The Berlin Neobank N26 ends its American adventure and leaves the market.

The step was foreseeable, but it comes as a surprise nonetheless.

Foreseeable, because statements have recently been rumored more and more that they want to concentrate more on the European market.

But also surprising because the cut was very radical and quick.

N26 will close its New York office, where at least 60 people were last employed - although the last time they wanted to fill 15 vacancies there.

Employees were laid off there during the corona pandemic.

Most recently it had almost 500,000 customers there.

How it will proceed with these has not yet been communicated.

Franz Nestler

Editor in business.

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How could it come to this? A quick look back will help here: In 2019, after a long period of preparation, the company entered the market. For N26 this was the first market outside the European Union and accordingly significant. At that time, a medium double-digit million amount was invested. More than 100,000 people in the United States are believed to have signed up on a waiting list. N26 looked for a partner bank with Axos for the market, which would take over the entire processing in the background. And this is where the problems started. The product development was complicated, the choice of strategy was probably wrong. The provider was terminated and new customers were put on a waiting list. Back then it was still said that they were looking for a new partner.

In addition: The competition in the United States is strong, if not to say: overwhelming. The American competitor Chime should be mentioned here. Neobank is aiming for a $ 35 billion valuation on the stock market. The British neobank Revolut is also planning an IPO and is currently valued at $ 33 billion. N26, on the other hand, is currently valued at less than 10 billion dollars, so it also has fewer funds available to actually perform there competitively.

For N26, this is after all the second largest retreat in the company's history. N26 said goodbye to Great Britain a few years ago and founded it with Brexit. Outside the European Union, N26 is currently still represented in Brazil. The actually overpowering competitor of Nubank rules there. This is after all striving for a valuation of 50 billion dollars on the stock exchange with a current valuation of around 30 billion dollars. In Brazil, because of the experience with the United States, they have at least applied for their own license. It remains to be seen whether one can get further with it than in the United States.

We will have to see where the N26 is going now.

In the last evaluation round, each N26 customer was valued at around 1000 euros.

The withdrawal also has a volume of half a billion euros.

In addition, the expansion plans should also attract interested investors.

That is probably over now, since apart from Brazil one is only represented in the European Union.

In addition, there are years of self-made problems with the financial supervisory authority BaFin, which even assigned two special supervisors for the smartphone bank N26.