Moneyland - Comparison of neo-banks

At the end of the article they explain their methodology. Basically they used 1 withdrawal in Switzerland for 250CHF, and 3 withdrawals for 250 each in USD, EUR and THB. The fees you see come from the withdrawals abroad I assume.

To promote this change Radicant posted a comparison of the fx rates used for Swiss debit cards. Not surprising, Radicant was on top. I wonder where the new Wir Debit Card would have ended up on this comparison.

https://www.radicant.com/de/blog-po...se-der-wechselkurse-von-schweizer-debitkarten
Yes, but several other news outlets also made a study recently, they all show Radicant on top. Moneyland for example, just posted above.
 
Basically they used 1 withdrawal in Switzerland for 250CHF, and 3 withdrawals for 250 each in USD, EUR and THB. The fees you see come from the withdrawals abroad I assume.
Still doesn't add up. Accroding to Radicant price list, 1 withdrawl in Switzerland is free (you only get charged from the 13th withdrawl) and 3 withdrawls in foreign currency cost Fr. 5 each. That would be a total cost of Fr. 15. Moneyland writes Fr. 30 for 'Frais lors des retraits d'espèces'. To me this is a discrepancy of Fr. 15.
 
That seems about right
I am skeptical about their methods of the abroad fees.
They claim they asked for exchange rates at the different institutions for a number of dates and then take the average.
The dates they asked are all during the week. Revolut has so far always been cheaper than Neon during the week, whenever I checked it myself.

You can try it out yourself in live, with Revolut here, and with Neon here.

So, either the Neon conversion link I provide here is wrong (I checked in my Revolut app and this part is correct), or Neon delivered not the full picture of the conversion fees to Moneyland.
Very fishy. I suspect Moneyland didn't include the "Transfer Fee" (8.59 for 1000 CHF to EUR) and only the "Exchange Rate" in their calculations which is of course useless for the final user.

This makes me doubting the whole article and also the fees for the other neobanks, if they ignore fees that are not declared as "exchange rate".
Here is a excerpt of their methods:
Bei den Anbietern wurden die Wechselkurse für folgende Stichtage angefragt: 31.05., 03.06., 04.06., 05.06., 06.06., 07.06., 10.06., 11.06., 12.06., 13.06., 14.06., 17.06., 18.06., 19.06., 20.06., 21.06. Daraus wurde der Durchschnitt berechnet und mit dem Interbanken-Kurs gemäss Oanda verglichen.
 
@Michael It may depend on how often they did the foreign exchanges. Revolut standard is only free for up to 1250 CHF (more or less) per month. And they did 2000 CHF with three currencies. So, if they spread it around the year, Revolut should be cheaper. But if they did in over three different months, we would have to be extra.
 
@Michael It may depend on how often they did the foreign exchanges. Revolut standard is only free for up to 1250 CHF (more or less) per month. And they did 2000 CHF with three currencies. So, if they spread it around the year, Revolut should be cheaper. But if they did in over three different months, we would have to be extra.
True... But based on what they write in the methods they 'asked' for exchange rates at different days, which wouldn't be affected by this limit. (but the fees on top are)

As far as I understand they made their life easy with this as they could just send an email to all of them, let each of them send you the exchange rates at the different days and then put them in an excel and do the calculations.

I might email them and ask how they did it (no comment function there unfortunately😅).
 
I am curious if anyone knows how Moneyland actually run the calcs as they don't provide any details. Why is Neon and others so much more expensive than Radicant? What are these fees actually for?

In my eyes there should be no real difference between Neon and Radicant for "Gebühren Ausland".

Thanks
 
I have merged both discussions on this study together here.
In my eyes there should be no real difference between Neon and Radicant for "Gebühren Ausland".
Actually, they do not use the same exchange rate. Radicant uses the interbank exchange rate while Neon uses the Mastercard exchange rate which is about 0.40% worse on average (can depend a lot on currency pairs).
 
Interesting, I thought they are using the Visa exchange rate. Seems that changed which is great.
Benefit from 0% fees when shopping abroad! Online and in-store. That means no Visa markup, no transaction fees, nothing. When you pay with your radicant card, we will only apply the mid-market exchange rate.

But still, not sure the math is correct. It's 6000 CHF in 3 different currencies, which makes 24 CHF of markup from Visa. Maybe TBH is much worse with Neon vs Radicant. I just would wish Moneyland is more transparent in their article and provide the details.
Even the fee of 5.40 CHF for Radicant are unexplained. What is that fee for? Don't see any fees with Radicant then, unless it's due to TBH.
 
Interesting, I thought they are using the Visa exchange rate. Seems that changed which is great.
Benefit from 0% fees when shopping abroad! Online and in-store. That means no Visa markup, no transaction fees, nothing. When you pay with your radicant card, we will only apply the mid-market exchange rate.

But still, not sure the math is correct. It's 6000 CHF in 3 different currencies, which makes 24 CHF of markup from Visa. Maybe TBH is much worse with Neon vs Radicant. I just would wish Moneyland is more transparent in their article and provide the details.
Even the fee of 5.40 CHF for Radicant are unexplained. What is that fee for? Don't see any fees with Radicant then, unless it's due to TBH.
What is TBH?

For Neon, Mastercard's markup is on average 0.4% worse than the interbank rate, it can go anywhere between 0.2% to 1% worse.

As for the 5.40, it's curious indeed. Maybe (and I'm shooting in the dark here as I have not yet used Radicant abroad) Radicant doesn't process transactions or foreign exchange at time of purchase? So if you buy something for 100EUR on a Tuesday while the rate is 0.9756, Radicant puts it as a pending transaction, but only processes it on Wednesday when the rate is 0.9795. Maybe Moneyland took that into account?
 
TBH is thailändischen Baht as per moneyland testing scenario in addition to dollar and euro. TBH might have indeed rather 1%. Just sad moneyland is not showing details and has not transparency.

I have radicant and it's indeed true that they don't use the exchange rate of purchase but w day or so later. Can be good or bad, but I don't like it. Makes it more difficult to compare as well.

With that said I am happy with them and use it for all foreign transactions or transactions in noj CHF. Their interest rate is also great for a checking account.
 
TBH is thailändischen Baht as per moneyland testing scenario in addition to dollar and euro. TBH might have indeed rather 1%. Just sad moneyland is not showing details and has not transparency.

I have radicant and it's indeed true that they don't use the exchange rate of purchase but w day or so later. Can be good or bad, but I don't like it. Makes it more difficult to compare as well.

With that said I am happy with them and use it for all foreign transactions or transactions in noj CHF. Their interest rate is also great for a checking account.
Do Yuh and Neon process foreign transactions at time of purchase? I've only been using Revolut abroad, next week I'll start using Radicant for the first time, so I'm not sure how other banks do it.

Yeah I'm also happy with Radicant, but I find the absence of push notifications for purchases really disappointing. It's a small feature, but in this day and age where lots of technical bugs or hacks can happen, it's better to be notified for money movements in your account.
 
I don't have Neon and don't use Yuh really for anything. I am also using Yapeal and it processes it more or less at time of purchase.

Agree that push notification is a miss and should not be difficult to implement. For now I am using Radicant only for foreign transactions or foreign currencies as I have my main account with Raiffeisen. The good thing is that I can hold a good chunk of CHF on the Radicant account to cover these purchases but also have a decent interest for short term money needs.
 
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