U.S. company they have tried multiple times to send me money, but are getting declined each time.
My account number is appearing as invalid on their system, and they have also said that the problem could be that I am in Ireland and bank acc. is in Germany. 
I am not sure who is at fault here, but it seems like a biggish problem (if i am being told the truth).

N26 does not accept payments outside the SEPA system.

The US Company's bank most likely uses SWIFT and N26 does not accept that kind of payment. N26 is only an indirect SWIFT partner, hence the XXX in their BIC and will not accept SWIFT payments.

You can't use your N26 account for payment outside SEPA.

Suckit

Thanks for that. So would i be better using an AIB account? (Not mine, but i have very little choice).

Would Revolut work?

Yggr of Asgard

Suckit wrote: »

Thanks for that. So would i be better using an AIB account? (Not mine, but i have very little choice).

Would Revolut work?

Revolut would not work as they have the requirement for the sender account to be in your own name for € or $ payments. Only £ with your own account number can take money from other senders.

If the US company is located in the US and only uses a US bank than you are out of luck with N26 and you need to use an alternative bank account to receive the money.

Does the US company not have a bank in the SEPA area they could use?

Suckit

Yggr of Asgard wrote: »

Revolut would not work as they have the requirement for the sender account to be in your own name for € or $ payments. Only £ with your own account number can take money from other senders.

If the US company is located in the US and only uses a US bank than you are out of luck with N26 and you need to use an alternative bank account to receive the money.

Does the US company not have a bank in the SEPA area they could use?

Thanks, i do not know. I doubt it. It is a kickstarter project i funded and they are returning 30% of it.
I could use my brothers AIB account i guess.

Yggr of Asgard

Suckit wrote: »

Thanks, i do not know. I doubt it. It is a kickstarter project i funded and they are returning 30% of it.
I could use my brothers AIB account i guess.

Your brothers AIB account might be the simplest way, even if you get stung their bad exchange rate and fee's for an international payment.

Suckit

I never even thought of that. I do not really have much choice, a well.
Thanks for the help. I will use his account, it might save a lot of time.

nsa0bupkd3948x

Would something like currency fair or transfer wise work?

ED E

For the pros here like Yggr, are we likely to see Sepa Instant going live with both N26 and Irish banks in November? Would be handy.

bennyx_o

At the moment, SEPA instant is optional for banks (unlike SEPA when it was introduced) I can see the likes of AIB and BOI supporting it from the get go, I'd also like to think N26 will too

Yggr of Asgard

ED E wrote: »

For the pros here like Yggr, are we likely to see Sepa Instant going live with both N26 and Irish banks in November? Would be handy.

SEPA Instant is optional at this point but I would speculate that N26 would be one of the early users. They already are using the direct Bundesbank Clearing System so they are in ideal position to participate. Since they moved to N26 bank you can already see that they have faster transactions times.

As to Irish Banks, I would speculate that KBC would be one of the first to introduce this. You can already see that transfers between KBC and N26 are done very quickly as they both use direct TARGET 2 clearing while some other banks are still indirect users.

As to the more traditional banks in Ireland, I am with bennyx_o of AIB and BOI. I don't see Permanent TSB to be on the forefront of this.

But at this point that is all speculation.

ED E

Sound for the feeback guys.

Probably going to dump BOI during the summer (after a myriad of f'ck ups on their behalf) but if whoever I end up with has instant that'd be great.


Crazy to think its taken this long when DBMS have had strong transactions/atomicity forever.

Lucas Hood

I'm off to Prague for the weekend I should be fine using this over there shouldnt I? For atm withdrawls and paying by card.

bertie4evr

Lucas Hood wrote: »

I'm off to Prague for the weekend I should be fine using this over there shouldnt I? For atm withdrawls and paying by card.

As long as you head into the card settings in the app and switch on 'Payments Abroad' you should be fine. I have seen it switch off on it's own after a while though, so keep an eye on it.

Bob24

And pay by card as much as you can ... unless you are on N26 Black their fee structure always makes cash a more expensive option.

Bob24

So Apple Pay is launching in Ireland today with Ulster Bank and KBC ... I hope a so-colled fintech company like N26 won't be lagging behind to much when it comes to mobile payments and be ready to roll-it out on the day it launches in Germany.

bertie4evr

Bob24 wrote: »

So Apple Pay is launching in Ireland today with Ulster Bank and KBC ... I hope a so-colled fintech company like N26 won't be lagging behind to much when it comes to mobile payments and be ready to roll-it out on the day it launches in Germany.

It's been rolled out in a lot of countries that N26 operate in for months. I have a feeling that since N26 gets its money from MasterCard fees they don't want to give up anymore of that fee to Apple.

Bob24

bertie4evr wrote: »

It's been rolled out in a lot of countries that N26 operate in for months. I have a feeling that since N26 gets its money from MasterCard fees they don't want to give up anymore of that fee to Apple.

It might be just marketing, but wasn't one of Apple's selling point for the banks that increased security would singificantly reduce fraud and more than make-up for the fees paid Apple?

In any case I guess since they are a German bank, they have to wait for Apple to decide to launch Apple Pay in Germany.

bertie4evr

Bob24 wrote: »

It might be just marketing, but wasn't one of Apple's selling point for the banks that increased security would singificantly reduce fraud and more than make-up for the fees paid Apple?

In any case I guess since they are a German bank, they have to wait for Apple to decide to launch Apple Pay in Germany.

I think that was more an American benefit. There's huge credit card fraud there since they're only just moving away from the old swipe cards.

user1842

ED E wrote: »

Sound for the feeback guys.

Probably going to dump BOI during the summer (after a myriad of f'ck ups on their behalf) but if whoever I end up with has instant that'd be great.


Crazy to think its taken this long when DBMS have had strong transactions/atomicity forever.

The Instant Payments scheme, officially called SCTinst (SEPA credit transfer instant) will go live November 2017. The scheme is optional and PSPs (Payment Service Providers, usually banks) can choose to adhere to it. The European Payments Council (EPC) designed and will govern the scheme.

Irish Banks use EBA STEP2 to clear domestic and EU SEPA euro payments either as direct or indirect participants. EBA STEP2 is a ACH (automated clearing house) that is owned by about 60 big European Banks. Clearing a payment means sending the physical payment files to the ACH who then send them to the recipient banks. The payment does not get sent when the customer initiates the payment but are bulked and sent to the ACH at various times during the day. EBA STEP2 have I believe 6 or 8 clearing cycles where banks can send bulk payment files. Irish banks I believe only make use of one of these cycles for sending payments but have to be open to receive bulk payments on all the cycles. 

The settlement of payments (the actual transfer of the money for the payments between banks) is a different process and is called net settlement. When the ACH receives bulk payment files from each bank it can then calculate net settlement positions (if bank A sends €50 euro to bank B and bank B sends €70 to bank A then the net position is only €20 which bank B sends to bank A). When this is done over millions of payments then it is very efficient in terms of reducing the actually transfer of money.

So when the positions are calculated the money is actually transferred via TARGET2, the Eurosystems, ECBs, RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement system). 

The EBA will be going live with their instant payment ACH solution in November (I don't think they will called it STEP3 ) and Irish banks can choose to use it or not. In basic terms payment files will not be bulked and will be sent one by one as they are created to the ACH, to be sent to the beneficiary within 10 seconds. Settlement positions (via TARGET2) will be calculated at set intervals.
Note that for Instant Payments to work all Irish Banks need to offer them at the same time. If one bank offers them then it is pointless as they will have no other bank to send the payments to. 

N26 use EBA STEP2 for Irish payments. The Bundesbank's clearing house (RPS) is only for domestic German payments.

Savman

Give user1842 a cookie!

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

Kennek1

I have both a n26 card and a revoult hard. Which should I use for personal and which should I use for accomadation, flights etc.?

I am heading to this list of countries..... can you envisage any difficulties using the cards in them? China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, oz, NZ, India.

Thanks

ED E

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

1842 clearly will be able to explain better but I've heard it described before that most of the Irish banks emulated their paper systems when digitizing back in the day. A digital "ledger" just replaced a paper one.

This business logic meant the systems have always been very much sub optimal. Where BOI would have called/telex'd AIB at 4PM daily their systems now do it autonomously but again just daily.

TLDR: Irish Banks are just backward, not malicious (that'd be giving them too much credit).

ED E

Note for those who like to flash their phone, turns out a change of device ID breaks the N26 app a bit. Solution: Unpair and repair (few stage process).

Savman

Kennek1 wrote: »

I have both a n26 card and a revoult hard. Which should I use for personal and which should I use for accomadation, flights etc.?

I am heading to this list of countries..... can you envisage any difficulties using the cards in them? China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, oz, NZ, India.

Thanks

Both are good Cards and should serve you well but common sense applies while travelling: don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Use both!

Bob24

Just a note on N26 online support: I needed something from them and just tried online chat, and I was pleasantly surprised to be connected to someone instantly. I don't know if there is a drastic improvement on their end or if I was just lucky, but this is much faster than what I experienced when I wanted to talk to them about a month ago (45 minutes wait).

And by the way I took the chance to ask about Apple Pay availability, and while as expected the answer was a bit vague the support person told me it is on the roadmap but she was not sure about the exact timeline.

nsa0bupkd3948x

Bristol Helpless Stapler wrote: »

Sent another email there yesterday after a few days of silence. Cc'ed in the Central Bank, CPCC, Leap Card, Transport for Ireland and Shane Ross's office.

After receiving no response from any party I sent a follow up email.

Shane Ross department replied and cced in the NTA, Leap Card, CPCC and Central Bank:

Thank you for your email; a reply will issue shortly.

Best regards

--
Private Secretary to Minister Shane Ross

Leap Card replied:

Thank you for your email and apologies for the delay in getting back to you.

The National Transport Authority (NTA) is currently investigating the system changes necessary to support the extension of the auto top-up facility to non-Irish bank account holders with its suppliers. While it is our intention to support non-Irish bank accounts, at this time we do not have an agreed timeframe to implement and test the changes necessary to support the various IBAN structures used in other European countries. However, NTA will continue their efforts to resolve this issue and in the meantime we apologise for the inconvenience caused

We have reviewed our response and your comments and we’re keeping our decision as the final response from Leap Card on this matter. If you're still not satisfied and want to escalate this matter further you can do so by contacting the National Transport Authority at info@nationaltransport.ie


Kind Regards,
----

Escalations and Complaints.

Leap Card Customer Care

Will be interesting to see the reply from Shane Ross's office. Have to hand it to Leap Card they've been investigating for years now. Must be a very thorough investigation.

"to support the various IBAN structures used in other European countries" I thought IBAN was a standardised format?

The J Stands for Jay

Bristol Helpless Stapler wrote: »

After receiving no response from any party I sent a follow up email.

Shane Ross department replied and cced in the NTA, Leap Card, CPCC and Central Bank:



Leap Card replied:




Will be interesting to see the reply from Shane Ross's office. Have to hand it to Leap Card they've been investigating for years now. Must be a very thorough investigation.

"to support the various IBAN structures used in other European countries" I thought IBAN was a standardised format?

As I know from the fruitless experience of trying to get three to set up a DD from a Bunq account, Dutch IBANs have 18 characters compared to the Irish 22.

nsa0bupkd3948x

McGaggs wrote: »

As I know from the fruitless experience of trying to get three to set up a DD from a Bunq account, Dutch IBANs have 18 characters compared to the Irish 22.

They're different lengths but still have a similar format and same algorithm to check the validity I thought.

The J Stands for Jay

Bristol Helpless Stapler wrote: »

They're different lengths but still have a similar format and same algorithm to check the validity I thought.

That's all true, but try explaining that to an organisation that doesn't care. I was told that if I could give the sort code and old format account number they'd be able to sort it out...

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

The J Stands for Jay

Fred Swanson wrote: »

Jesus wept!

Three rep: I'm afraid we can't accept a direct debit mandate from a non-Irish bank.
Me: it's currently being paid by direct debit from a German bank account.
Three rep: I'm not sure how that happened.