The best European neobanks, payments and investing apps

Neobanks, brokers and payment apps, and how deposits are actually protected

What separates a European-regulated app from a global one is jurisdiction, not marketing: every tool on this page answers to a specific national regulator — BaFin in Germany, the FCA in the United Kingdom, the Bank of Lithuania, the Bank of Spain, and others — each keeping a public register of exactly what licence a firm holds. Several operate under shared EU directives that let a firm authorised in one EEA state, Estonia in Lightyear’s case or the Netherlands in bunq’s, offer its service across the bloc through “passporting” rights rather than a fresh licence per country. That shared rulebook, not one unified licence, is what actually connects a list spanning Stockholm, Vilnius and London; the regulators, currencies and deposit schemes still differ by country.

The bank-versus-e-money distinction this site checks on every review page is real, not fine print for its own sake:

• Licensed bank — deposits are backed by a statutory guarantee. Under the EU’s Deposit Guarantee Schemes Directive (2014/49/EU), eligible deposits at a bank authorised in the EU or EEA are protected up to €100,000 per depositor, per institution, payable within days of a failure.
• UK equivalent — the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, whose limit the Prudential Regulation Authority raised from £85,000 to £120,000, effective 1 December 2025.
• Electronic money institution (EMI) — takes no deposits, and neither scheme covers it. It must instead “safeguard” customer funds, typically by ring-fencing them at a separate bank or insuring them — meant to return money after insolvency, but without the statutory fund or fixed payout timeline a bank deposit carries.

Day to day, the more visible rule is the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2, Directive (EU) 2015/2366), requiring strong customer authentication — typically a biometric check or one-time code — on most online payments and logins, to cut card and account fraud. The UK left before PSD2’s later provisions applied, but the FCA carried an equivalent standard into UK law, which is why a UK app asks for the same kind of extra verification step as an EU one.

None of this shows on a homepage screenshot, which is why checking it is part of building this page:

• Ownership — who actually owns and controls a company today.
• A real, dated price — one live figure rather than a marketing price.
• Regulatory status, from the register itself — whether a tool is a licensed bank, an e-money institution, or an authorised investment firm, and which protection scheme, if any, applies to money held with it.

None of this is financial advice; it is regulatory status worth verifying independently before moving money anywhere.