Germany's N26 is expanding its business to 17 European countries, opening new locations in Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland, and Slovakia.
Designed for the needs of smartphone users, the N26 bank account promises an eight-minute sign up process, instant money transfers, and real-time transaction notifications and budgeting features. Starting in Germany and Austria in January 2015 and following soft launches in France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Slovakia, and Spain in December 2015, N26 now claims over 200,000 customers across eight markets.
To accommodate its move into new markets, the bank has updated its app, website, video ID verification process and customer service to be available in French, Spanish, and Italian - in addition to German and English.
Valentin Stalf, founder and CEO of N26, says: “The European reach will give us the scale to disrupt retail banking further and take full advantage of our highly scalable and cost efficient systems we have built over the last years.”
Rather than developing all products in-house, N26 is working with a range of fintech startups to incorporate their apps into its suite of services. The bank is already offering services from TransferWise and is working to integrate with a range of other partners, including Robinhood, FinanceFox, Vaamo, Raisin, Nutmeg, Auxmoney, Clark, LendingClub and Amazon.
The company says it is working "full speed" to expand its offering to include savings, investment, credit and insurance products directly through the app and promising upcoming innovations in real-time credit and AI-based security.