N26 Vs Revolut: Clash Of The Mobile Banking Titans (Comparison Guide)
Just a few years ago, if you had uttered the term “mobile banking” during a conversation your words would have probably been met with blank, confused stares.
But today few people could say they haven't heard about this relatively new wave of mobile banks or so-called “challenger” banks (some people think that they represent a threat to the current monopoly held by traditional banks) that has been taking the world by storm.
Mobile banks have no physical branches in the real world, making them especially useful to travellers, who can open a bank account online in minutes from anywhere in the world, and manage all their banking affairs from a mobile phone app or desktop browser while abroad.
N26 and Revolut are presently the two leading mobile banks in Europe and have already revolutionized the banking game for travellers with innovations that have made banking cheaper, more convenient and more instantaneous via their app-based banking platforms.
Over the past few years these two rivals have been involved in an unremitting contest of one-upmanship, with both companies aggressively expanding throughout Europe and trying to woo new untapped markets into taking up their products.
But what are the most important differences between N26 and Revolut and which mobile bank is a better option for you?
Do you even have to make a choice between the two or should you set up an account with both?
It is these questions that this detailed N26 vs Revolut comparison guide will hopefully help you to answer.
In the following text we compare N26 and Revolut from multiple angles to get a fairly comprehensive picture of how these two mobile banks stack up against each other.
At the end of the article there’s a comparison table that nicely sums up the content in the article.
Let’s get started.
Origins
Both banks materialized in the year of 2015, with N26 launching in the month of January just a few months before Revolut made its debut in July.
N26 is a German FinTech startup headquartered in Berlin, Germany. The company was founded by two long-time friends, Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal.
Revolut is a London-based FinTech startup that was founded by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, two British entrepreneurs of Russian descent who had both garnered extensive experience in banking prior to establishing Revolut.
Licensing and deposit protection
N26 obtained its full European banking license from the ECB (European Central Bank) on July 18, 2018, so the company holds the status of being an official bank.
With N26, your deposits held in the member states of the European Union are insured up to a maximum amount of €100,000 under German Deposit Protection.
On the 13 December 2018 Revolut had their application for a European banking license approved by the ECB, although the company is still in the process of becoming a fully-fledged bank.
In the future Revolut will be able to offer customers deposit protection of up to €100,000 under the EDIS (European Deposit Insurance Scheme).
However, this scheme does not yet exist so for the time being your money is safeguarded in a segregated account at Lloyd's or Barclays (depending on the type of account you hold) under the current e-money regulations.
Customer Base
Both Revolut and N26 have acquired substantial customer bases over the past few years, with their clever peer-to-peer marketing strategies no doubt contributing to the rapid pace of growth they’ve both been experiencing.
Many of the people signing up have been technologically literate millennials who love to travel and are frustrated with their antiquated traditional banks that aren’t geared to their lifestyles.
Back in November 2018, N26 announced that it had acquired over 2,000,000 customers and with their recent entry into the UK market the company’s rate of growth has probably accelerated.
Revolut announced on Twitter in 2018 that it had reached a new milestone of 3,000,000 users, which is not terribly surprising if you consider that Revolut has expanded into more countries than N26 thus far.
Countries of operation
N26 currently offer accounts toresidents of 24 European countries, which includes the 19 Eurozone countries. Their products vary slightly depending on your country of residence.
Revolut currently offer accounts to residents of atotal of 32 countries, which includes all the EEA (European Economic Area) countriesand Switzerland.
Both companies have grand ambitions to expand globally and both are currently on the brink of breaking into the US market, which has significantly higher regulatory barriers to entry than the European market.
Products
N26 and Revolut both use a freemium business model with a free standard checking account available to all users and the option of upgrading to a more feature-rich paid plan at any time.
N26
In addition to the standard account, N26 offers N26 business, N26 Black and N26 Metal to customers. All accounts are in Euros only with no option to hold other currencies.
N26 Business is for freelancers and entrepreneurs and you must be signing up for the first time to get this account. One of the perks with this account is 0.1% cashback on all Mastercard purchases.
N26 Black costs €9.90 and waives the 1.7% fee for non-Euro ATM withdrawals. It also comes with pretty comprehensive travel insurance cover.
N26 Metal costs €14.90 a month and adds a few extra perks like direct access to customer support from within the app, free express delivery of your Mastercard (normally costs €25) and exclusive partner offerings (read: shopping deals).
Revolut
Revolut has a remarkably similar product hierarchy to N26 – it offers a business, premium and metal card in addition to a free standard account.
One way Revolut differs from N26 is that you can hold 24 different currencies (you receive a unique IBAN number for each currency) under the one card/account and can interconvert between them at interbank exchange rates.
This means that if you were planning a trip to Europe but you were currently holding British Pounds and Australian Dollars in your Revolut account, you could convert the two balances into Euros within the Revolut app (no need for a money-changer) before the start of your trip.
However if you don’t pre-purchase currency before a trip your card will automatically convert your balance into the currency you’re spending at the best available rate, so you don’t need to worry about this.
If you have multiple currencies stored on the card and you make a payment, Revolut will first try to deduct the funds from the balance in your account that’s the same as the payment currency. If you have no balance in the payment currency, it will convert from your base currency, and if the funds are not sufficient there, it will move to your next active currency with a sufficient balance.
Revolut premium costs £6.99 a month and you get additional features and benefits including overseas medical insurance, delayed baggage insurance, delayed flight insurance, global express delivery, priority customer support, access to 5 cryptocurrencies (Litecoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Ripple) and disposable virtual cards (more on those later) and up to £400 (instead of £200) in free ATM withdrawals per month.
Revolut metal is the highest tier product and costs £12.99 a month. It includes everything you get with premium plus an exclusive concierge service, up to £600 in free ATM withdrawals per month and up to 0.1% cashback within Europe and up to 1% cashback outside Europe on all card payments.
Foreign transaction fees (cross-currency payments)
N26 uses the Mastercard exchange rate with no markup added for all cross-currency card payments and ATM withdrawals.
This rate is usually slightly inferior to the wholesale interbank exchange rate, but there is not a very significant difference between the two.
Revolut uses the real-time interbank exchange rate for payments in over 150 currencies worldwide, although there is a small fee of 0.5% for any expenditure above £5,000 in a month.
Revolut also adds a markup of 1% to transactions in Thai Baht, Russian Ruble Ukrainian Hryvnia and Turkish Lira during weekdays.
Additionally, a markup of 0.5% is added to all major currencies (EUR, GBP, USD, AUD, CAD, JPY etc.) and an additional markup of 1% to all non-major currencies at weekends.
This means that Thai Baht, Russian Ruble, Ukrainian Hryvnia and Turkish Lira have a 2% markup added to them at weekends. See this page for more detailed info.
International money transfers
N26 offers free SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) money transfers within the Eurozone.
Transfers to non-Euro bank accounts (cross-currency transfers) are carried out through Transferwise, a low-cost money transfer service with fees that are up to 8 times lower than those charged by banks. You can transfer Euros into 19 different foreign currencies with N26.
The actual fee charged by Transferwise varies considerably depending on which two currencies are involved in the transfer.
The total fee usually consists of a percentage-based fee and a flat fee. You can use the pricing calculator to view the fees incurred for a transfer made with a specific currency pair and amount.
Revolut grants customers free international cross-currency transfers, which certainly sounds very attractive, but in practice such transfers are not always free for the customer.
Firstly, a low fee of 0.5% is applied to any transfer amount exceeding £5,000 or €6,000 in one month, although you can overcome this cap by upgrading to premium or metal.
Most importantly, Revolut mentions on their website that you may be charged wire transfer fees when the beneficiary bank is located outside the EU or if the transfer is not in Euros.
They also note that you can be charged a fee by the beneficiary bank or even by an intermediary bank that’s involved in processing the transfer.
ATM withdrawals
Depending on country of residence, N26 grants standard account holders either a maximum of five free ATM withdrawals per month OR unlimited free ATM withdrawals every month within the Eurozone.
If you’re limited to 5 free withdrawals per month and you exceed the limit, you will be charged a €2 fee for each withdrawal thereafter.
All N26 Maestro card withdrawals incur a fee of €2, whether they are domestic or international withdrawals.
N26 charges a 1.7% fee for all non-Euro (foreign currency) ATM withdrawals. However, this fee is waived for all users on paid N26 products (N26 Black or N26 Metal).
Revolut allows standard account holders to withdraw up to €200 for free every month but for any withdrawals above this amount there is a 2% fee regardless of the currencies involved.
Premium users get up to €400 per month in free withdrawals, while Revolut Metal users can withdraw up to €600 per month free of charge.
Debit Cards
After you set up an N26 current account they will send your N26 MasterCard debit card to your address for free, though there is an express delivery option that costs €25. Standard delivery usually takes 4 – 14 days, depending on your location.
The MasterCard debit cards are different for the N26 standard and N26 Black accounts, and the card for the N26 metal account has a tungsten core. All cards are NFC-enabled.
N26 users of the Netherlands, Austria and Germany can also get a free optional Maestro card, regardless of which N26 product they have chosen.
Revolut also uses different contactless cards for their respective products and their metal card is crafted from a single sheet of reinforced steel using a diamond drill bit.
Revolut will also send your prepaiddebit card to your address but you will have to pay €6.00 for delivery after topping up your account.
The card scheme (Visa or Mastercard) is determined by your location and you can’t choose it. In my case (Ireland) I was sent a Visa card.
Revolut also allows you to have a free virtual debit card with its own unique 16-digit card number, in addition to your physical prepaid debit card. You can view your virtual card details in the Revolut app.
The virtual card is great for online payments but you’ll still need the physical card if you want to make ATM withdrawals or in-store payments.
You can also obtain additional cards, both virtual and physical, for your Revolut account, although a €6 fee applies for each new card if you’re on the standard account. However this fee for additional cards is waived if you upgrade to a paid plan. Note that there’s a limit of 5 cards per account.
Premium Revolut users can also add one disposable virtual card, which we discuss more about under securityfeatures.
Topping up/adding funds
One thing you can’t do with many digital banks is lodge cheques or cash into your account, since these banks don’t have any physical branches in the real world (although some have partnered with post offices or will receive cheques in the mail).
In any case though, most people nowadays have their wages and salaries paid directly into their bank accounts so this isn’t much of a drawback in reality.
You can add funds to your N26 account by physical cash deposit via CASH26 (German or Austria only) or by SEPA transfer from any Euro bank account (in France the sending bank account has to be in your name for the first transfer).
You can top-up your Revolut account via bank transfer (next working day), Android Pay (instant), or with a card linked to another bank account (instant).
In my standard Revolut account there’s a top-up limit of €85,000 per year and the minimum top-up amount is €10.
Google/Apple Pay Integration
N26 and Revolut both now have Google and Apple Pay support for most of their operating countries and are working hard to add support for all the remaining countries.
Apps
Revolut is exclusively mobile-based and you can only manage your account through the Revolut smartphone app.
N26 has both a smartphone app and a web app that allows you to log into your account from a web browser.
This means that you can access and manage your N26 account from non-mobile devices like laptops and desktop PCs, which is currently not possible with Revolut.
The N26 and Revolut apps are both pretty intuitive and user-friendly.
Security features
Yes, banking with FinTech companies is cheap, fast and convenient.
But one of the reasons some people have been reluctant to adopt mobile banks is doubt about the level of protection their funds have from fraudsters and hackers.
Luckily, both N26 and Revolut both use multi-layered security architecture to thwart fraud, although each bank uses a slightly different framework.
For logging into their respective smartphone apps, both N26 and Revolut offer a fingerprint login option.
The N26 app also allows you to log in via an alphanumeric password or a pattern if you don’t want to use the fingerprint option.
The alternative login option offered by the Revolut app is to authenticate by entering your 4-digit pin code, which isn’t as secure as an alphanumeric password.
N26 and Revolut both allow their customers to wield a large degree of control over their account security settings.
This is in contrast to most traditional banks, which generally seize the reins for most security matters like daily overseas spending limits and the freezing of cards.
N26 and Revolut both give users the ability to instantly freeze or unfreeze their debit cards on a whim, and also to set monthly spending/ATM withdrawal limits from within their respective apps.
They also both offer finer control, allowing users to specifically enable/disable online payments (these are particularly high-risk) and ATM withdrawals.
Revolut uniquely allows you to toggle on/off contactless payments and swipe payments (with the magnetic strip), which protects you in case your card gets cloned.
Both banks will send you real-time push notifications, so that you know immediately if somebody is making fraudulent transactions with your card details and you can freeze it (hopefully) before too much damage is done.
One nice safety feature that only Revolut uses is location-based security, which means that an in-store purchase can be declined if your smartphone is detected to be in a different location to where the purchase was made.
Note that your phone’s GPS has to be turned on for location-based security to work. Some users have reported having transactions wrongly declined but most of the time the feature seems to work well enough.
Another security feature exclusive to Revolut is its disposable virtual cards. These are non-physical cards (existing only in the app) that automatically generate a new card number after each transaction.
The old card number becomes invalid after the transaction is complete so nobody else can make a fraudulent purchase if they managed to acquire your card number.
N26 doesn’t use location-based security but it secures transactions with 3D secure, which requires users to login to the app to manually confirm high-risk payments.
One security feature unique to N26 is pairing, which means that the N26 app is paired to your smartphone and nobody can log into your account using the app on any other device. Even if somebody has your login details, they must also possess your smartphone to access your account.
Additional products & features
Insurance
N26 offers fairly comprehensive travel insurance coverage to its N26 Black and N26 Metal customers.
The company also has a free in-app dashboard called N26 insurance, which covers you for all your insurance needs and lets you view and manage all your insurance policies in one place.
The idea is to save you from having to fill out stressful paperwork by letting you make claims, renewals or cancellations with one tap.
However, N26 Insurance seems to only be available to Germans for the time being.
Revolut currently offers all users device insurance and overseas medical insurance, including emergency dental cover.
I can’t comment on device insurance because it’s not yet available in my country (Ireland).
The overseas medical insurance is only valid for 40 days so if your trip goes on longer than that you'll need some other kind of insurance cover.
Note that you can add optional winter sports cover to your overseas medical insurance, though this does bump up the price a bit.
Premium users get overseas medical insurance for free. For standard users the exact rates are computed based on age and various other factors so it may cost you more or less than me.
In my case it’s €0.99/day for Europe, €1.50/day for North America and €1.25/day for the rest of the world, with an excess of £75.
I also have an annual price cap of €37.50, which means that once I’ve paid that amount I’m automatically covered for the remainder of the year at no additional cost.
If I include winter sports cover it’s €1.74/day for Europe, €2.75/day for North America and €2.25 per day for the rest of the world. The annual price cap increases to €68.75.
When you’re travelling the app detects your location so that you get charged the correct rate based on where you are in the world, and you automatically stop paying as soon as it detects that you’re no longer abroad.
Savings
N26 Savings is presently only available to Austrian and German customers, though that it likely to change in the near future.
With this facility you can open a separate savings account after comparing the interest rates of the various N26 partner savings banks (FirstSave Europe in UK, Grenke Bank AG in Germany etc.) from within the N26 app.
It’s a fixed savings account, which means that you make a fixed deposit (€2,000 min, €100,000 max) and chose a fixed savings period (3 months min, 60 months max) to leave the money in the account, where it accrues interest at 1.48% per annum.
Only when the term is over can you withdraw the money you have deposited plus the interest it has accrued.
Revolut doesn’t yet offer a proper savings account where your money will accrue interest, though this product should be launched in the near future.
Credit
N26 Credit is currently only offered in two countries - Germany and France.
You can request a loan of anywhere between €1,000 and €25,000 from within the N26 app. Repayment terms range from 6 to 60 months.
After providing some information about your monthly income, credit score, and so on N26 will make you a binding offer.
French users can confirm the loan from within the app with a digital signature, whereas Germans have to go through a video call with an additional ID verification process.
Once the loan is confirmed the money will appear in your account either within 1 hour (if its with N26 Credit) or within 3 business days if the loan is granted via German credit specialist Auxmoney.
Revolut Credit is a product currently only available to UK customers but the company is working hard to make it available across the EU.
With Revolut Credit, users can request loans from directly within the app. You can request from £500 to £25,000 pounds with repayment terms from 12 to 60 months.
Once you tell Revolut your monthly income, residential status and the amount of money you need they’ll give you a personalized quote in seconds. If you accept the loan terms the money will appear in your account instantly.
The monthly loan repayments are then automatically taken from your account via direct debit.
Overdraft
N26 presently only offer an overdraft facility to their German and Austrian customers.
You have to first get approved and whether you do will depend on your SCHUFA/CRIF credit rating and the details of your income.
New customers are eligible to receive up to a €1,000 overdraft limit, whereas existing customers can get a €5,000 limit. The interest rate on overdrafts is 8.9% per annum and you’ll be invoiced every quarter.
Revolut doesn't currently offer an overdraft facility though this will likely change in the near future when it becomes a fully-fledged bank.
Investing
N26Invest is presently only available to German customers. It allows you to choose from three pre-selected, diversified portfolios (Invest 40, Invest 60 and Invest 80), which each consist of 5 index funds managed by Vaamo, a partner of N26.
The Invest 40 portfolio is low-risk, low-return, Invest 80 is high-risk, high return, and Invest 60 is somewhere in the middle of the two.
To maintain your investment portfolio there’s a small monthly service fee of 0.99%. However if you invest less than €2,300 a minimum monthly fee of €1.90 applies instead of the 0.99% fee.
Revolut has plans to launch a commission-free trading service that is accessible from within the app. For the time being this is unavailable in my country and I assume in most other countries as well.
Cryptocurrency
One feature exclusive to Revolut is Cryptocurrency, which allows you to buy, sell, exchange and transfer cryptocurrencies within the Revolut ecosystem.
It works with Bitstamp, a trusted exchange licensed and regulated in Luxembourg. Revolut uses a VWAP (volume-weighted average price) to calculate rates and then adds its own 1.5% markup to the rates it derives.
Currently, five cryptocurrencies are supported and they are Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Ripple (XRP).
For the moment you can’t transfer cryptocurrencies outside the Revolut platform (i.e to external wallets), but crypto can be transferred between Revolut users.
Your cryptocurrency also can’t be spent directly with your Revolut card but you can exchange it into any supported fiat currency that you desire.
Splitting bills
Both N26 and Revolut make it easy for you to split bills with friends or colleagues, whether it’s for lunch, dinner, beers, taxi rides or what have you.
With N26 you can easily send the amount you owe to any of your phone contacts using the Moneybeam feature. However, you can only request money from contacts if they are using N26.
In the case of sending money, if the contact has an N26 bank account debts can be squared up very quickly provided that your contact accepts the request.
The process takes a bit longer if the contact is not an N26 user and in this case N26 will request the contact's bank details for you.
Revolut lets you send money to or request money from any of your contacts, whether they use Revolut or not.
It's easier if your contacts use Revolut, but if a person that owes you money isn’t a Revolut user you can still request money using a Rev Me link, which allows the person to pay you up to £250 in 9 different currencies using a debit card.
Revolut also makes bill-splitting easier with its Near Me technology, which automatically detects any Revolut users near you and lets you send or request money from them.
This feature comes in especially handy when the people you're splitting the bill with aren't added to your contact list, but are using Revolut.
Budgeting, spending analytics and saving
Both N26 and Revolut are well geared towards helping you to budget, set savings goals and analyze your spending.
N26 doesn't allow you to set a daily or monthly budget as such, but it has “statistics”, where you can view your total spending for each month gone by, as well your average expenditure for a 4-month period.
You can also see exactly how much was spent in each of the various spending categories like shopping, ATMs, travel, subscriptions & donations, bars & restaurants, family & friends, groceries, business expenses etc.
N26 also has “spaces” which lets you create new sub-accounts, which you can use to help you save up for things or to just set money aside for various purposes.
You can drag and drop to move money between spaces and can set a savings goal for each space. The app will tell you what percentage completion you've attained towards your savings goal.
Revolut allows you to set a monthly budget and once you’ve done so the app will tell you your daily spending limit based on that monthly budget you’ve set, as well as how much you have left to spend that month.
Revolut displays your total spending for each month and for all time, and lets you analyze your spending not only by spending category but also by merchant or country, so you get additional insights that you don't get with N26.
Revolut's version of Spaces is called Vaults.
Vaults allows you to make automatic recurring payments into a personal savings vault if you are saving up for a holiday or something similar. You can even save in cryptocurrency.
The really neat feature of Vaults is that you can have your daily transactions rounded up to the nearest whole number and any spare change deposited into the savings vault.
You can also control how quickly spare change gets deposited into the vault by ramping up the spare change accelerator (x2, x3, x4, x5, x 10).
Customer support
N26 offers several ways of contacting them, including by email, phone or live chat within the smartphone app or web app.
They also have a very helpful support centre where all your most burning questions should be answered in various articles, FAQs and tutorials.
I’ve had a few issues with N26 over the past few years and I’ve always found their customer service representatives to be well trained and speedy when it came to resolving my difficulty.
Revolut has a “Help” section within the app, where you can explore every conceivable topic related to banking with Revolut and find most of your questions on those topics answered.
Inside this help section you can also ask the community of over 2 million users for assistance.
There’s also a chat function where you can speak to a bot called Rita and ask it any questions you like. If the bot doesn’t understand your question, you can just type “live agent” and it’ll put you in touch with a real live human right away.
Within the Revolut app there are also links to the company’s pages on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter if you want to get in touch there instead.
I have no personal experience with Revolut’s customer support as I’ve not had any problems with them yet.
Referral program
N26 and Revolut both have their own refer-a-friend programs.
In the case of N26 they will credit your account with €15 within 60 days if a friend signs up through your referral link and then makes any type of transaction worth at least €15 with their N26 Mastercard.
For Revolut you can also find a referral link within the app to share with friends but they don’t seem to be offering any kind of reward if your friend should happen to sign-up through the link.
Setting up an account
N26 and Revolut both pride themselves in how easy they make it for new customers to open a bank account with them. You won’t have to fill out any paperwork or show up at a bank in person.
With N26 the account creation process takes just a few minutes. You first have to fill out the online registration form, confirm your email, log into your account and choose your N26 product.
The second step is to get your ID document verified, which usually involves sending in a selfie along with a few pictures of your ID document. Germans can also verify their identity in person at a German post office with the Postident method.
The last step of the process is to download the N26 app and pair your smartphone with it. Just log in to the app with your new login details and follow the instructions.
Setting up a Revolut account is also a piece of cake and takes just 2 minutes. All you have to do is download the app, launch it and then follow the instructions from there.
After entering your mobile number, creating your passcode and filling in your personal details the account will be created for you.
The last step is to verify your identity by uploading a selfie and a picture of a valid government-issued photo ID.
Conclusion
If you’ve read this far, you’ll have obviously realized that N26 and Revolut are two fairly complex financial products, making it difficult to pick a clear winner.
Both players obviously have a lot in common, yet they also possess their own unique strengths and weaknesses, with N26 in the lead on some fronts and Revolut in others.
At this point, N26 definitely feels more like a real bank account where you can safely deposit your money, whereas Revolut still feels like more of a prepaid debit card that you might top up with funds whenever you go abroad.
Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to choose a bank based on factual information alone. Sometimes you have to take things for a test drive and see if they work for you in the real world.
There’s no reason you can’t use both Revolut and N26 at the same time and see if a clear preference for one of them emerges over time.
In fact, that’s what a lot of people, including myself, are doing at this early stage of the game, since with so many new products and features constantly being released by these two players, it’s difficult to pick a horse just yet.
N26 Vs Revolut Quick Comparison Table
N26 | Revolut | |
Debit card | Contactless Mastercard debit card, optional Maestro card for residents of Germany, Austria & Netherlands only | Contactless Visa or Mastercard debit card (card network depends on your location) |
Exchange rate | Mastercard exchange rate with no markup added | Interbank exchange rate on weekdays for most currencies, 0.5% - 2% markup at weekends |
Free delivery of first debit card | Yes | No, €6 delivery fee |
Annual fee | Standard account is free | Standard account is free |
ATM withdrawal fees (in Euro) | Up to 5 or unlimited free ATM withdrawals per month in Euros. 1.7% fee (waived for users on paid plans) for non-Euro withdrawals. | Up to €200 per month permitted in free ATM withdrawals, 2% fee thereafter. Paying users have higher free withdrawal limits (€400 or €600). |
Full European banking license | Yes | Coming soon |
Countries of operation | 24 European countries | 32 European countries |
Web & mobile apps | Yes | No, mobile app only |
Foreign transaction fees | No, Mastercard exchange rate | No, mid-market exchange rate with 0.5-2% markup at weekends and 1% on weekdays for four currencies |
Virtual cards | Not available | Link up to 5 virtual cards |
Disposable virtual cards | Not available | Link only one (premium & metal only) |
Adding funds | SEPA transfer or cash lodgement with CASH26 (Germany, Austria, Netherlands only) | Top-up with Android Pay, a debit/credit card, or via bank transfer |
Cheque deposit | Not supported | Not supported |
Customer support | Help centre, phone, e-mail, live chat | Help centre, live chat, automated phone line for freezing card |
Spending analytics and budgeting | Yes, but no option to set a budget | Yes |
Segregate funds into sub-accounts | Yes, with "Spaces" | Yes with "Vaults" , rounding up feature helps you save |
Extra products | N26 Insurance, N26 Savings, N26 Invest, N26 Overdraft | Cryptocurrency, travel insurance, gadget insurance |
Direct debits & recurring payments | Yes | Direct debits only supported in Euros, recurring payments possible with all supported currencies |
Hold multiple currencies | No, EUR or GBP only | Yes, 26 currencies supported |
International money transfers | Powered by Transferwise, small flat fee and percentage-based fee | Interbank rate but markup of 0.5%-2% applies at weekends and 1% markup applies to four currencies during weekdays |
Security Features | Smartphone pairing, 3D Secure, instant push-notifications, freeze/unfreeze card, disable/enable card payments abroad, online payments, ATM withdrawals | Location-based security, disposable virtual cards (premium & metal only), instant push-notifications, freeze/unfreeze card, disable/enable swipe payments, ATM withdrawals, online payments, contactless payments |
Customer Base | 2,000,000 + users | 3,000,000 + users |
Split bills and pay contacts easily | Send money to any contact, request only from N26 contacts | Send money to and request money from any contact, also send to and request from non-contacts that use Revolut with "Near Me" |
Google and Apple Pay support | Yes | Yes |
If you liked this article or found it useful please share it with other travellers. Did we miss any important differences between N26 and Revolut? Which one is your favourite and why? Please let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!
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