| Absolutely colossal. I live in the UK which has multiple established neobanks. Back in the day I used one of the biggest traditional banks. I had to schedule an appointment to open an account. Twice, because some of the papers they wanted from me were apparently outdated. The appointments were weeks in advance and for the second one I had to go to a neighboring city as the branch there had the best availability. They would regularly block some of my transactions at random, sometimes sending me an SMS and demanding a response to continue. I was not even able to send the SMS back as my carrier blocks messages to paid numbers by default. Their software wouldn't let me update my address correctly. It would randomly cut off half of it. Their app was antiquated and had 5 or so different codes/passwords that they wanted me to write down for different purposes. As an absolute cherry on top, I made a completely regular transaction while abroad and they decided to block all my spending to "protect me from fraud" and demanded that I show up in person to one of their branches to have it unblocked. I was abroad for 6 months with no way of accessing my main bank account. The neobank I moved to let me register online, selfie with a passport plus a day of waiting. Their security was far better as they actually adhered to modern best practices and their fraud protection was minimally invasive. At no point was I prevented from making a transaction for longer than 5 minutes and all their precautions were reasonable. Their app is a joy to use and contains genuinely useful features. And all this was handled without me ever talking to anyone. I could keep going for longer, but the point is neobanks are more customer friendly in all ways imaginable while consuming far less resources by automating that which is easily automatable. |