Banking Without Borders
00:00:00 · Jonny Pease, Jan Watermann
[00:00:00] S0: Okay, so Trading 212 sent an email this week telling everyone that the 1.5% cashback offer is ending on the 3rd of December. But we're gonna look at the options in both the UK and EU to try to find an alternative. And there are options for you, except like all good things, they come with their catches. But first, Jan, why do you think they canned the cashback offer? Because it was very clearly a popular product. Maybe that was the problem though. [00:00:24] S1: Jonny, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. It was way too expensive for them. And the problem starts with this being a debit card and not a credit card. Debit card interchange fees are kept at 0.2% within the UK. And that just limits the amount of money they can earn with them. We've had had a look at their accounts, and in 2025, trading 212, the UK Limited company, they earned 1.68 million pounds through debit card income. And the same time they've had an advertising and marketing expense of 51.5 million. So that's literally, hmm, what's that? Um yeah, I think the card income is just about 3% of what their total marketing expense was. Um now we need to imagine how much they've probably given away to encourage users to use that uh that cashback offer. It was insanely popular, and I think that was the reason it's not there anymore.
00:01:18 · Jonny Pease, Jan Watermann
[00:01:18] S0: I think it was inevitable from the beginning of this year, Jan, that this offer was coming to an end, right? Because they made you invest the entirety of the cashback. Like prior to that, you actually got to have some of it in your account, and then you could like withdraw it if you wanted to. And then they make you take out a subscription on the card. I'm surprised that they're ending it in a way because I actually thought, okay, this is them just refining the product, just making sure that the people that are using it are really interested in it, and also they are trying to ascertain more money from it because they can get obviously revenue every time your subscription goes out, they can generate a bit of money from that. Maybe that was a chance at trying to see if they could make more money from this product, but clearly that was actually the beginning of the end. [00:02:00] S1: Yeah, absolutely right. So it's a marketing marketing expense, and they just started adding hurdles um to make less people take advantage of this cashback offer, and now they've just figured, hey, it's too expensive. And I I see a lot of other fintech companies doing that in the future. It's a marketing expense, and it makes a lot of sense to have an offer like this in the beginning to funnel people through the door, you know, make them aware of your your product. It would have worked. Generate a large user base, essentially. Yeah, it works really well. And then once you have enough, you know, you might invest your money elsewhere.
00:02:31 · Jonny Pease
[00:02:31] S0: People were talking about this just across the internet, across YouTube. There was a lot of chatter around it. And initially, like they've obviously, I think, maybe roadmapped this with the initial launch of just being like pure cashback, purely the most compelling product or option available possible. And then slowly it's distilled down to the point where you are forcibly having to invest the cash back that you earn. But still, like jump in the comments. This is still, let us know what you think, but this is still at its, I arguably worst state. You know, still a great product. And that's Jan what's so sad about this. I'm also curious to hear from people. Were you like encouraged by this to invest? Because ultimately that's what trading two one trading two on two wanted from you. They wanted you to invest in their brokerage product. Um, did that get people investing, Jan? I do wonder. You know, and I do wonder what the ramifications of this will look like for trading two on two. Could it hurt their business model? Could people stop using it? Are there people that were purely mate using just the card and not investing? I think so.
00:03:32 · Jan Watermann
[00:03:32] S1: I think a bunch of people we've literally had a lot of YouTube um commenters sharing ideas and thoughts on how to literally avoid the investments. Like that was possible in the past. I mean, there was a workaround. We can show that on the screen really quick. It's simple, it was possible to um yeah, find a workaround around this investment feature. Um, so people were clearly trying to be creative to figure out ways to not have to invest their cash back. What I'm wondering right now, Jonny, is do you think this product is now terrible? Should people stop using that, or is it does it still have some you know, uh right to exist?
00:04:02 · Jonny Pease, Jan Watermann
[00:04:02] S0: Obviously, from a rewards perspective, and I really think very strongly that you should be rewarded for your spending, considering you know, banks, merchants are making money from every time you tap your card, so why shouldn't you as a result? So from a yeah, obviously from a rewarding your spending perspective, this sucks. Clearly. You're not going to be rewarded anymore. But arguably, Jan, from a travel spending perspective, it still sits really high up the table, doesn't it? You know, if you think about it from a weekday spending, if you're using this card and you're spending in a foreign currency, you're getting the interbank rate, which is as good as it gets. You know, that you know, why's offer the interbank rate, but every time there's an exchange, there's a variable fee. So trading two on two sits above. As an international spending card, and even for withdrawing money internationally, and it's still significant, isn't it? I think you you get up to 400 pounds or 400 euros, if I'm if I'm not wrong, of ATM withdrawals with this card as well. It's modern Revolut has to offer. [00:04:57] S1: And some plans. [00:04:59] S0: It is, isn't it? [00:05:00] S1: Some paint plans.
00:05:00 · Jan Watermann, Jonny Pease
[00:05:00] S1: Some paint plans. [00:05:01] S0: Shocking. That's shocking. Um, so I think in certain subsets of areas of the world, depending on what's available to you, yes, this might still be an outstanding card for travel. You know, personally, I can get rewarded from in the UK at least from Lloyd's Ultra, for example, when spending internationally or domestically. I can get 1% cash back. So that would arguably be better. Although, Jan, if we get into the weeds here and forgive me if you're watching or listening to this, you know, one could say, well, Lloyd's Ultra offers MasterCards FX rates. Trading two on two is the interbank rate, which means I'm gonna have to pay a slight markup on MasterCards rates and then offset that against my cash. But it's minor, in the end, it might just be on deposit scout.com right now. I'll put a link in the description box, but we have a travel cards page and we have a rewards cards page, and we do get into the nuance and the detail there. So if you are someone that really wants to look at what the differences could be on spending internationally with trading two on two or spending with um, you know, like a Lloyd's Ultra that's using the MasterCard FX rate, you can have a look at that on Trading 212. I'll put a link in the description box below for you. But Jan, there are, of course, there are of course in the European Union and in the UK options available for people that have unfortunately now not got a reward card to spend with, right? And and we we want to lay that out for people.