Neobank N26 Debuts Interest-Bearing Savings Account in Spain

Neobank N26 has launched a savings account in Spain as it weathers a turbulent period.

The new Instant Savings account, announced Tuesday (May 26), offers eligible customers in Spain an interest-bearing savings account with 2.26% yield and no conditions of permanence, minimum deposit requirements or excess fees.

“As more and more customers choose N26 as their primary bank account over traditional banks, it’s been our priority to expand our product portfolio to offer a more comprehensive range of benefits that help empower customers to have a better relationship with their money,” Gilles BianRosa, N26’s chief product officer, said in a news release.

“Interest-bearing savings are an important part of this, and it’s exciting to be launching a product that offers one of the most competitive rates in the market today.”

The news comes a little less than a month after a Financial Times report that insurance group Allianz was selling its stake in N26 at a high discount. Sources told the newspaper Allianz’s venture capital operation Allianz X has instructed advisers to sell the company’s roughly 5% stake in N26 at a $3 billion valuation.

The $3 billion figure is a third of the $9 billion N26 was valued in its last funding round in autumn of 2021. Allianz — along with China’s Tencent — first invested in N26 in 2018 as part of a $160 million Series C round.

Also last month, N26 announced it was cutting 4% of its staff – 71 employees – as it focused its priorities against “the backdrop of significant and long-lasting changes to the global business landscape in the last year.”

As PYMNTS noted in a report on the state of neobanking in Europe, N26 also exited the U.S. market in 2022 and has been focusing its efforts on Europe, where it does business in 24 countries with 8 million customers.

CFO Jan Kemper said last year that the company would not pinpoint a definite time frame for profitability, stating last year that “we are not committing ourselves [to say] if this will take 12 months, 24 months or 36 months.”

Elsewhere, PYMNTS noted that as banks risk losing customers to neobanks, savings accounts could end up being a crucial battleground in this conflict.

“And in that case, the advantage may go to the traditional financial institutions (FIs), who have the installed base of clients, the financial firepower and a host of complementary and adjacent revenue streams that the digital-only upstarts just don’t have,” PYMNTS wrote.