While the Challenger Bank has heard rather thin or unpleasant news in the last few months, N26 now seems to be getting started for the next big “things”.
One of the unpleasant news was that in May the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) tightened the screws and harshly ordered N26 to take more stringent measures in the area of money laundering prevention.
Now, after a long period of time, a spirit of optimism seems to be gaining the upper hand in the management of the Challenger Bank, like our colleagues from Finance Forward have found out. Which big “things” are planned and which projects are specifically on the N26 agenda?
Expansion Brasilien
The project of entering the Brazilian market, which has been postponed several times and has been inactive for a long time, has evidently come to the fore again. According to the company, the office in Sao Paulo has now grown to “almost 30 employees”. And, according to an N26 spokesman:
You are currently developing a product that will be tailored specifically to the Brazilian market
The specific tailoring is likely to be necessary – the South American markets tick differently and the explosively growing FinTech Nubank is well ahead in Brazil. However, the chances for N26 remain intact and lie in the enormous size of the country.
Stock trading and crypto feature
N26 plans to launch a trading feature for stocks at the beginning of 2022, and the crypto feature should start at the end of the year, provided everything goes according to plan.
In both areas, the Challenger Bank does not act as a pioneering innovator, it simply follows the pressure of customers and markets. Competitor Revolut has been offering both features for a long time, as has the still small and therefore underestimated Challenger bank Vivid for a few months.
In addition, fast-growing and aggressively operating neo-brokers such as Trade Republic or Bitpanda are likely to have given additional wings to the decision to follow suit.
In addition, N26, like arch-rival Revolut, is preparing a marketplace. Both Revolut and N26 aim to build a super app that can be used to organize all aspects of financial life. At Revolut, the marketplace in the offer should go beyond the pure financial topics, details on the ambitions of N26 are currently not known.
Revolut has a clear lead in Europe in key areas. If N26 now follows suit, the Challenger Bank should, at least in Germany, accommodate the currently still dominant position in the area of banking apps from FinTech forges.
Has more details on N26’s crypto and trading plans John Stanley Hunter researched by Finance Forwad, read here.
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