Neobank Xinja to close accounts, return banking licence
The fintech will now give customers seven days notice before closing all high interest Stash accounts, after it banned new customers from joining in March. Accounts will no longer earn interest effective immediately, and cards and payment facilities will be terminated from January 15.
"Eric Wilson says the Xinja Bank business model is based on “win-win.” Simply put, Xinja think that if they treat their customers well and help them make more out of their money, their customers will stay with them longer, take out more of their products, and recommend them to their friends.Sep 19, 2019"
Never trust anyone who says win-win. :)
As a customer, I think they held their end of the bargain. The interest rate is always higher than most. Executives well fed.
They just had no products and no income.
So it’s only not a win-win for shareholders.
I knew it was going to happen.
How did you know? Please elaborate.
I mean it was fairly obvious they would go bust. They had high expenses & almost no income. They should have branched out in to CC or home loans to stay afloat.
Xinja probably had the worst app out of all these "neo-banks", barely usable. I can see why they are one of the first to collapse. At least on the user side, Up seems to have it more under control.
Up's app is in a league of it's own. Best app out there by far.
I hope they survive and I expect they will as they can probably get more backing from Bendigo if needed.
If I didn't already have 90% of my bills/payments setup in my legacy bank, I'd absolutely swap everything to Up.
The rate of progress in adding new features has been staggering
That's like saying I could move to a bigger and better house - but alas, all my furniture is in my current house.
I think the other neobanks are probably in a better position. It's always a bad sign when you have to close off applications for new accounts as this usually indicates you can't even break even on your existing customer base.
Could have been worse. I was wondering if Xinja would be the one to test how the federal government deposit guarantee actually works, like how soon you can get your money back when a bank collapses.
Agree, I'm happy with all the interest I have earned from Xinja, and they let me transfer all the money out instead of declaring bankrupt
Moving to setup a robin style trading platform… lol.
I closed my account several months ago. I was disappointed that they were behind implementing PayID, and the lack of outgoing PayID method outweigh the benefit of higher interest rates than their competitors. Their app didn't phase me.
I speculate because they don't have home loan products and other visible revenue stream to sustain. Relying on captial raising only work for so long.
RIP
"He said World Investments took a 20 per cent stake in the neobank which will increase to 40 per cent over time while Xinja's founders retained 40 per cent of the business and expect that to dilute down to around 20 per cent."
Did the founders know it was going to fail and just cashed out much earlier?
Was it there plan all along?
A work colleague urged me to invest in this 18 months ago. "It is guaranteed to go up".
If you invested in it 18 months ago, you would have earned a decent interest till now
Not a deposit, purchasing shares in the company before they float on the stock exchange.
Important question - is it pronounced "Zin-ja"? "Ex-in-ja"??
This is the real reason they failed. No one knew how to pronounce it.
It's definitely EX-inja now
Extinct-Ja
just a meh product. This is the natural order of things
I liked this bank because at one point they chose to keep the interest rate same for existing customers at the expense of loosing new customers. They served me well in the short time they existed. The aggressive ramp down puts me off. A communication coming on 16th saying I won’t get interest starting from 15th, doesn’t sound right. And I have two weeks to move my funds. Makes me think I should probably stick to big banks (even though they have their own issues).
They never said their path to profit so it is always expected.
Home loan interest rates at 2 - 3% it costs millions a year to run a bank. If lending $1m will get you $20k in interest income then it takes $50m in loans (excluding losses) to make $1m. I don't think you can run a small bank for anything less than $10m pa. Therefore you need $500m of deposits plus you need liquidity for people who are accessing cash. Anything less than $1bn of capital you can't run a bank and make a profit.
Volt will follow, 86400 will follow, Up and Revolut are the 2 promising, I rate Revolut higher than others, can’t wait until they launch the investing platform.
What's your basis that you rate Revolut higher than the rest? Business model? App interface? Keen to hear
They offer unlimited no fx fee transfer (subscription required), but you can transfer up to $9000 per month for free. I use international transfer a lot, I compared with TransferWise and Revolut is actually cheaper.
And, they offer crypto exchange, buy bitcoin and other coins easily.
They also offer commodities, you can buy gold and silver and hold in the app.
The app interface is awesome.
I am waiting for their investing platform and the US bank accounts.
Do you use them for domestic transaction? Day to day account? That's my area of interest. Thx
@avoidfullprice: I have never used it as they don’t have payID yet. And even if they have it, I also don’t use it because
I got the homeloan and the offset account at CBA where I bank all of my money and use the account for everyday transactions.
I only transfer the money to my Revolut account when I need to use it.
86400 have home loans, so I wouldn't expect them to close any time soon.
I agree. 86400 have a source of income to keep them somewhat afloat. Volt will definitely collapse.
All the current neobanks will slowly fail except for Paypal. They've been eating up the online payment space for years and have now moved on to online trading.
UP is a partnership between Ferocia & Bendigo Bank so I’d imagine if Up got into trouble Bendigo could rescue them. 86400 have home loan revenue to keep them somewhat afloat. Other NeoBanks such as Hay & Volt are at a risk of collapsing IMO.
Shame. Xinja was decent.
Oh well, the fun has stopped.
I got my money out yesterday morning.
Got an email from them after all done and dusted.
Now to find a reasonable alternative.
Thought xinja was quite ok, was saving in the stash account since they opened it. Where to now for top tote savings rate I ask?
Same as Velocity… they are closing shop as well. No more accumulating Velocity points via them.
Link?
So it begins…