Sander localised IBANs require a local banking license. Given that it took bunq multiple years to obtain their Dutch license I can pretty much make a guess why they would not want to jump into that process for every country
It should take considerably less to just set up a branch office using their Dutch licence instead of a full new entity and then provide local IBAN. Well-known cases of this are BNP Paribas, a French Bank offering DE IBAN under the Consorsbank brand in Germany. Or N26, which has set up a Spanish branch, presumably due to the high level of IBAN discrimination in the country.
Though it’s clear it will probably still cost time and money - which bunq could spend better elsewhere - and won’t solve the underlying problem. To the contrary, I feel it rather reinforces them, the fewer the people that use a „foreign“ IBAN.
