Number26/N26 Mastercard/Account now for Irish Residents

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118179652#Comment_118179652

Still an awful waste of money. I've never paid any bank charges in this country. Tell whoever issues the cheques to cop the fock onto themselves. It's 2021, not 1971. Cheques should have been abolished many decades ago. None of my customers now pay me with a cheque, after I simply told them I will no longer accept them.

Quackster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118179652#Comment_118179652

You could open an EBS MoneyManager account for lodging the odd cheque and pay nothing. Of course, not an option if you don't have an EBS near you but a bank or post office deposit account or a share account at your local Credit Union are other fee-free options.

wassie

Thats sound advice.

However for my circumstance, for €3.83/month I have access to a local branch, an Irish IBAN for a couple of direct debits.

For me, this tiny cost is worth it versus the time that would be involved in fighting numerous organisations that don't readily accept non-Irish IBANs everytime sign up to a new service or change providers (which happens regularly).

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118181147#Comment_118181147

Tell whoever issues the cheques to cop the fock onto themselves. It's 2021, not 1971.

Irish Govt departments are the main culprits, one of which is Revenue. No surprises there really.

unkel

Revenue pay directly to your IBAN and have done so for many years! In fact they were the easiest of them all for changing my direct debit to a non IE IBAN number. Took about a minute to do it online. Credit where credit is due.

wassie

I've imported half a dozen cars over the last few years and appeal the VRT appeal on all of them. Each time the refund is delivered by cheque....from Revenue. And I wasnt given the option even when I queried it.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118182714#Comment_118182714

Must have been a long time ago. Last car I imported (early last year), I got the VRT refund directly into my IBAN

wassie

Nope - mid last year was last one. This inconsistency for the same service is just another example of why dealing with them so frustrating. Unlike yourself, I won't be giving any props to Revenue anytime soon as clearly Im not alone if others experiences (such as this one) are anything to go by.

unkel

Dunno, you must have forgotten to tick a box? I imported my car in March 2020, paid the VRT at the next possible appointment by debit card, put in an appeal and about a week or so later I got a full refund of the VRT I paid. Directly onto my card (just checked)

Or maybe you paid the VRT with a cheque (we miss the :pac: here 😀)

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118183814#Comment_118183814

I’ve had various revenue refunds paid to my Swiss IBAN as well I can’t even remember the last time it was by cheque. Maybe go back and challenge them. The Revenue deal with people all over Europe, so not being able to handle IBAN transactions would be a big issue.

The J Stands for Jay

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118181929#Comment_118181929

Revenue have been perfectly happy to pay directly into my N26 account since 2016.

Yggr of Asgard

N26 is closing its US business for good on the 11 January 2022:

https://n26.com/en-us/blog/n26-us-operations

jrmb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118185297#Comment_118185297

Yeah, no government service has ever had any trouble using my N26 account.

jrmb

During lockdown, the DSP explicitly said that N26 and Revolut accounts could be used.

wassie

No one here is suggesting it couldnt.

I think your all missing my original point which was around IBAN discrimination & why I still need an Irish current account.

My N26 is my daily transaction account which is nix for between roughly 60-100 transactions a month.

I keep an AIB current account to handle a few direct debits by firms that insist on an Irish IBAN ...AND the odd cheque I get occasionally issued out by organisations.

Using both accounts this way for me means that for less than a fiddy a year, I dont waste my time faffing around fighting providers that have IBAN discrimination every time I want to switch a service.(As I review all my service providers & insurers annually) - YMMV!

unkel

No firms should insist on Irish IBAN. This is illegal, they should be reported.

Yggr of Asgard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228269#Comment_118228269

Might be illegal but unlike in other countries where the Government put an enforcement against this including significant financial fines, our government just have done the usual, implement it sort off and leave it to quangos to sort out which all don't want to take primary responsibility and just play ping pong with complaints.

And companies know it and hence don't care.

irishgeo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228286#Comment_118228286

Can’t you complain to Europe.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228286#Comment_118228286

Yes you're right of course, it's exactly what happened to me, see a few pages up. We should still try and educate those dinosaur people and dinosaur companies that what they are doing is illegal. And report them anyway. Hopefully things will change in due course. Before all the Irish banks are gone in about 10-20 years anyway 😂

Yggr of Asgard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228389#Comment_118228389

Depends, if you are an EU Citizen from outside of Ireland than you have more rights and can use something like solveit to complain about both the company and the CCPC/CBI ping pong directly to the EU and you home country.

If you are an Irish Citizen, it's a little bit more complicated as you first have to exhaust your Irish Complaint process (God luck with that).

It took what 2.5 years and the EU Commission threatening a heavy fine for Leap Card (a government quango) to finally accept Non-Irish IBAN's. A lot of people complained and followed through, so it got fixed.

But there are still companies out there, which just don't implement it or only implement it partly. For example, you cannot sign up to most mobile phone providers online with a Non-Irish IBAN because of "credit history" and "fraud protection" as excuse, but once you have a subscription you can change to a Non-Irish IBAN by putting it in writing. Now to me that is also illegal yet neither Comreg nor CCPC is doing anything about.

In other countries they hand out significant fines for that kind of behaviour.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228286#Comment_118228286

Can you please post some links on this? Thank you.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228389#Comment_118228389

Complaining is not very practical though. Most people want cheap or free, no hassle banking, they don’t want to spend time filling complaints nor fighting with vendors. And on the other side, making such a fundamental change to an accounting system is not risk free and some vendors will consider the risk of loosing business and paying fines is the lesser of the to.

daheff

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118228520#Comment_118228520

Do these same mobile phone providers do the same in other EU countries by they operate in?

ED E

Anyone had issues with pre-authorisations on N26 and Amazon? Never had issues before but 99% of the time things would dispatch right after the order was placed, this is something on back order. Looks like N26 rejected Amazon pushing the payment twice based on emails I received. Flipped it to BOI and seems fine now (still pending dispatch).

jester77

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118312225#Comment_118312225

As in getting charged twice? I noticed that today on an order I have with Google, the money was taken when I placed the order last week, and they took the same amount again this morning.

Suckit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118315565#Comment_118315565

Not sure if that is what they are talking about, as I have often had that happen to me, it's not really taken, and it rectifies itself. I think there is a name for it.

I think what ED E may be referring to is that the money is seemingly blocked by N26 for instant payments. Not sure if it has anything to do with their SEPA fee.

I know nothing... But have noticed top ups that used to be immediate, seem to be stopped now. Revolut is the only one I can top up with instantly.

ED E

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118315565#Comment_118315565

Not quite. AFAIK, the way Amzn do things is they charge you at dispatch. So if you order on the 1st they do a pre-authorization to ensure the card is valid. Then say on the 6th they dispatch and do the real charge.

Suckit

Anyone having issues with SEPA transfers? I am trying to transfer since last night, but the option to pay the 99cents and send an instant bank transfer is greyed out. Beneatht the transfer types it says:

Unfortunately, your recipient's bank doesn't support instant bank transfers. Please try making a standard bank transfer instead.

I have tried with a few different banks, same thing.

28064212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118370125#Comment_118370125

No Irish banks support SEPA Instant

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118370137#Comment_118370137

Not just Irish banks, many banks don't support it. And whether they ever will is debatable. To be of use most banks across Europe would need to support it and that would mean major changes to transaction system and that is expensive. For instance process MLA exceptions would need to be done in almost in real time etc...

Suckit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118370137#Comment_118370137

Thanks, the banks are in Germany, UK and Switzerland. I have used both the German and the UK ones before to send instant.

I got on to chat, it seems that I hadn't activated payments abroad in the app (I just got a new phone and downloaded the latest app). I hadn't heard of that before, she activated it for me, and told me it can be found in settings -> Limits.

I went back after she did that and I could send to one of the banks but not to another. I will try again later.

user1842

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118370298#Comment_118370298

Most of the banks in the euro areas big countries already support SCT Inst (instant payments). Irish banks are outliers.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/groups/erpb/shared/pdf/15th-ERPB-meeting/Status_update_on_SCT_Inst_scheme.pdf?b2afb8eeeba23e0045c53608a0925d4c

In addition I think the EU Commission may soon legislate to ensure SCT Inst is available.

https://www.regulationtomorrow.com/eu/commission-roadmap-on-eu-wide-instant-payments-scheme/

AB7

Any word on when they will reopen the option to sign up for free accounts again?

wassie

There is a monthly limit to new signups. If you want one suggest you sign up with them straight away so you are offered one when they open up for the next month.

This is from the N26 website - the PR Dept putting their spin on things:

With the overwhelming demand for N26’s digital banking products, we will be making a temporary limitation to the number of new bank accounts that we can offer each month.

The real story (from the FT back in October)

German banking watchdog BaFin has imposed a draconian cap on N26’s client growth in a rare intervention that will slow down the expansion of the Berlin-based online bank. The measure was imposed by BaFin in early October after the regulator became increasingly dissatisfied with organisational flaws at the fast-growing bank.As a result, N26 will only be able to accept 50,000 and 70,000 new customers a month until it has fixed a number of specific issues flagged by BaFin, down from the average of 170,000 clients it had been taking in this year.

Brian201888

The lads in the chat are quite useless, just telling me the same thing again and again.

I set up a premium account yesterday with the plan to move from KBC and have a shared space with my wife for bills but have now discovered that the separate IBAN for each space is only available in Germany at the moment.

Does anyone know of a timeframe to roll that out further? Chat just tells me it's only available in Germany again and again

jester77

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118420017#Comment_118420017

They sound confused. I don't know if separate IBANs for spaces are available outside of Germany, but shared spaces with IBANs are not available anywhere yet. You can only apply an IBAN to a non-shared space.

First bullet point here:

https://support.n26.com/en-eu/app-and-features/spaces/what-are-ibans-for-spaces-subaccounts

cuttingtimber22

How do dollar transfers work into an N26 account? Will they have their own space?

jrmb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118420017#Comment_118420017

I have a premium account and I can't have IBANs for my spaces. They've given me a spare debit card with separate details, but both debit cards draw from my main current account.

Edit: If it's a regular payment (e.g. the phone bill is a regular €50), you could set up an automatic transfer into your current account in time for the direct debit. It's a workaround that shouldn't be necessary though.

jrmb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118438072#Comment_118438072

As far as I know it all gets covered into the currency of your main account.

Wise lets you have wallets in different currencies, but weirdly, when I bought something with my Wise debit card, it deducted part of the money from my euro section and another part from my sterling.

jrmb

I've got a persistent problem where Chip and Pin terminals reject my N26 MasterCard without asking for the PIN. It's happened in a few different places over the past 2 weeks.

Similarly, my Amazon Prime subscription is being declined even though the card details are correct and I have sufficient funds. In my local supermarket, the terminal says something like "Code file missing" when I insert my card, but the payment goes through anyway.

I've raised both with N26 but they really don't seem to have enough staff with the skills to check these things out. I've been able to manage without an Irish current account until now, but I've joined Bank of Ireland out of frustration with N26 and I won't renew my paid subscription.

I get the code file missing on terminals in a lot of places too but the transaction always goes through.

Yggr of Asgard

And following the German Regulator restricting N26 to 50,000 new customers per month, the Italian Regulator has now told N26 not to open any new customer accounts. Again like in germany this is down to Anti Money Laundering regulations and concerns about N26's compliance.

Brian201888

N26 as of today can assign unique Ibans to your Spaces which is a feature I've been waiting for for some time, will allow me to fully move over to N26 as I like having a seperate bills account to pay DD's out of which hasn't been possible up to now

.G.

Reading a lot of worrying stuff on twitter about N26 closing peoples accounts without notice and denying them access to their stored funds until they send "proof" of where they got them from! N26 response on twitter is poor, directing people to use support chat in the app which they no longer have access to!

Yggr of Asgard

N26 is under immense pressure at the moment with multiple banking regulators in the EU having acted against them (from limiting the number of accounts they can open a month to installing special supervisors in their operations).

Root is their sloppy customer identification which also has driven a large number of fraud cases that are currently been investigated.

In addition, their responses (both terribly slow and unbelievably shoddy quality) to various law enforcement have driven the installation of special supervisors by the German Regulator. Some German state police forces say 75% of all banking related fraud cases involve N26.

So now once they have even the slightest issue with a transaction (suspicious source, out of typical behavior, sending or receiving account being on a watchlist) they react with full force, i.e. limit the account fearful that the regulator will take further steps (including suspending their license).

N26 always was horrible in following processes and regulations (I still remember the credit/debit card tax issue for Irish customers) but now it's so bad that the regulators are acting against them.

Plus following the wirecard debacle the German regulator needs to show that they can be on top of things, so it would not surprise me if BaFin will take further action against N26 soon.

Yggr of Asgard

There are multiple reports in German newspapers that N26 is at present terminating accounts with immediate effect (without giving information and even worse locking customers out of the account until they provide additional paperwork but refusing direct debits etc. while charging cost for said direct debit refusals).

German Customer protections organizations (which unlike our CCPC are actually useful) are currently investigating this as the way the accounts are blocked (no ability to reach N26, not giving timely access to the funds and even worse reporting this negative to the Schufa) might not be lawful.

Seems the BAFIN is scaring N26 management.

Yggr of Asgard

N26 now has a blog post about the recent account cancelations and blocking: Why does N26 block accounts? — N26

harmless

Last year I only had one issue trying to setup an Eir account with N26 as direct debit. That was IBAN discrimination and illegal.

This year my payment has been refused using my card on Samsung Ireland, NCT and AXA Insurance. I used my card last year to pay for NCT and insurancee without issue.

I still use the card frequently without issue on websites outside of Ireland and to shop locally using google pay on my phone.

Should I expect N26 to have issues on Irish websites in the future? It never was in the past. I don't use twitter has this issue been address on there?

Sheep Shagger

With eir did a paper based direct debit form not work?

In fairness to n26, its not their fault that some campanies still have crappy antiquated systems that can't accept a "foreign" IBAN, that's outside their control.

harmless

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118967271#Comment_118967271

Yes but it would take at least 6 weeks to setup and I only found this out after I finally managed to talk to a manager, none of the reagular sales reps knew about it. The possiblity of Eir messing it up and leaving me with no broadband was too high.

Sheep Shagger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118967291#Comment_118967291

Didn't take me that long to set it up, in any case not a N26 issue.