If you are like us, travel abroad fairly often and work with different currencies and clients all over the world, you will have found yourself periodically annoyed by the quirks of most credit or debit cards. Just to name a few:

1. COMMISSIONS, COMMISSIONS Everywhere

Commissions when you withdraw cash or receive an international transfer from a different bank just to begin with. I have found myself looking at charges of 5 or even 7% at times! How crazy is that a bank would charge me 7% of my money so I can simply use it?

2. Lost card panic

The headache of canceling the card calling the bank from abroad when it has gone missing. There may even a chance of you finding it later (and feel very stupid), but who wants to take the risk of having their card stolen?

Of course, this makes me wish that there were a way to temporarily block the card. Just leave me some time to check if there is an actual chance of recovery while knowing nobody is robbing me blind. Sounds reasonable, right?

3. New Account, new pain

Traditional Banks are famous for their paperwork. The irritation of opening a new account can become a straight up nightmare when you need to do it in a foreign country, in a language you don’t master or sometimes, do not even know.

That has definitely made me wish that I could open a bank account from my smartphone, we live in a digital world, C’mon!

4. Where did the money go?

Finally, when I want to check how much I spent and on what, looking through endless lines of payments and numbers is such a boring task that more often than not I just give up before I even start.

Sometimes finding a single payment that I wanted to check may be ok. However, checking how much I spend during the whole month in Thailand just in restaurants? Call Tom Cruise, we’re going for Mission Impossible 7. And spoiler alert, it ends with a headache and the wish of not looking at another bank statement ever again.

5. WHAT CAN we do about it?

What is the point in whining if there is nothing to do about it? Are we writing just to unwind about our frustration? That could have been a desperate last resort if we had not found a solution to all of these problems, N26. Let’s checkpoint by point:

• No ATM charges in Euros with the free version. No ATM charges in any currency if you go Black.
• FREE ATM Withdrawals if you go for Black, and lowest commissions if you go with the free version.
• No card payment commission in any currency.
• Block and unblock again your card from your phone at any time, just using an app.
• Set up your new account in under 8 minutes, online from your smartphone.
• See graphs of your monthly expenses, automatically categorized using Artificial Intelligence.

And if that was not enough:

• Contactless payments with your card (with the integration of ApplePay in the near future)
• Instantaneous money transfers to other N26 clients.
• Unbeatable international transfer rates thanks to their partnership with TransferWise.
• If you choose N26 Black 5.90€/month option you get all of the above, plus mobile phone theft protection, the best travel insurance including medical attendance, ATM theft protection, extended warranty, and free withdrawals in any foreign currency.

n26: the mobile bank

To back all these advantages, we bring you this post as happy N26 Black customers ourselves. We would like to share our experience with you:

The Black Card will get you all the features of the free version plus the best worldwide insurance (flights canceled or delayed, baggage loss, etc.) including hospital expenses and extended warranty (if you broke the iPhone you bought with the black card? No worries, it is covered).

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWWRkmpgQeH/

Starting with the shipping of the card, 2 business days worldwide, card working within seconds of pairing it with the app.

Following with the use of the cards in Europe, enjoying not having to worry about which ATM to use to avoid fees, paying Contactless or with the PIN, and receiving international transfers in Euros with exchange rates that could be checked with XE knowing that they would be the official ones every time.

We have also used (heavily) the cards abroad, we went to Thailand and United Arab Emirates in the summer, and the experience couldn’t be more perfect. Never, I repeat, never a real-time notification has failed anywhere in the world, it just works.

We have bought international and domestic plane tickets, paid for hotels, ferries, restaurants, parties (OMG, those parties…) and withdraw thousands of EUR cash commission-free, thanks to the benefits of the N26 Black Card.

Finally,  purchases in dollars are pretty common, especially online, and they could be performed with no problems at all, and with the same blissfully perfect exchange rates and no commission.

N26 has changed the way we interact with the banking world for better and for always, give it a try with the free account and upgrade to the black option if you’re a frequent traveler, you won’t be disappointed.