While Bunq currently advertises it's 5-minute onboarding process, I feel the need to comment on that feature, since for me it's seems impossible to create an account for my kids and onboarding takes forever.
I have been a satisfied user of Bunq for both my personal and business accounts for several years. There had been issues, but those were mostly due to the continues changing of the User-Interface, and my lack of being able to adapt to them.
In the start-up phase of Bunq, the most simple account with no cards was free. Suddenly Bunq stopped the deal (and I stopped inviting friends on Bunq), but I always thought it was a good option for an account for my kids, they don't need a card (for now) just a IBAN account number, so grandma can transfer a financial birthday gift, and auntie can send a bonus for passing their swimming diploma. So no fancy features needed, they just need the most basic account for some piggy bank amount, so fee's should be minimal (free).
Now recently I noticed that the 'Easy Savings' plan was for free, so I could open up accounts for my kids.
So to be clear with my objectives, I want all my kids to have their own account (one sub-account with IBAN will suffice), have it connected with my account, and use only one mobile phone (mine) with one number (mine). Kids are below 8 years and and I got 4 of them, and they don't need a phone yet.
Issues :
- You can't open an invite link and start the onboarding process when any of the other accounts are logged in.
- You can't log-out if you don't have a mobile phone number
- You have to delete the app to 'force' logging out, and start the validation process for all your accounts.
- You have to use another means of validation (authenticate with a top-up from another other bank account or 20 sec video) then when you opened up the account (pasport ID validation). This is their first bank account, so can't do the top-up. And making a 20 sec video of a 10-month old with the right moves is some sort of exercise I want to to opt-out for. So my advice is to also allow the pasport validation (e.g. after reinstalling the app) after the initial validation (for creating the account) is done.
- When deinstalling and then reinstalling the app on the SAME phone (to 'force' logout), I get the cool-down message about installing on a new device and can't access any accounts for 24 hours.
- Validating with a 20-sec loop with my 6-year old ended up in and infinite loop of recordings, every step is confirmed as being ok by the app, but you keep getting back to the validation step and need to start recording again.
- When opening an account, you instantly (not really, see fault on my part below) settled on the 'Easy Green' with a trial, but when switching to a 'Easy Saving Personal' there is an issue, because you have to close the 'Main' sub-account. Closing the 'Main' sub-account is not possible, because you always have to have an account where bunq can deduct their invoice. To close the 'Main' sub-account you need to make sure to have exactly amount of the upcoming invoice (in my case € 17,99, cause I chose accidentally the most expensive plan). This is not obvious, because some support pages says it need to be € 0,00, while others say it need to the amount of the next upcoming invoice (e.g. € 17,99). I'm pretty sure I was still on 'trial-month', but I can't double check, because I can't login on their account anymore.
All issues combined:
I can't validate my 10-month kid and get back into the account, so I can't ask support to refund the billing, so he's started to debt himself for € 17,99 a month. (I know bunq will fix it, but I like to make my point)
Fault on my part:
- When opening my own invite link, I chose the first option available 'Easy Green', because it wasn't obvious there were other options (just the arrow, now that I looked up the page again), I just pressed "Aan de Slag" to start going, knowing I could switch the plain later. If I would have selected the 'Easy Saving' plan a lot of time and effort of both me and the support team would be saved.
Comments regarding support:
- They acknowledged there is a bug concerning not being able to close the 'Main' sub account (a requirement when switching to 'Easy Saving Personal'
- They refunded the monthly fee of a previous billing, but got one billing again today of my other kid's account.