After a cat and mouse game between N26 and the German BaFin it looks like they’re taking their penalizing of malpractice to a whole new level. While the German challenger seems to be enjoying the high waves of the funding race with rivals like Revolut and Monzo, the same cannot be said about its relationship with the regulators. If you are remotely connected to the payments world, you probably heard about the hefty fine they received over their failing anti money laundering strategy.
After being appointed a watchdog by the regulators, N26 has now been given a cap on their customer acquisition. In other words, the bank that has been onboarding 170,000 customers every month can now only accept 50 to 70 thousand users monthly until they address issues raised by BaFin.
Banks (both incumbents and challengers) have been notorious for questionable compliance with AML.
Just to freshen up your memory, ING was fined €3 Million for failures in anti-money laundering regulation earlier this year, only to be followed by ABN AMRO agreeing to pay a whopping €480m for similar violations. Not to mention that Monzo is also under investigation by the British regulator
It seems, however, that these hefty fines weren’t helping with the issue, as banks continue to violate AML rules despite hefty fines. Therefore, the BaFin is putting a limit on customer acquisition this time, which we also suspect to be THE business model of N26.
Looking at this extreme measure, we can't help but wonder about their missing out of potential revenue this could cause. So we believe that the next strategy for N26 to maintain their revenue is to maximize the value of their existing customers. How do you think they could compensate for the lost revenue on customer acquisition?
Finally, it is evident that the German regulators are keeping an extra sharp eye on financial institutions after the recent Wirecard scandal.
Do you think that the BaFin is doing the right thing? Or did they take it a notch too far?
Mastercard has been under heat after it was announced that they will sharply increase interchange fees post-Brexit, revealing the power of credit card duopoly. Let's look at what caused this increase and how it could affect both merchants and buyers.
Cryptocurrency has been a hot topic in a number of recent news reports insert popups of news reports, and we’re seeing an increasing number of issuers and banks making efforts in expanding digital currency roadmaps. This article covers Visa’s crypto API pilot and the possible effects of this initiative.
Buy now, pay later pioneer Klarna is launching its own banking accounts in Germany. Klarna was already a bank as the holder of a Swedish banking license, but without fully playing the "Bank" role in Europe. This is a remarkable step and certainly a big challenge for challenger banks!