Banking options in Czech Republic are quite limited.

A long time ago

I started out as a client of Ceska sporitelna, but that didn't last longe because of their exorbitant price on withdrawals abroad - 200 Kc (8 Euro) per instance. I must have wasted thousands of Kc when traveling in US & India because of this before I found time to change banks.

(The way I choose companies is one wrong means goodbye forever, so even though as of today they offer a package for 25 Kc per month where the fee goes down to 40 Kc, they should have offered that when I was on the road.)

Some time in 2015 I opened an account at Unicredit. Their U konto seemed pretty good, and to this day I call them the "bank 4 dropouts" - the account is free of charge for all under 26, regardless of student status. I've had average or above average customer service for a few years.

Start of bad experiences

Recently, something has changed. In November, they did maintenance to their systems which failed. Nobody could use Internet Banking for a few weeks, and they didn't seem all that bothered about it.

Little did I know that would be a start of bad experiences. When my first paycheck came, they charged a fee of 1500 Kc (about 60 Euro). 1500 Kc to send money from Berlin to Prague?! It would have been cheaper to send the money in a package by snail mail.

Naturally, I went to my the nearest branch and complained. And I asked them to close my USD account and open a EUR account, which they promise caps the fees at 200 Kc.

This was in October. As of today, my USD account is still visible in my app and on the web. I have an EUR account that I can't see the balance of and can't make transactions from it. I'm basically relying on them that it's there and I will be able to pay from it with my card. Worst part is I have been e-mailing them about this periodically. I either get no response, or I'm given excuses like to send them the confirmation paper and to contact the person that set up the account. Isn't this their job?

I decide to do something

So I decide to act sooner rather than later. Basic research revealed 2 options: TenX and Revolut.

TenX is a crypto startup that issues a card that you can use to pay with cryptocurrencies anywhere a debit/credit card is accepted. Revolut is fintech startup that aims to revolutionise banking by - tbh I don't know how, that's their job. As long as it's better than traditional retail banking, I'm down

It could have been my inclination towards a London-based startup, as I briefly lived there or the fact that Revolut recently added cryptocurrency support, or just the fact that I expect a non-crypto startup to gain more adoption and hence potentially less issues that I decided to go with Revolut.

So I signed up to their Premium account (8 Euro/month). After 1 day, I'm pretty happy. You can read about Revolut somewhere like here, here's a quick cheatsheet of stuff I couldn't do with my current bank:

set up accounts in 26 base currencies, including Kc. For each account you get an IBAN and EUR accounts accept SEPA 😍 (fast way of doing euro to euro transactions, Czech banks are very behind on this to my knowledge) and you can exchange money between your accounts literally instantly
0 fee on spending money in over 130 currencies & exchange done at interbank rate
24/7 instant chat support. I've tested it, and my issue was resolved in 5 min, no need for e-mails or calling international numbers
buy & sell crypto! So you can eliminate your Coinbase or Poloniex, and save money. Once all your fiat accounts run out, they Revolut will automatically charge your crypto accounts! Ofc the storage is centralised (they hold private key and you can only see your public one), which has security disadvantages. While it is possible to buy crypto in a fully decentralised way, I have enough trust in a centralised system to store it there for just as long before I transfer it to my own address (btw, I use Jaxx and Metamask :))
The issuer of the card is a bank based in Cambridge, UK. That means I can make purchases in UK-only websites, have a Stripe account etc. (They're planning to start issuing their own cards from next month, but to my knowledge nothing will change)
the apps of traditional banks (judging form CS, Unicredit and in the UK I used Barclay's) are satisfactory. Revolut actually has a beautiful app. Plus analytics of what how I spend my money, notifications when I receive notifications - all the goodies that come with having a proper app...
you can set up virtual cards that can only be used for online banking

What do both have?

I ordered a beautiful contact-less MasterCard that they claim will arrive in 3 days
neither supports Apple Pay, Android Pay or Samsung Pay (S Pay). A traditional bank is likely to get it first because it incurs fees for that institution, and, well the point of Revolut is to be as lean as possible. To be honest, I don't really need to pay with my phone
They've applied for a European Banking License. Means accounts will be insured up to €100 000, you'll be able to overdraft (Czech banks still don't have this 😥) and do direct debits (currently only option is recurring payments).

And disadvantages?

They charge 2% on ATM withdrawals over £200 per month. I.e. in a developed country use your card. In a developing country you will probably not spend much more than £200 anyway, and still 0 other fees + better exchange rate might get you a better deal in the end.

So that's it. Hope my experience helps somebody in making better banking decisions :)

Best,
Dom

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