I recently learned that bunq places a €50K limit on IBAN (SEPA) transfers. Why? It turns out that paying someone more than that requires either:
(i) two separate transfers to my own bank account with any other bank (which then allows me to transfer the sum in one transfer to the recipient); or
(ii) transferring the payment to the recipient from my bunq account, but splitting the payment into sub-€50K amounts.
And the split payment cannot be made on the same day! Is that really necessary?
While not a huge deal, neither of these options is particularly practical. It increases the risk of errors. (Both of the transferor and the transferee.)
Even less practical was the advice I received from bunq in a private chat in the app: open a bunq business account and you're good to go. Well, not really. This post here (https://together.bunq.com/d/6635-what-are-my-daily-limits) seems to make clear that even a bunq business account doesn't allow one to transfer more than €50K in a single transfer. (It does seem to allow multiple payments up to €1mio per day.)
In this thread here (https://together.bunq.com/d/3721-why-is-the-maximum-limit-50-000) John Do suggested that "To reduce the liability risk bank almost always set a limit. In most cases this limit is set to 50k (for instance IDEAL). If I'm not mistakes these limits is what banks have agreed together."
Surely that is mistaken for business accounts. ING for example lets users of business accounts transfer up to €5mio in one go (with the same maximum per day). The default is €250K, but user-increasable up to €5mio per transaction (and per day). That seems more reasonable. I'd be happier if bunq ups the maximum to be more in line with other banks. I'd take the bunq business account if bunq did this.
The €50K limit appears to be in line with market practice for consumer banking.
But still, why not remove it? (Other than creating a reason for people to get a bunq business account, obviously, if bunq were to increase the limit for those accounts.) I called ING to find out, and they told me that ING is working on implementing the function for their online banking to go up to €1mio for personal accounts. Not sure when tho, but not too shabby if they do. Will bunq beat them to it?