New visual identity, new formulas, new positioning: BforBank today presented its new online banking offer. This is a 180 degree turn, abandoning the heritage clientele for a very generalized public. Here’s what we know about the new offering.
My private online bank. When launching its 100% online bank in 2009, Crdit Agricole chose to build a high-end image, clearly aimed at senior executives and entrepreneurs. Without much success: 15 years later, barely more than 200,000 clients have joined BforBank, despite the most recent attempts to expand the target. At the same time, Boursorama Banque, for example, has convinced more than 5 million clients…
Should this be considered recognition of a positioning error? Still, the new BforBank identityPresented today following the update of its website and which should become official in the coming days, it takes the almost opposite option, clearly aimed at young people and, in general, at all those who have limited banking needs.
This desire for democratization is expressed in the new logo (a stylized frog head) and in the colors chosen for this new graphic universe, which abandons the usual brown for pastel tones.
But we also find, and above all, traces of it in the new catalog.
Until now, BforBank required its new clients to prove 1,600 euros of income to obtain a Visa Premier card. This is not the case. All your offer is now accessible no income conditions.
Online banking is taking advantage of this to get rid of the traditional division between Visa Classic, Premier and Infinite. They are replaced by two letters from homeincluded in the two new formulas BforBASICFree and BforZENcharges 4 euros a month.
The end of overdrafts and checkbooks
Let’s start with the common points between both offers. The first cards: if they are distinguished by color (blue for the first, sea green for the second), the two new cards are of the same nature: Visa immediate debit and systematic authorization.
Top 3 in our online banking comparison
Excluded: Up to 230 offered
Excluded: up to 200 free + 5% booklet for 3 months
Hello Prime: Up to 180 free + 6 months 1
This authorization, even for the paid card, will allow the account to operate in 100% online mode, with account updating in real time. This use of systematic authorization was also imperative, since BforBank does not grant more overdraft authorizations your new clients. And, therefore, no more checkbooks either. A choice that brings you closer to the offers of payment entities, such as Lydia or Nickel, and nobanks (Ma French Bank, Revolut, N26).
The best of mobile banking
Other points in common: both packages are integrated a virtual cardallowing in particular to pay online without revealing the plastic card number, as well as the free issuance of instant transfers and mobile payment Apple Pay and Google Pay.
The BforZEN offer at a glance
For their 4 euros per month, customers who choose to the BforZEN offer Logically it will have a little more than in the basic offer:
- higher withdrawal limits (1000 euros vs. 500 euros) and payouts (3000 euros vs. 1500 euros);
- free payments outside the euro zone, up to 1,000 euros per month (1.95% of the amount paid beyond);
- 5 free cash withdrawals per month in the Eurozone, compared to just 1 for the BforBASIC offer (1 Euro per additional withdrawal);
- travel, snow and mountain insurance and assistance;
- a personalized annual report, with no further details at this stage.
A catalog reduced to what is strictly necessary
The drastic changes introduced by BforBank also affect the rest of the catalog. Regarding savings and investment, one of the brand’s historical strengths, the offer is remains have a strict minimum: an account in a Bfor+ savings account, exceptionally remunerated at 5% gross until the end of the year, but at 0.60% gross at a fixed rate. Therefore, exit the life insurance contract, which has no longer been marketed since February 8, 2023, the PEA and the securities account, and even the Livret A and the LDDS.
Another product that is disappearing: the real estate loan that has no longer been marketed since April 2022. BforBank, however, maintains a personal loan offer, proposed in collaboration with Sofinco, another brand of the Crdit Agricole group.
Online banking: comparison of offers
