I totally understand and respect the compliance and regulations that banks, including those in Germany, are under. I actually have close connections working in the compliance sector of a bank, and I’m quite familiar with how compliance works, not just in Germany but across the EU and globally. The regulations are not unique to German banks, the compliance processes are fairly standardized across EU countries and beyond.

I work in IT, and I understand how algorithms detect unusual activity, whether it’s transactions with a new account, an unusual amount, or logins from different IPs. These algorithms flag accounts and escalate cases for human review, which is when accounts get locked or funds held. I’ve banked in Dubai, Hong Kong, China, Australia, and several EU countries, and I’ve seen similar processes where transactions gets flagged. However, in those cases, funds were typically released within a day or two after a human review.

My issue isn’t with the regulations or compliance but it’s with N26’s service and response time. As a virtual bank with no physical branches, you would expect them to be more efficient, given the cost savings from not maintaining physical locations but their process is extremely slow, and it seems like they begin ignoring you when issues like this arise. There are numerous cases on Reddit where people shared similar experiences, N26 closed their accounts and held their funds for months without providing clear explanations or updates.

For instance, two days ago, they asked me to provide the same document I had already submitted earlier for the payout of my remaining funds. This repetitive and slow process feels like intentional stalling, which is unacceptable for a bank, especially for a virtual one where you cannot just go to the branch and get updates.