Danny Good question. I don‘t have any insight to the balance sheets of either of these three banks, but looking at public information my take on this is that while Vivid and Revolut have massive VC money and practice penetration pricing, bunq has never accepted any form of outside investments, is fully independent, and therefore prices their products closer to actual cost. As soon as their funding runs out, their pricing policies will change. You see this all the time, and in fact if you‘ve been following recent pricing changes at N26 you see exactly this happening. Of course only small steps at a time to not make customers angry, but ultimately the money has to come from somewhere.
By the way, the Metal Card at bunq is free. The only thing you‘re required to pay is a pre-payment for your current plan costs. You don‘t actually end up paying anything for the card itself, bunq basically just wants you to actually use it after you order it and not leave bunq two months after. Sending chunks of metal to customers throughout Europe that don‘t end up using them is not exactly eco-friendly and doesn‘t make financial sense for them as they‘re not Tinkoff‘s little sister. Still, the card is essentially free as long as you use bunq anyway. Can‘t get cheaper than that really.
Anyway, just my take on the reasons for why pricing is like it is. bunq is a Neobank, but in a completely different financial situation than some of its competitors. For me, that‘s an advantage (I like independence and an easy to understand company structure)… you can also see it as a disadvantage, though.
