Neon apologized through email. I wonder why they don’t put up a statement on their website. If non-customers read/heard about the problems elsewhere they might not open an account. Are they hoping that the news doesn’t spread?
Anyway I like their explanation with a bit of reasoning. Just too many emoji 
I have
Sorry
Login not possible for a short time. Please try again later
upon opening the app all day today.
not a good sign. Anyone knows anything? I have not received any communication 
[edit] I did delete the app cache (on android) which did not fix it
I had this in the morning but it was fixed in the early afternoon. Try force closing the app and opening it again maybe?
thanks for the tip. force-quitting and restarting now prompts an update … and works afterwards:D
Yes, I received as well the email.
Not great, it would have been better to know in advance about the downtimes.
For those who park their money on Neon, here is some information (to be verified) of the day: Neon droht mit „Inaktivitätsgebühr“ - Inside Paradeplatz
I personally no longer have an account with Neon and therefore cannot take a position on this issue. Has anyone received such an email from them?
No, I haven’t. I use the card frequently on vacations and have added it to subscriptions in currencies other than CHF. Is there a better card for foreign currencies out now?
I guess they found out that with current fees they are only going to be profitable through volume which makes me wonder why they actively tell customers to quit using the service if they don’t use it.
… and customer usage of their services.
Volume alone doesn’t make you profitable, when customer aren’t using profitable services.
It’s nothing new - even UBS has a free credit card with inactivity fees.
Well it does. In case of Neon I think their main income is payment fees (correct me if I’m wrong) which means as long as the volume of payments is high enough, and thus payment fees earned by Neon, to pay for the fixed costs of Neon (minus variable costs for each payment), then they are profitable.
Aren’t their exchange rates for card payments supposed to be without a markup? How else can they earn besides selling their customers to “partners”? With a commission for foreign currency bank transfer via Wise?
They still earn payment fees as explained by SIX for example:
Issuer
The issuer may charge card holders annual fees for the card. The issuer also receives
an interchange fee from the acquirer as a fixed and/or volume-dependent fee for the
card transaction.
That article is disgustingly aggressive and negative.
We mean the same thing then 
A high volume of accounts doesn’t make you profitable, if customers aren’t using your profitable service (in this case payment service for card payments).
Interchange.
EDIT: logitacher beat me to it
I’d say it’s written in a normal tone for insideparadeplatz.ch.
When Neon tried to raise money, I analyzed a lit bit their finances.TBH, I don’t see how the company can be profitable without fees and selling high-margin services like pillar 3a, investment, insurance or premium cards. In CH, the interchange fees are really small.
Recently, their mostly raised money through their customers, one reason could be that VC and other investors know that this type of business is not profitable.
Currently, only this year Revolut made a small profit after years of massive losses. N26 is still not profitable.
The revenue of Neon is around 3.5 million.
Some assumptions:
Neon needs to pay Mastercard and Hypo.
They have around 35 employees in CH with a cost per employee of 80k + 10 employees in Serbia with a cost of 40k, it’s already a charge of 3.2 million.
Sorry if this is the case. German is not my main language, so I probably missed some nuances. I thought in good faith I was sharing a piece of information.
No need to be a business mogul to understand that their business model is fragile
free account with no margin on forex
use of third parties (card issuer and Hypo) to pay
no paid service with added value
use of commercial referencing to earn money (we are the products…even if they believe in the products they are offering us through their partners)
They need high volume of transactions to earn something.
I remember having read in one of their newsletters that an investment solution was under way. An additional source of income for the future.
Not correct, they have Neon Green and Neon Metal. There are plenty of people using these services (if it does not have an added value for you, it does not mean that applies for everybody).
I wonder how many active Neon Green and Neon Metal users there really are?
In january 2023, they announced 7’500 green users
That’s 5% of all neon users (140’000 as mentioned in the same article) paying CHF 5/month.
I would be surprised if metal users exceed the number of greens. I didnt find any data.
What is the value added for the client? Does it worth 5 CHF a month?
The client pays 5 CHF a month to have 5 trees planted and one tree per 100 CHF of spending. There is also a warranty extension
It costs around 0.15$ per tree for Neon
“The general tree planting price is $0.15 per tree, provided that your donation is not designated to a specific project nation.”
Frequently Asked Questions - Eden Reforestation Projects.
