Why can I no longer accept a direct debit?

ATSeventy7

Can this now only be done if you have a premium account? Hope not!

JohnDo

ATSeventy7 Hi 👋🏼 Joseph,

Direct debits are only possible if you have bunq Premium, Business or SuperGreen. If you have Travel, it isn’t possible.

ATSeventy7

Really sad how you lure people in with a free account and after going through all the (huge) hassle of switching my account to bunq, I am in essence being EXTORTED to upgrade to the premium account!! “bank of the free”......apparently not!

Samzoiets

ATSeventy7 You get what you pay for...

A free account comes with limited services, which are a very cool secured credit card and an easy way to add money to your card.

There has been sufficient communication on what was to change when bunq terminated the free and promo subscriptions. You had three months to consider your options and to choose wether to go to premium, or downgrade to the TravelCard subscription automatically.

As you choose the latter, this is one of the disadvantages.

ATSeventy7

Really surprised that there aren’t many more people reacting to this!

Tim

ATSeventy7

You didn't do any research before switching memberships or signing up? It's mentioned in multiple topics and in the pricing sheet for example. The Travel membership doesn't include a full bank account, only a Travel Card.

Jakob-Y

ATSeventy7 Probably no one is suprised because this is nothing new. The Travel membership is called that way because it only includes the Travel Card, but no bank accounts that can be used to make payments. What I am surprised about is that people sign up for a bank account without even reading the terms.

And they‘re pretty easy to read at bunq, written in regular English.

ATSeventy7

Jakob Jakob, actually it is very new! I joined Bunq more than 3 years ago and only very recently discontinued their free accounts! The only remaining ‘free’ option is to switch to the travel card option!

ATSeventy7

Jakob-Y

ATSeventy7 True, what is kinda new is that the older subscriptions have been phased out even for existing customers. For new customers, however, they haven‘t been available for a long time (~2 years?). Granted, one might not have followed the changes to subscriptions and if you only found out about that recently, I can see where you‘re coming from.

Hopefully you can find an option for banking that you‘re satisfied with soon, be it with bunq or somewhere else.

ATSeventy7

Sam 🇳🇱🇬🇧 So if you get a letter from landlord stating that in 3 months your rent wil triple it should fine right? Property is still the same, but your landlord just woke up one day and decided that he was going to exploit you! But hey, you get what you pay for right?

ATSeventy7

When did you join Sam?

Samzoiets

ATSeventy7 Thank god we have laws for that in the more civil parts of the world. You are exaggerating when you compare housing to a bank service.

When you rent your place for free, you might expect the landlord to ask money at a certain moment. He delivered a service, for which you are required to pay a fair price.

When the rent triples, you might want to consider if the new rent is a fair price to pay for the benefits you get. If not, you can consider to move out. If so, you are lucky to have paid less before.

ATSeventy7

Sam 🇳🇱🇬🇧 Actually sam, im not! The principle is exactly the same and im quite surprised how defensive you are of them. If you think that banks make their money off of your account fees and transaction costs, I suggest you spend some time on Wikipedia today.

They make their money by lending out your deposits, so you thinking that this is a one way street is an exaggeration! Bunq is making money from my deposit, in exchange they offer me an account! Its not free, its WAS a mutually beneficial relationship. Now, not so much!

Samzoiets

ATSeventy7 Bunq does not make its money by charging high fees for loans, in fact; they do not do credit.

Actually, they don’t make money on your deposit either as the place where they deposit your money (European Central Bank) charges a interest rate of minus 0,05 percent, so bunq actually has to pay fees to keep your deposit.

Welcome to the economy!

Bunq has another approach to banking as is described well in Breaking with the banks (Breken met de banken), a boom that was published in 2017 which discusses the first years of bunq.

Spending time on Wikipedia is always a good advice, but be sure to read those articles that reflect a specific case, before arguing that case and not the common and generic articles.

Happy Friday, and keep your head and feet cold on this ☀️ day!

Jakob-Y

ATSeventy7 Check out https://www.bunq.com/terms-annualreport — even though we still don‘t have the 2019 report, bunq‘s business model probably hasn‘t changed completely since 2018. As you can see, they do lose a lot of money on our deposits and even with income from subscription fees they didn‘t manage to break even back then. I suspect this plays a huge role in why they‘re going with a (mostly) premium-only product.

ATSeventy7

Thanks both, this is actually quite insightful! Would not surprise me if they do change their business model in the future(which I would not mind....lost opportunity here and can use these profits to plant even more trees;) ) This does however not change the fact they they lured in early customers (who formed the backbone of their very existence) with free accounts and now extort these client to upgrade these accounts or otherwise they will not be able to accept direct debits which have been in place for 3+ years!