Frankfurt The major French bank BNP Paribas is launching a new private account in Germany and launched the corresponding website last week. With “nickel” banking should be particularly easy – and something different than usual. Because to open an account you have to come to a lottery acceptance point.
With the offer, BNP Paribas sets itself apart from other neobanks such as N26 and Bunq, which are aimed at digitally savvy people. Nickel sees itself as an “account for everyone”, as Nickel Germany boss Reinhard Grübl recently said at the Handelsblatt conference “Future Retail Banking”. He lists immigrants and older people as possible users, for whom the way to accepting the lottery is possibly shorter than to the nearest bank branch.
In France, Nickel – meaning “super” or “faultless” in French – has been around since 2014 and has been a BNP Paribas brand since 2017. Nickel counts a total of 3.2 million account openings so far, but only a good half of them are active users. The offer has also already started in Belgium, Portugal and Spain.
The account opening can be prepared in the Nickel app. There you enter personal data and you have to take a picture of your identity card, passport or residence permit and take a picture of yourself. A Nickel partner – according to Grübl, there are 7,200 tobacco shops in France – checks the information and immediately sends out a Mastercard debit card.
The account is activated immediately. The debit cards in the basic variant, which is also unusual, are issued without the customer’s name.
The nickel account runs on a credit basis – so there is no overdraft facility – and the standard version costs 25 euros per year. Customers can withdraw money from the Nickel partners three times a month free of charge, from the fourth withdrawal 50 cents are due. Nickel charges EUR 1.50 for withdrawals from ATMs.
Nickel account is cheaper than basic accounts
There are also other account models. The Nickel card costs extra, ten to 80 euros a year. Individual bookings are sometimes cheaper or free of charge.
Nickel has big plans for Germany. Within five years, they want to win 5,000 lottery acceptance points as partners and 600,000 customers.
So far, however, the BNP brand has only found 25 partners. Nickel is in talks with other potential partners, but has to sign a contract with each one individually.
And there are other hurdles: The competition in the German banking market is considered strong, so it will not be easy for Nickel to attract customers from the competition. It is unclear how many people are unable to get a checking account although they would like to open one. They in particular would be potential customers for nickel. The Payment Accounts Act, which has been in force since 2016, obliges financial institutions to offer everyone a credit-based account, a so-called basic account.
Consumer advocates criticize that the prices for basic accounts are often far too high. But the savings banks have recently opened such accounts on a large scale, last year there were around 330,000 accounts for refugees from Ukraine.
Nevertheless, Nickel is not under pressure. According to French media reports, the offer on the home market has been profitable for a long time.
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