Tre notizie, tre settimane, tre nomi diversi. Lo stesso problema di fondo.
Three news items, three weeks, three different names. The same underlying problem.
On April 2, 2026, the Italian Competition and Market Authority – the Italian Antitrust – imposed on Revolut a total fine of over 11 million euros for unfair commercial practices.
On April 13, Bnext closed the accounts of all its consumer clients, switching to do something completely different.
And a few months earlier, in August 2025, the Dutch Central Bank had inflicted on Bunq a fine of 2.6 million euros for serious deficiencies in anti-money laundering controls – the third time in a few years that the same institution was sanctioned for the same reasons.
Those who looked at this news as separate episodes missed the most important thing: they are not separate episodes. They are symptoms of the same structural phenomenon.
Analysis of the three fintech banking fine cases: what do they mean for you?
Revolut and the Italian Antitrust
The AGCM sanction is divided into three distinct blocks, each of which tells something different.
The first – 5 million euros – concerns misleading messages about “zero commission” investments: Revolut promoted the absence of costs without adequately communicating the existence of additional commissions, hidden spreads and operational limitations. The real conditions emerged only after the user was already inside the product.
The second block – another 5 million – concerns payment account management: according to the Antitrust, Revolut did not provide adequate information on when, how and why an account could be limited or blocked.
The third – 1.5 million – concerns the Italian IBAN issue: Revolut operates with a Lithuanian IBAN (initials LT), not Italian (IT), and did not clearly communicate to its clients what this entailed in terms of rejections from Italian payment systems, nor did it explain the real requirements to eventually obtain an Italian IBAN as a replacement.
Bnext and the consumer account closure
The Spanish fintech, founded in 2017 and reaching hundreds of thousands of retail clients, announced the closure of all personal accounts starting April 13, 2026. Users had a few days to empty the funds – or lose them in the reimbursement process. The company then repositioned itself as a B2B financial infrastructure provider.
It’s not a bankruptcy in the technical sense of the term, but something that for many clients has equivalent practical consequences: funds blocked, automatic payments interrupted, the urgent need to open an alternative account within 72 hours.
Bunq and the repeated AML fine
The Dutch neobank – often presented as one of the “most serious” European fintechs – was sanctioned by the Central Bank of the Netherlands for 2.6 million euros for serious deficiencies in anti-money laundering controls.
It’s not the first time: between 2018 and 2023, the same authority had already conducted five inspections on Bunq, identifying serious violations in four out of five cases.
The common pattern: why it happens and how to protect yourself from online banking disservices
The fintech business model is built on acquiring customers at low marginal cost: no branches, no physical staff, digital onboarding in a few minutes, IBAN in 24 hours.
This model works very well for scaling, but much less well for managing the level of compliance that European regulators expect from any entity handling consumer money.
Traditional banks have built their compliance infrastructures over decades – often in response to scandals, sanctions, trials.
They have legal offices with hundreds of people, transaction monitoring systems calibrated on millions of real cases, due diligence procedures developed through years of dialogue with supervisory authorities. It’s an expensive, slow infrastructure, sometimes frustrating for the client – but solid.
Fintechs replicate the visible part of that structure – the app, the interface, the account – without having yet built the invisible part: the operational depth of compliance.
And when a thorough regulatory inspection arrives, or a volume of clients that exceeds the real management capacity, that structural fragility becomes visible.
There’s also a second level that directly concerns those who use these services.
When a traditional bank blocks an account, there are precise procedures, guaranteed times, a physical interlocutor, regulated communication obligations.
When a fintech blocks an account – as documented in thousands of reports received by Altroconsumo and Bank of Italy in recent years – the client often finds themselves interacting with a chatbot, waiting days for an email response, and not receiving satisfactory explanations on what happened and when funds will become available again.
If you’re using a fintech as your main account for your capital, or if you have doubts about the solidity of the institution managing your funds, the GloboBanks team offers a first free consultation to evaluate the most solid alternatives available today – real banks, with full banking license, centuries-old history and physical presence.
The structural difference between fintechs and traditional banks
There’s a fundamental distinction that fintech marketing has helped obscure in recent years, and it’s worth making it explicit.
A traditional bank with full banking license is subject to stringent capital requirements: it must maintain capital reserves proportionate to deposits, is subject to regular inspections by national supervisory authorities, participates in deposit guarantee schemes and has detailed communication obligations toward clients and regulators.
Many fintechs and neobanks instead operate as payment institutions or electronic money institutions, categories regulated significantly differently.
They are not required to maintain the same capital reserves, their funds are not always protected by national deposit guarantee schemes in the same way, and the perimeter of verifications to which they are subjected is historically less intensive.
This doesn’t mean fintechs are necessarily dangerous for small daily amounts.
It means they are not built to manage significant wealth – and that those who use them as the main deposit point for relevant capital are assuming a structural risk often not perceived.
What changes for those using these services today
For those who use Revolut, Bunq or N26 for daily operational expenses – subscriptions, small payments, fast transactions – the picture is not alarming. These tools do what they were designed for, and they do it decently.
The problem is different.
In recent months we’ve received calls from entrepreneurs who used these platforms as their main account, transacted tens or hundreds of thousands of euros through them, and found themselves with funds blocked, documentation requests with 48-hour deadlines, or accounts closed without an explanation that made sense.
They were structured entrepreneurs, with legitimate businesses, who had simply chosen the wrong tool for amounts that tool is not built to manage.
This is why GloboBanks exists.
Over the years we’ve opened over 450 bank accounts for entrepreneurs, professionals and families worldwide, with over 90 million euros transacted through international banking institutions.
We work with banks with full banking license: Swiss private institutions with centuries of history, top-tier American banks that only open accounts on direct referral, institutions in Singapore, UK and Panama selected based on regulatory solidity even before service offering.
Institutions where there’s a relationship manager with a name, a direct number, and real knowledge of your situation.
The practical difference for those opening an account through GloboBanks:
A real interlocutor, not a chatbot. If you have a problem, you call a person who already knows your profile and your account history.
Clear deposit guarantees and compliance structures built over generations, not hastily updated to comply with new European regulations under regulator pressure.
Access to products that fintechs don’t offer: credit lines, premium cards, wealth management, investment products reserved for bank clients.
Long-term stability. The banks we work with don’t change the rules overnight, don’t close accounts because an algorithm found something unusual, don’t disappear or change business models.
The news of recent weeks – Revolut fined, Bnext closed, Bunq sanctioned for the third time – are not isolated episodes.
They are the signal that regulatory pressure on European fintechs is destined to increase, not calm down.
Let’s be clear, those who have their main account on these platforms are in danger and those who keep relevant capital or transit significant amounts through them are assuming a risk that a real bank doesn’t entail.
Want to understand if your current banking structure is adequate – or if you’re keeping serious wealth in places that weren’t built to safeguard it?
Thanks to the GloboBanks team you can obtain a free strategic analysis of your situation.
You’ll exit the call knowing which banks with full licenses are compatible with your profile, in which jurisdictions it makes sense to open an account, what the real minimum deposits and concrete timelines are – and the names of the institutions we recommend, so you can verify firsthand that they are solid, high-level banks.
Delaying and continuing with your current structure can cost you:
Capital blocked at the worst moment, without a real interlocutor to resolve the problem with
Loss of access to products and services that serious banks reserve for their clients
The discovery – too late – that the platform you were using changed the rules, raised requirements, or simply shut down
Write at this link to book your free strategic consultation.
