Recently, I was trying to find a way to create a joint bank account together with my future wife. An easy way to manage my finances along with hers, all in one single app without a PIN/TAN method, external hardware or even my laptop. It turned out getting the joint account feature together with a digital banking experience is not that easy, especially because these online banks have these key features available only in selected regions or the pricing model is not appealing. Let’s dig in a bit deeper:

What online banks are considered for comparison?

During the past years a notable number of online banks were founded. Some of them have some unique value propositions and differentiate with sustainability, crypto currency trading or just a large holistic feature set. I am solely focusing on private banking, but will mention business accounts as well.

In this article I focus on Revolut, N26, Bunq, Monzo and Tomorrow on the European market. I am well aware of others such as Monese or Starling Bank, but for simplicity reasons I will exclude them here. All these players have a European banking license and therefore Your money is secured up to 100.000EUR. Also I won’t mention instant push notifications, Apple Pay/Google Pay support, the free MasterCard or the fact that you can open a bank account in under 10 minutes, because all of them have these features in common.

Let’s start looking on them one by one.

N26

Just like their competition N26 offers a free, premium and so-called “Metal” account. The latter being something that relates more to status than actual added value, because the card is made out of metal. One of their key features is “Spaces” where you can move money to sub accounts, set targets and do basic budgeting. The 3 accounts in comparison:

• Basic: Free withdrawals (up to 5) in country of residence, Spaces (up to 2), free payments in any currency worldwide.
• You: Free withdrawals (up to 5), Shared Spaces (up to 10), free withdrawals worldwide, insurance package, perks (local offers and discounts), additional card in case of loosing it.
• Metal: Adds exclusive offers, preferred customer service and of course the metal card.
• Business (Basic and You available): 0,1% cashback on all payments, comes with all the features for Basic and You listed above.

Currently, N26 operates in the following countries: Germany (headquarters), Austria, France, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Estonia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Slovenia, Portugal, Finland, Italy, Slovakia, USA and Netherlands.

I am an N26 You customer since 2017 and, honestly, love using the app and the banking experience: easy budgeting, transactions, money management and 100% digital. However, this is something every other banking app I mentioned above is delivering as well, just with other naming conventions and design. The true differences and advantages lie in the pricing model and feature details. With N26 you have (!) to pay at least 9,90EUR per month to access 10 spaces. Bunq offers 25 sub accounts for 7,99EUR (they don’t have a free account however). And if you want to have 10 spaces with your partner (shared spaces), you have to pay around 20EUR per month. Shared Spaces is still possible with just one premium account and one free account, but then only 2 Spaces can be shared. Bunq has a dedicated joint account at 9,99EUR per month. Clearly, this is a huge difference. So joint budgeting is possible, but at a very high price.

People complain a lot about a bad customer support experience. However, I cannot confirm that after over 2 years of premium membership.

The N26 Premium Accounts offer a wide variety of perks and discounts that you can use for your next purchase made with the N26 card: 3 months of YouTube Premium membership, 10% discount on bookings on Hotels.com, Udemy courses at 10,99€ and many others. These change over time.

Since premium memberships come with insurances, the app allows you to add your own insurances (from different providers) as well. So you can see your monthly insurance cost at a glance.

N26 has overdrafts, the possibility to receive consumer credits or book further insurances.

For me, they have developed some very unnecessary features such as changing the color of the app icon or the possibility to order additional cards in different colors at 14EUR. The latter actually is not a card for your wife, it solely belongs to you (so no joint account). So it is interesting to see their development priorities, but they to seem very much focus on branding.

Bunq

Bunq is headquartered in the Netherlands and offers a very decent digital experience as well, but at different price points. Let’s take a look into their options:

• Premium: Budgeting, round-up transactions for automated savings, automated rules for sub accounts based on paycheck amount, bill splitting and request-money-feature, 10 free withdrawals worldwide per month, includes TransferWise, group expenses (in case you want to go on vacation with a group of people), up to 25 sub accounts each with a unique IBAN and lastly around 0,27% yearly interest, get notified of transactions in advance, 3 cards (MasterCard, Maestro, Travel Card), Apple Watch app, 2 PINs to charge a (sub)account individually, multiple cards that can be linked with Google/Apple Pay.
• Joint: Same premium features but for 2 people.
• Business: Same premium features, for each transaction the applicable tax rate is deducted and moved to a sub account, scan receipts and link them to transactions, import e-receipts (e.g. PDFs), link Bunq to 3rd party business apps (Slack, Wordpress, Google Sheets, …), add trade name (legal entity), add employees and assign CEO including access control.

Additionally, they offer 2 dedicated cards:

• Travel Card: real-time rate of exchange, true MasterCard (worldwide acceptance) and no exchange fees.
• Green Card: A metal card that aims to contribute to a sustainable future. Bunq charges 99EUR per year and plants trees for every 100EUR you spend. The card works with every bank like a true MasterCard and has the same international features included in the Travel Card. Additionally it comes with extended warranty when shopping and a shopping insurance.

According to their Twitter site, they have discontinued the “Free” option, so the starting price for the premium membership is 7,99EUR per month, whereas the joint account option is at 9,99EUR. The business account costs 9,99EUR per month, too. What I really like is the pricing model: In my opinion it is worth the price, just because of the variety of features available. Especially the joint account option is very appealing if you share finances with your partner, so effectively each person is paying 5EUR per month compared to 20EUR in case of N26 (although N26 Shared Spaces is not a joint account). Bunq even has a “Pack” option at 19,99EUR that comes with 4 premium memberships or 3 premium and 1 business account. This might be appealing for a family/friends/shared flat setup.

They differentiate with a sustainability focus, which is not that omnipresent compared to Tomorrow, but still you can choose where your money is invested.

One thing to be aware of: There is no possibility for overdrafts. So if you have a lot of transactions coming in and out, you always need to make sure that your account balance is sufficiently funded. This is something in favor of N26, for instance.

In some situations the EU-IBAN provided by Bunq can be a disadvantage: Some merchants or retailers won’t accept the Bunq IBAN (which starts with “NL”) is not accepted. However, there is a European regulation (Article 9 of No. 260/2012) that explicitly addresses this issue. Some of these retailers seem to not have yet implemented this, although this would be considered IBAN discrimination. Personally, I would still prefer a — in my case — German IBAN, because I don’t have time explaining retailers that they are not acting according to the law. By the way: I have experienced something similar in the past with American Express cards (could happen with MasterCard, too), where a retailer would not accept my credit card, because “the fees are too high” or simply because “my boss told me to not accept these cards”. This seems to be a very German issue, but this would be against the law as well (called “unfair competition”), if the retailer has a contract with these credit/debit card companies such as MasterCard, Visa or American Express.

Revolut

Revolut was founded in the UK and with that European customers receive a Euro IBAN number (Lithuania (LT) after Brexit, previously GB),  similar to Bunq (see above the issues that sometimes occur in foreign countries).

Revolut is active in the following countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Croatia, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Cyprus, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Czech Republic, Hungary and the UK. The launch in the US is imminent.

• Standard: Free withdrawals up to 200EUR per month, Vaults (Similar to N26 “Spaces”), Group Vaults (see N26 Shared Spaces) and rounding up transactions and sends them into a vault.
• Premium: overseas medical insurance, delayed baggage & flight insurance, priority customer support, access to 5 crypto currencies, disposable virtual cards and the LoungeKey Pass access
• Metal: 0,1% cashback within Europe and 1% outside Europe on all card payments, concierge service and the exclusive metal card (just like N26 Metal)

Revolut has some interesting feature differentiation: For example, they take the round-up transactions feature to the next level. If you spend 3,75EUR, the 25cent that would normally go to a savings sub account are instead invested in a crypto currency. Note that you cannot withdraw and convert it into your main account at this point in time.

Their “sustainability” feature currently is around donations, where you can round up an expense and donate the amount to a non-profit or charity (works as a one-off or in recurring manner as well).

Currently Revolut tests their Perks feature, which N26 already included in their premium accounts (cashback, discounts, etc.). Also they are about to release a youth account for teenagers.

Monzo

Monzo is another UK-based bank, which currently looks to expand into the US. They are at this point in time only available in the UK only, you can still sign up if you are from a different country, but the offer is clearly tailored to the UK market. I am using Monzo as another example of well-done digital banking although customers outside of the UK can’t use it. Let’s look at their pricing and account model:

• Standard: Free of charge, overdrafts, free (Debit) MasterCard, pay money into the account via cash and cheques, account switching service (move from your old bank), Savings Pot (see N26 Spaces), transaction round-ups, automated savings, interest around 1,3%, your money is FSCS protected up to 85k pounds
• Joint: same standard features, but you keep your personal card and both you and your mate receive a joint account card individually, joint budgeting, joint ownership
• Monzo 16–17: Account for teenagers between 16 and 17, spending on things like gambling (legally prohibited) is blocked, budgeting, free usage across the world, free withdrawals in Europe
• Business: 24/7 customer support, budgeting with Pots (similar to N26 Spaces), some features that Bunq already has are on the roadmap (tax splits, international payments, categorized spending, expense management)

Monzo is very transparent regarding their product roadmap and towards the community (similar to Tomorrow). This is something of real value that both Revolut and N26 could pick up, so customers know what’s ahead.

They offer some unique features such as “Get Paid Early”, where you get your salary one day in advance (with “Faster Payment Service” and “Bankers Automated Clearing Service”).

Tomorrow

Tomorrow doesn’t have a full banking licence yet, but they use the infrastructure and banking licence of solarisBank. The “bank” has a very detailed and consequent sustainability focus. Just like Monzo, they are extremely transparent with their product roadmap and how they make money (which is not their primary goal, but rather to save the planet basically). Check out their community (forum).

On February, 25th they released their premium account named “Zero”:

• Standard: features 3 free withdrawals per month, but worldwide withdrawals in foreign currencies are at 1,5% of the withdrawn amount. 2 “pockets” are included.
• Zero: Unlimited withdrawals, free withdrawals in foreign currency and unlimited pockets (not sure why the other banks have a limit here). The main differentiation is that Tomorrow takes care of balancing your CO2 footprint. Read here for further details.

Looking into their forum, Tomorrow should release further premium features in the near future. They key differentiation are the company values around building a better tomorrow. That means investing in renewable energies instead of coal, organic agriculture and modern mobility.

The account is currently very simple featuring all the digital advantages of a bank only available on a smartphone app: Instant transactions, Google Pay, etc. They plan to expand to other European countries in 2020 as they are currently operating only in Germany.

My personal experience

I have been a N26 You (formerly N26 Black) customer for over 2 years using it as my main account. I don’t have any other credit card (yes life works without it) or bank account. I am completely satisfied, customer support was always helpful (in the rare cases I was requesting support) and I appreciate the (Shared) Spaces feature a lot. The only downside I see currently is the lack of a joint account since I want to organize my finances together with my future wife. Or just an improved pricing model would be great, because I refuse to pay 20EUR per month for 2 people, if the competition (Bunq, Monzo, Revoluts Group Vaults) is offering it either for free or at half the price.

If you want to create an account, feel free to use my invitation code: https://n26.com/r/sebastir8405.