So, I have been using ZAK for more than two years now.
I transfer the sum I budgeted for daily expenses and small bills there a pay from there.
I like that it works easily with Google Pay and Apple Pay.
I like the common spending tracking that I use together with my wife.
While the app is simple enough, there are a few gripes I have:
I have to enter an mTAN EVERY SINGLE TIME. Even for known recipients and tiny sums. I just had to enter one for 1.30 CHF. Come on!
No ebills
No payment templates, e.g. for payments with reference numbers. If there is no QR code, I have to enter the recipient with address and all. PostFinance does not require this. (I wonāt pay anymore bills from here.)
I could never use it as my primary banking app unless I was dirt poor and could not afford 5 CHF for a banking package. It really makes me appreciate PostFinance.
What are your experiences?
Do you have workarounds for my gripes?
I have about 30 financial/banking/brokerage apps on my phone. And Zak must be one of the top 2 or 3 that feel clunkiest.
ā¦and when I have to enter the (27-digit) reference number from the payment slip, I canāt just copy & paste it. No, itāll throw up an error about the number format, unless I bloody manually delete the spaces between the number blocks. Which it canāt even show all in width on my phoneās screen. So I thereās a little bit sof crolling involved. Infuriating.
For me, scanning the payment slip isnāt always an option, since I often only receive it in a digital format (as in the Swisscard app).
I suppose the consensus is that ZAK is very limited, on purpose.
I donāt think they are letting the app die. They are spending gazillions on marketing. I saw an offer today where you get 60 CHF if you sign up for ZAK now. All the bloggers including MP offer ZAK promotions.
This must cost them a pretty penny.
The app may be deliberately designed to lure in new customers who can then be upsold to regular Cler products. Itās kind of a freemium model in disguise.
Remember: If the product is free, then you are the product.
Yeah, I have two phones and can use my ZAK phone to scan it from the other, but it sucks really. Iāll just use PostFinance in the future.
Nah, not another account. I have Yuh which is better from a usability point of view, but I donāt plan to make it my main account either.
I guess Iāll just keep using ZAK for what Iāve used it before:
day-to-day card spending and keeping tracking of common expenses.
It works ok for this. But with other accounts being free, I fear that other users may abandon the app once they realise that there are better alternatives.
Out of curiosity, can you name a few of the banking/brokerage apps you have Iād love to check if there is something I can swap out for something else. Thanks!
I see that you use both Yuh and Revolut. Could you please elaborate about their differences a bit? E.g. in what cases one should choose one or the other?
I encountered this issue, not related to the use of paiement card, but I wasnāt able to open the app during 2 minutesā¦ that seemed like 15 minutes. This reinforces the idea that is pretty good to have a plan B.
Sure. If you want to subscribe to either, just DM for a referral code
Here goes: Yuh is a full Swiss bank account and can be used for receiving wages and paying all kinds of bills. If you need a real bank account, it will do that.
You get to buy crypto, some shares and ETFs, directly within the app. Fractional shares are available now. The offer is decent, fees are around 1 % for foreign currencies and I think 1 % on top for crypto.
Fees for payments in foreign currencies with or without card are about 1 %, which is less than most banks.
You get a Swiss debit Mastercard, which currently does not work with Google, Apple and Samsung Pay, but Google and Apple are planned.
Thereās a cashback program, in which you around 0.02 CHF per payment back in their own coin which is supposed to grow in value.
Main drawback:
Not a real credit card. Because itās a debit card, you cannot always assume that you can pay for deposits in hotels and for rental cars. It may or may not work.
Revolut is not a full bank account.
It has its strength in foreign currency transactions.
It hardly charges any conversion fees. This is a big plus for me and the main reason why I use it.
You can buy many kinds of crypto from within the app.
You can receive money in other currencies than CHF.
If you use up to 1000 CHF per month in foreign currencies, you can save around 30 CHF per month by using Revolut compared to other banks with the free card.
Drawbacks:
You cannot pay bills with a Swiss reference number or QR code. You can do IBAN payments, though.
Some payments cannot be made because the recipient gets a āpaid through Revolut on Behalf of Your Nameā. This can be a bother, e.g. with DeGiro and other foreign services which do not accept Revolut originated payments.
Customer support is not that good. Just donāt do anything funny like getting huge amounts transferred to your account suddenly, your account may be blocked. I havenāt had any bad experiences, but there a some horror stories going around.
Not a real credit card. Revolut cards are not accepted in some places and cannot always be used for rental or hotel deposits.
No ebills
It also has a freemium model that make sense if you use foreign currencies a lot.
That also explains your preferred model (PostFinance + Revolut).
Itās funny that that you pointed out multiple times ānot a credit cardā as a disadvantage and I can see why (some merchants refusing to take anything else but the credit card, e.g. car rentals). But I always seen credit cards inferior to their debit counterparts: poorer spending reporting, occasional accidental interest charges, high fees in general, and higher harm to an ecosystem overall.
Moreover you can always convert a debit card into a credit card with Curve (https://curve.com)
I believe they wire charges over the Mastercard credit card network.
But they have an absolutely evil way of making money.
Curve combines all your cards into a single Mastercard debit card
Can you please explain how Curve is treated as a ārealā credit card? I donāt see that on their website, but maybe you have some real life experience.
Oops that is my bad! I just assumed it works as a credit card, because Iāve used it for deposits etc, where I thought only credit cards worked.
My bad
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Iād love to check if there is something I can swap out for something else. Thanks!
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