neon duo Review: why choose this Swiss joint account?

What if we were to “legalize” our bank account situation in Switzerland? Or should I say “formalize” or even “simplify”…

A bank account in one of our two names…

Since we moved to the 100% online bank neon, we’ve only ever had a single bank account in one of our two names.

We each paid our salary into it, with which we paid all our outgoings. Simple. Efficient.

We did, however, get a few questions from one of our two employers, who soon accepted the situation when he checked that the account did indeed belong to the registered spouse.

Except that… if you read the small print of the neon account properly, only money destined for the beneficial owner (i.e. the one who has the business relationship with neon bank) can go into their bank account.

I wasn’t too concerned about this up to now, as we’re married, and the HBL legal side didn’t say much…

Then came problems with transferring money…

Then, one of us began to make large money transfers for business reasons. We had to prove our legitimacy by showing associated contracts. And there, we had our first wake-up call as we weren’t supposed to have incoming and outgoing transactions that are not in the name of the account holder…

Once, twice, and that was enough to raise the question of salaries. Not OK!

If we wanted to continue, we would have had to complete a form for each deposit in order to prove that the money coming in definitely belonged to the account holder (in order to absolve the bank of all responsibility) … that’s going to be a lot of paperwork!

So, it was time (and reasonable, I admit) for us to properly formalize our situation.

But then, a subsidiary question…

Alternative joint accounts (and a comparison of them)

I’m going to put together a dedicated article for you comparing all the available Swiss joint accounts, and setting out which is the best.

To give you a quick overview in the meantime, here is my Swiss joint account comparison in three points:

• BCV (and other cantonal banks): they offer things like “free joint account if you maintain a minimum account balance of CHF 15'000 at all times, otherwise CHF 15/month”
• neon duo: then there’s neon and its 100% online joint account, for CHF 6/month
• WIR Bank: and there’s the new “Top bank package” from WIR Bank at CHF 0/month, even for a joint account!

My reasoning was first simple, and then a dilemma.

It was simple to rule out BCV: I don’t want to leave CHF 15'000 sitting in an account so that they can make a return from my money! Because by putting this amount of 15kCHF into the stock market, even if only at 6%, that would provide a return of CHF 900.

After that, came a dilemma: on one side neon with its neon duo joint account option, but CHF 6/month (as CHF 3/month/partner) … and on the other side the Top bank package.

I was on the verge of ditching neon and going with WIR Bank…

But on thinking about it again, I thought:

• neon needs to be the best and competitive with the quality of their products, because they don’t (yet) have any mortgages or other products that would enable them to maintain working capital with the risk of resting on their laurels
• Whereas WIR Bank’s mobile app is quite outdated, and doesn’t really get developed
• Some examples: the integration of Wise into neon, the onboarding user experience (incl. on neon duo) is really great

And there’s another point that adds to my reluctance to use WIR Bank’s joint account: I already have my mortgage with them, and I’ve always wanted to make sure that I’m not 100% tied to one single banking institution, in order to retain my negotiating power. Later on, I took my VIAC mortgage to them, so without doing any negotiation. But anyway…

Also, as we’ve seen with several banks in the past, they launch an attractive product, then after a while, they change the conditions. While with neon, at least, I know that there’s a fee right from the start. On this point, I’m now waiting to see if WIR Bank will play fair over the long term.

But… CHF 6/month… that hurts when you’re frugal…

But despite this, I decided to test out the neon duo joint account over 12 months, and then I’ll re-evaluate the situation.

In the meantime, I view these CHF 72 as support for the development of neon bank (for now, anyway haha), who I’ve really liked ever since they started out.

Opening a neon duo joint account (in 6 minutes!)

As usual, I’ve taken a few screenshots for you of how we created our joint account on neon duo.

While the user experience isn’t normally the most important thing for me, given my financial tools, it was a joy to be able to open my neon duo account from my sofa in less than… 6 minutes!!

Click on 'Profile' > 'Accounts', then 'Open joint account'

Summary of the advantages of neon duo

You'll be eligible for a neon duo debit card (one for each partner)

Then you just need to:

1. Check your personal details
2. Confirm your address (it must be the same as your partner, if you’re a couple, or the other person with whom you live)
3. Generate an invitation code for your partner
4. Select the option why you’re opening a joint account (personal use such as paying your joint rent or credit cards, owning and managing assets for a third-party account like a charity, business payments, or payments for the third-party account)
5. Accept the various general conditions
6. And… that’s it! Then all you need to do is wait 2-3 days for each of the two people to receive their respective credit cards

Even nicer: you can see where you are in the queue for your account to be created!

Don’t forget to transfer standing orders and eBills

We plan to use neon duo as our only bank account. So we had to transfer all our standing orders and eBills from one of our private accounts.

I therefore got out my old change of bank checklist which works well for making sure I don’t forget anything.

FAQ

neon ebill (with neon duo)

I wondered how I was going to be able to transfer my current and future eBill payments between my private neon account and my neon duo account.

In fact, the process is relatively simple:

1. Cancel all your future eBill payments on your private account
2. That makes them reappear as “to be paid” in the eBill section
3. Once your neon duo account has been created, go back into eBill (via the link in the neon app), and go to pay a bill
4. At the payment stage, you just need to select “Neon joint account”, and, that’s it!

Explanation of how eBill works with the neon duo joint account

Select your private account or neon duo joint account, depending on which one you want to pay with

Bank neon, neon, or neon banque?

I’m often asked if these are different entities. Well no, they’re just the different marketing names depending on the language, but they all refer to the online bank neon which you’ll find through this URL.

Conclusion about neon duo

After two weeks of using neon duo, I must say I’m really quite won over by their solution. The way you can move quickly between private and joint accounts is really well thought out in their ebanking, as are money transfers between these two accounts.

Extracting all my joint account transactions into CSV format works as it should (so that I can do my tracking in YNAB).

Likewise, the eBill system lets me choose between private account and joint account in order to know which money I want to use for my eBill payments.

The only downside is the CHF 3 cost per partner, totaling CHF 6/month. If it’s not free, I was thinking more like 3-4 Swiss francs maximum.

So we’re going to try out neon duo for the next twelve months, and then we’ll review things again.

How about you, what joint account have you chosen to manage your couple’s personal finances in Switzerland?

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