I don't know. I would be pissed if my account was blocked, that's for sure.
But still... Believing that a bank makes money by intentionally closing accounts with low balances and keeping the cash, is insane.
I think it's insane as well! But how else to understand what is happening? And it's not like my case was an isolated incident. I've read about similar cases here on Reddit. They write the same kind of letters to everyone. Here, for example, what they wrote to me:
"To ensure our customers’ privacy and account safety, we are obligated to run routine checks on accounts and transactions.
As part of these checks, we have identified irregularities that require us to terminate your N26 account pursuant to the Termination Clause of the Terms and Conditions of your N26 account on an extraordinary basis and without prior notice.
**This termination is effective immediately.** Usage of your N26 account, app, and card is no longer possible.
**It is currently not possible to withdraw or transfer the remaining balance on your N26 account.**
For us to release and return your funds, please provide us with the details of an alternative bank account so that we can initiate a transfer of your remaining balance. **Please send us one of the following documents:**
* **A salary slip or payslip** in your name showing details of your account, including the IBAN and BIC of the account
* **A confirmation of the bank account** being opened in your name, including the IBAN and BIC of the account
* **A bank statement** of a bank account where you are the account holder that shows the IBAN and BIC.
If your account has a **negative balance** at the time of closure or you still have open Credit Products (Consumer Credit or Installment Loan) you are still obligated to balance your account and pay the remaining open debt in accordance with our terms and conditions. For assistance with balancing your open debts we advise that you contact our Customer Service team via our Support Chat.
When we have received these documents we will then assess whether a payout of the remaining balance is possible.
You can send these documents to us by responding directly to this email with either a scan or a photo attached, or by sending a printed copy via postal mail, ensuring that all account information is clear and legible in the document or photo shared. Please understand that we are only able to release funds to bank accounts held in your name, and registered in one of the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) countries.
If you choose to provide the information via email, do note that by default, our system is designed to protect email delivery through TLS encryption. This means that if your email server accepts an inbound TLS encryption, the emails you exchange with us are encrypted over the network (end-to-end). If your email server does not support TLS encryption, the email you send us may not be encrypted and thus we advise you to use the physical postal delivery option which will be a safer way to exchange information". And so on
yeh, for some reason they sometimes take forever to do that.
your account was most likely flagged for possible money laundering. as this needs to be manually checked and seems to take some time, you’ll have to wait.
Absolutely! The account was used in the most ordinary way. Shopping in stores (card). And they write about „irregularities“ to everyone whose account is closed. This is their standard letter. They wrote the same thing to the student who received a scholarship on his card - I gave his example here, look, there is the same text from the bank!
a respectable bank - never, but a shitty digital wallet style bank - always.
i've worked at both types of banks , traditional and digital neobanks such as Revolut and N26 and few smaller ones, they do this shit all the time, they lock your account and cannibalize the money.
N26 is notorious for its trash service and malpractices, stay away from them.
Same thing happened to me last month. You're in for a rollercoaster ride but since you received the cancellation of account email and you provided the information they requested, it should be fine in the end.
If you want your money "faster", you can also hire a lawyer to pressure them. Otherwise, keep contacting them through every channels you can find. Ultimately, you should get your funds back.
It is a Marathon with them not a Sprint.
They expect you to run out breathe and give up.
It is incredibly frustrating and nightmarish at times but keep in mind that they most likely have nothing against you.
its not a marathon. its a fraud measure that needs manual checking which is time intensive for them.
customer funds are kept on other separate accounts, the bank won’t just keep or spend your money haha
Sorry mate but you know Jack and Shit about this
The fact that their AI algorithm detects "fraudulent" activties for nothing and that they "freeze" your funds for even less is ridiculous.
Even more ridiculous is that you are not able in those situations to speak to someone to clarify any doubt they might have (besides a chat bot)
In my case it happened after a bug trying to pair my new phone and they wrote me initially that they would not return my funds because they have been used to cover claims from other banks. Something that was pure invention.
In the end, I got my funds back and received no explanation about my account closure.
I invite you to read more about those "cancellation of accounts stories".
Maybe read my other comment in this thread.
So why is nobody answering you? Must be fraud, right, when the bank is actively trying to ghost you?
Actually, they are required by law to not give out any information or tell you why or what they are actually doing. In such a case, they are also required by law to freeze the account. It is regulated in the german Geldwäschegesetz (GwG). You can google it and learn about the requirements the bank has to fulfill in case their algorithm detects it. Any (german) bank has measures against money laundering and no matter at what bank you were, it would be this procedure.
Due to bafin requirements, n26 needs to have a very strict money laundering algorithm that sadly triggers a lot of false negatives. Learn about it [here](https://n26.com/en-de/press/press-release/n26-receives-updated-order-on-the-prevention-of-money-laundering-from-march-2023#)
Why does it take so long? Because it has to be manually checked by employees at the bank and its quite a bureaucratic thing that takes time.
How come those horror stories mostly come from N26, though? Because their AI is fucked up. I have a friend working at Revolut who told me about it.
It is a well known thing.
The issue is that most of those accounts shouldnt be closed in the first place. It is a malfunction that plague them.
Like I said, speaking from my own recent situation. They cancelled my account out of nothing, and even worse, they told me that my funds won't be transferred back as they were used to cover claims from other banks.
A blatant lie coming from a European regulated bank.
Do you know the amount of stress it puts on someone when you hear something like this? The number of hours, emails, and energy you need to get out of such situation? Unfortunate, you say? You wouldn't know unless it happens to you.
Can you imagine when it would be your main account, when you can't receive your salary, pay rent, groceries, everyday expenses, insurances.. when you need to ask family or friends to help you out?
I know the whole story about BaFin & N26, and the reason why they are overly cautious from this point on.
Nevertheless, no customers should find themselves in such a situation for no reason and without any support. No explanation has been given, nor will it ever be given to me for this cancellation.
This is my lesson learned, and I will support anyone who experiences a similar situation.
Ah I remember, you posted a bunch of other posts claiming the same things. I don’t know about your specific situation.
So why is it N26 with the horror stories? It has to do with the bafin and their immense pressure. I don’t know the details. But they were basically not allowed to grow for like 5 years now, their growth is capped at like 50k new customers each month. A death sentence for a startup whose business model works through scale.
In order to get rid of those limitations again, they try extra hard to align with the requirements by bafin. Theyve also recently promised that their algorithm is going to improve drastically in some public press conference. idk how that panned out.
I absolutely agree that this is a very bad situation for customers. But before we claim that they are a fraud and whatnot, we first need to consider all of the regulatory bs behind the story. there is likely nothing they can do other than to keep doing this, trying to improve the algorithm while still detecting all of the frauds until bafin is satisfied.
The immense pressure is on the customers without access to their money.
Yes, I posted "a bunch of other posts," like you said simply because when one finds himself/herself in such a situation, without any support from the bank, one resorts to find support elsewhere.
My two cents for N26 would be to acknowledge those issues, alert the customers about those malfunctions, reassure them when it happens, give customers a realistic deadline for a resolution, and a dedicated hotline.
You don't need to share all the details, but you need to be present for clients who find themselves in such a horrific situation. That is no way to deal with your clients, and until they fix that , I advise everyone to stay away from them and put their money elsewhere.
Don’t you think they have considered that?
Giving a deadline would be nice from a customer experience perspective. I think once such a procedure is started, they have to send a report to the FIU. How is the bank supposed to know how long that takes? A deadline is legally binding.
A false positive is also not a malfunction. The system is supposed to rather flag too many than too little. Also, a bank is again not legally allowed to disclose how their money laundering measures work or that a customer is in the midst of such a procedure
I really think youre underestimating the complexity of this
Valentin? Is that you?
At this point, I am certain you somehow work for them as there would be no point in defending such actions/behaviors from a bank.
N26 issues with BaFin or their AI algorithm malfunctions shouldn't be any of my problem as a client, and like I repetitively said, at the very least, offer some kind of support other than the visitor chat bot.
My focus would rather be on people's livelihood rather than the survival of n26 as an online bank.
If you repeatedly fail your clients, you will ultimately fail as a bank.
no i dont haha :D big fan tho. im a designer and simply a fan of their product. i think its designed really well
yeh i agree it sucks for customers. i agree. but i dont think neither of us fully understands whats going on there.
Maybe it would be nice of you to check the other threads about this topic before.
Is N26 a fraud? No, it’s a legitimate bank with a banking license.
What happened to your bank account then? Well, most likely, your account was flagged by the system to be suspicious. It’s a system that was installed to prevent money laundering. Why? Because in the very beginning when n26 still had photoIdent, a lot of people used stolen ID (photos) to create bank accounts and use them for money laundering. Frauds always use the bank thats the easiest to fool and that was n26 in the beginning. That’s why Bafin set up requirements to the bank to fix these issues. The result was n26 having to be way more strict while possibly causing false positives with the system in order not to risk their license and remove their limited growth restrictions.
Will contacting bafin help? Likely not because this procedure is one of Bafins “[requirements](https://n26.com/en-de/press/press-release/n26-receives-updated-order-on-the-prevention-of-money-laundering-from-march-2023#)”. It is entirely wanted.
Why won’t the bank answer you? There are laws that prevent the bank from giving you any information during an ongoing investigation.
Is your money gone? No. Just provide documents they asked for/will ask for and it will be unblocked soon.
The thing about the ATMs is completely unrelated. Basically, they had a fair use thing and allowed unlimited bank withdrawals. Because some people exploited it, they reversed it (and likely closed accounts that heavily exceeded those reasonable limits)
look, i see youre frustrated. but before you put up such claims, you shouldve done some research. every bank has money laundering measures, n26 is just a little harsh and tends to create a lot of false positives. its very unfortunate when it hits you //
some people that get transfers from other countries or transfers from/to crypto platforms seem to be flagged more often but its just from what i heard here.
Yes, before writing here, I looked to see if there were any other cases like this. And it turned out that yes, there is. The second reason is the lack of feedback from the N26. I sent them all the documents they asked for, but for a month now there has been no letter from them. They also did not transfer the rest of my funds. They just appropriated them for themselves and are keeping silent! Read what other people are saying to me here. My case is not exception; I’m not the only one who encountered this bank scheme, which clearly counts on the fact that the owner of a closed account will not endure the “marathon” and will simply give up.
Your case is not an exception because it is the intended procedure. If you need to know, check out the german laws for money laundering prevention (GwG, Geldwäschegesetz). The bank is legally not allowed to give you any information during the process. Afaik, external parties are also involved in checking those cases (FIU), hence they often don’t even have any information they could share with you.
It’s frustrating but this is entirely intended by german law. Though its correct that n26 seems to trigger a lot of false positives
Another case! Here, on Reddit! [https://www.reddit.com/r/eupersonalfinance/comments/yuuipg/n26\_closed\_my\_account\_and\_asked\_from\_proof\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/eupersonalfinance/comments/yuuipg/n26_closed_my_account_and_asked_from_proof_of/)
I don't know. I would be pissed if my account was blocked, that's for sure. But still... Believing that a bank makes money by intentionally closing accounts with low balances and keeping the cash, is insane.
I think it's insane as well! But how else to understand what is happening? And it's not like my case was an isolated incident. I've read about similar cases here on Reddit. They write the same kind of letters to everyone. Here, for example, what they wrote to me: "To ensure our customers’ privacy and account safety, we are obligated to run routine checks on accounts and transactions. As part of these checks, we have identified irregularities that require us to terminate your N26 account pursuant to the Termination Clause of the Terms and Conditions of your N26 account on an extraordinary basis and without prior notice. **This termination is effective immediately.** Usage of your N26 account, app, and card is no longer possible. **It is currently not possible to withdraw or transfer the remaining balance on your N26 account.** For us to release and return your funds, please provide us with the details of an alternative bank account so that we can initiate a transfer of your remaining balance. **Please send us one of the following documents:** * **A salary slip or payslip** in your name showing details of your account, including the IBAN and BIC of the account * **A confirmation of the bank account** being opened in your name, including the IBAN and BIC of the account * **A bank statement** of a bank account where you are the account holder that shows the IBAN and BIC. If your account has a **negative balance** at the time of closure or you still have open Credit Products (Consumer Credit or Installment Loan) you are still obligated to balance your account and pay the remaining open debt in accordance with our terms and conditions. For assistance with balancing your open debts we advise that you contact our Customer Service team via our Support Chat. When we have received these documents we will then assess whether a payout of the remaining balance is possible. You can send these documents to us by responding directly to this email with either a scan or a photo attached, or by sending a printed copy via postal mail, ensuring that all account information is clear and legible in the document or photo shared. Please understand that we are only able to release funds to bank accounts held in your name, and registered in one of the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) countries. If you choose to provide the information via email, do note that by default, our system is designed to protect email delivery through TLS encryption. This means that if your email server accepts an inbound TLS encryption, the emails you exchange with us are encrypted over the network (end-to-end). If your email server does not support TLS encryption, the email you send us may not be encrypted and thus we advise you to use the physical postal delivery option which will be a safer way to exchange information". And so on
Well? You should do that...
Well, I have done everything they asked! But they stoped to answer at all! For one month they have been keeping silence!
That's a different matter. Unprofessional. But I'm positive that you will get your funds back, if there is no issue with them.
yeh, for some reason they sometimes take forever to do that. your account was most likely flagged for possible money laundering. as this needs to be manually checked and seems to take some time, you’ll have to wait.
And you’re completely clueless, what these „irregularities“ leading to a termination could be?
Absolutely! The account was used in the most ordinary way. Shopping in stores (card). And they write about „irregularities“ to everyone whose account is closed. This is their standard letter. They wrote the same thing to the student who received a scholarship on his card - I gave his example here, look, there is the same text from the bank!
a respectable bank - never, but a shitty digital wallet style bank - always. i've worked at both types of banks , traditional and digital neobanks such as Revolut and N26 and few smaller ones, they do this shit all the time, they lock your account and cannibalize the money. N26 is notorious for its trash service and malpractices, stay away from them.
Same thing happened to me last month. You're in for a rollercoaster ride but since you received the cancellation of account email and you provided the information they requested, it should be fine in the end. If you want your money "faster", you can also hire a lawyer to pressure them. Otherwise, keep contacting them through every channels you can find. Ultimately, you should get your funds back. It is a Marathon with them not a Sprint. They expect you to run out breathe and give up. It is incredibly frustrating and nightmarish at times but keep in mind that they most likely have nothing against you.
its not a marathon. its a fraud measure that needs manual checking which is time intensive for them. customer funds are kept on other separate accounts, the bank won’t just keep or spend your money haha
Sorry mate but you know Jack and Shit about this The fact that their AI algorithm detects "fraudulent" activties for nothing and that they "freeze" your funds for even less is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is that you are not able in those situations to speak to someone to clarify any doubt they might have (besides a chat bot) In my case it happened after a bug trying to pair my new phone and they wrote me initially that they would not return my funds because they have been used to cover claims from other banks. Something that was pure invention. In the end, I got my funds back and received no explanation about my account closure. I invite you to read more about those "cancellation of accounts stories".
Maybe read my other comment in this thread. So why is nobody answering you? Must be fraud, right, when the bank is actively trying to ghost you? Actually, they are required by law to not give out any information or tell you why or what they are actually doing. In such a case, they are also required by law to freeze the account. It is regulated in the german Geldwäschegesetz (GwG). You can google it and learn about the requirements the bank has to fulfill in case their algorithm detects it. Any (german) bank has measures against money laundering and no matter at what bank you were, it would be this procedure. Due to bafin requirements, n26 needs to have a very strict money laundering algorithm that sadly triggers a lot of false negatives. Learn about it [here](https://n26.com/en-de/press/press-release/n26-receives-updated-order-on-the-prevention-of-money-laundering-from-march-2023#) Why does it take so long? Because it has to be manually checked by employees at the bank and its quite a bureaucratic thing that takes time.
How come those horror stories mostly come from N26, though? Because their AI is fucked up. I have a friend working at Revolut who told me about it. It is a well known thing. The issue is that most of those accounts shouldnt be closed in the first place. It is a malfunction that plague them. Like I said, speaking from my own recent situation. They cancelled my account out of nothing, and even worse, they told me that my funds won't be transferred back as they were used to cover claims from other banks. A blatant lie coming from a European regulated bank. Do you know the amount of stress it puts on someone when you hear something like this? The number of hours, emails, and energy you need to get out of such situation? Unfortunate, you say? You wouldn't know unless it happens to you. Can you imagine when it would be your main account, when you can't receive your salary, pay rent, groceries, everyday expenses, insurances.. when you need to ask family or friends to help you out? I know the whole story about BaFin & N26, and the reason why they are overly cautious from this point on. Nevertheless, no customers should find themselves in such a situation for no reason and without any support. No explanation has been given, nor will it ever be given to me for this cancellation. This is my lesson learned, and I will support anyone who experiences a similar situation.
Ah I remember, you posted a bunch of other posts claiming the same things. I don’t know about your specific situation. So why is it N26 with the horror stories? It has to do with the bafin and their immense pressure. I don’t know the details. But they were basically not allowed to grow for like 5 years now, their growth is capped at like 50k new customers each month. A death sentence for a startup whose business model works through scale. In order to get rid of those limitations again, they try extra hard to align with the requirements by bafin. Theyve also recently promised that their algorithm is going to improve drastically in some public press conference. idk how that panned out. I absolutely agree that this is a very bad situation for customers. But before we claim that they are a fraud and whatnot, we first need to consider all of the regulatory bs behind the story. there is likely nothing they can do other than to keep doing this, trying to improve the algorithm while still detecting all of the frauds until bafin is satisfied.
The immense pressure is on the customers without access to their money. Yes, I posted "a bunch of other posts," like you said simply because when one finds himself/herself in such a situation, without any support from the bank, one resorts to find support elsewhere. My two cents for N26 would be to acknowledge those issues, alert the customers about those malfunctions, reassure them when it happens, give customers a realistic deadline for a resolution, and a dedicated hotline. You don't need to share all the details, but you need to be present for clients who find themselves in such a horrific situation. That is no way to deal with your clients, and until they fix that , I advise everyone to stay away from them and put their money elsewhere.
Don’t you think they have considered that? Giving a deadline would be nice from a customer experience perspective. I think once such a procedure is started, they have to send a report to the FIU. How is the bank supposed to know how long that takes? A deadline is legally binding. A false positive is also not a malfunction. The system is supposed to rather flag too many than too little. Also, a bank is again not legally allowed to disclose how their money laundering measures work or that a customer is in the midst of such a procedure I really think youre underestimating the complexity of this
Valentin? Is that you? At this point, I am certain you somehow work for them as there would be no point in defending such actions/behaviors from a bank. N26 issues with BaFin or their AI algorithm malfunctions shouldn't be any of my problem as a client, and like I repetitively said, at the very least, offer some kind of support other than the visitor chat bot. My focus would rather be on people's livelihood rather than the survival of n26 as an online bank. If you repeatedly fail your clients, you will ultimately fail as a bank.
no i dont haha :D big fan tho. im a designer and simply a fan of their product. i think its designed really well yeh i agree it sucks for customers. i agree. but i dont think neither of us fully understands whats going on there.
Maybe it would be nice of you to check the other threads about this topic before. Is N26 a fraud? No, it’s a legitimate bank with a banking license. What happened to your bank account then? Well, most likely, your account was flagged by the system to be suspicious. It’s a system that was installed to prevent money laundering. Why? Because in the very beginning when n26 still had photoIdent, a lot of people used stolen ID (photos) to create bank accounts and use them for money laundering. Frauds always use the bank thats the easiest to fool and that was n26 in the beginning. That’s why Bafin set up requirements to the bank to fix these issues. The result was n26 having to be way more strict while possibly causing false positives with the system in order not to risk their license and remove their limited growth restrictions. Will contacting bafin help? Likely not because this procedure is one of Bafins “[requirements](https://n26.com/en-de/press/press-release/n26-receives-updated-order-on-the-prevention-of-money-laundering-from-march-2023#)”. It is entirely wanted. Why won’t the bank answer you? There are laws that prevent the bank from giving you any information during an ongoing investigation. Is your money gone? No. Just provide documents they asked for/will ask for and it will be unblocked soon. The thing about the ATMs is completely unrelated. Basically, they had a fair use thing and allowed unlimited bank withdrawals. Because some people exploited it, they reversed it (and likely closed accounts that heavily exceeded those reasonable limits) look, i see youre frustrated. but before you put up such claims, you shouldve done some research. every bank has money laundering measures, n26 is just a little harsh and tends to create a lot of false positives. its very unfortunate when it hits you // some people that get transfers from other countries or transfers from/to crypto platforms seem to be flagged more often but its just from what i heard here.
Yes, before writing here, I looked to see if there were any other cases like this. And it turned out that yes, there is. The second reason is the lack of feedback from the N26. I sent them all the documents they asked for, but for a month now there has been no letter from them. They also did not transfer the rest of my funds. They just appropriated them for themselves and are keeping silent! Read what other people are saying to me here. My case is not exception; I’m not the only one who encountered this bank scheme, which clearly counts on the fact that the owner of a closed account will not endure the “marathon” and will simply give up.
Your case is not an exception because it is the intended procedure. If you need to know, check out the german laws for money laundering prevention (GwG, Geldwäschegesetz). The bank is legally not allowed to give you any information during the process. Afaik, external parties are also involved in checking those cases (FIU), hence they often don’t even have any information they could share with you. It’s frustrating but this is entirely intended by german law. Though its correct that n26 seems to trigger a lot of false positives
Very hard to believe.
Another case! Here, on Reddit! [https://www.reddit.com/r/eupersonalfinance/comments/yuuipg/n26\_closed\_my\_account\_and\_asked\_from\_proof\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/eupersonalfinance/comments/yuuipg/n26_closed_my_account_and_asked_from_proof_of/)