C24 Bank Review [2024 English Guide]

C24 Bank Review Overview

We found C24 bank’s* checking account a great option for everyone who is fine without English support.

In our review, C24 achieved an overall score of 6.9 out of 10. It lost 2 points due to a lack of English support and 0.8 points for poor customer service.

Otherwise, C24 is the best option for everyone looking for a day-to-day banking account. It’s the only bank in Germany that offers tons of features and a great mobile app for free.

Table of Contents

Pros and Cons of C24 Bank Account

Pros	Cons
Zero fees with no minimum monthly deposit	Poor customer service
2.25% interest on your money in your check-in account	Only 4 free ATM withdrawals per month
2.25% interest on daily account (Tagesgeldkonto)	No physical branches
Cashback: You get points on each transaction. These points can be converted into cash.	No trading account
Free pockets: You can create multiple subaccounts with their own IBANs for free.	No credit card
Amazing app: C24 offers a top-rated modern mobile app with a simple interface.	No English support
75 € new customer bonus	You pay 1.75% of the cash deposit in fee.
Deposit protection up to 100,000 €
Good for travelers: Make payments all across the world for free.
Contact customer support via in-app chat, email, or phone.

Summary of C24 checking account services

C24 offers three types of checking bank accounts. You can find the services they offer in the table below.

The C24 Smart account is a free option and suitable for most people.

	C24 Smart	C24 Plus	C24 Max
Fee/month	Free	5.90 €	9.90 €
Pockets (sub-accounts)	4	6	8
Cashback	0,05%	0,1%	0,2%
Promotional cashback	Up to 2.5%	Up to 5%	Up to 10%
Overdraft facility from 7.49% pa	up to 10k €	up to 10k €	up to 10k €
Free ATM withdrawals per month (2€ afterward)	4	6	8
Interest rate on checking account (up to 50,000 €)	2.25% p.a.	2.25% p.a.	2.25% p.a.
Interest rates in pockets (up to 5,000 €)	2.25% p.a.	2.25% p.a.	2.25% p.a.
Daily interest rate (up to 100,000 €)	2.25% p.a.	2.25% p.a.	2.25% p.a.
Real-time transfers	Free	Free	Free
Free physical Mastercard	✔️	✔️	✔️
Arag buyer protection	✖️	✔️	✔️
Check24 Gold membership	✖️	✖️	✔️

Is C24 bank safe?

C24 Bank has a German banking license and is part of the statutory deposit protection scheme (Gesetzlichen Einlagensicherung).

The statutory deposit protection comes into play if the bank goes bankrupt. It covers up to 100,000€ per customer.

NOTE: The 100k€ coverage includes all your balances at C24 Bank, i.e., your checking account, all subaccounts (pockets), and the daily account (Tagesgeldkonto).

So, if you have more than 100k €, consider opening multiple bank accounts with different banks. This way, you won’t lose all your money if one of the banks goes bankrupt.

How did we review C24 Bank?

The table below shows you how it scored in different areas.

Parameter	Weightage	Score out of 10
Customer service	20%	6
Ease to open an account	10%	10
English support	20%	0 (No English support)
Fees	20%	9
Real-time transfer	5%	10
Overdraft facility	5%	10
Technology	10%	10
Special features	10%	9
Overall score		6.9

Below you’ll find more details about each category.

C24 customer service

We rated C24 customer service 6 out of 10. The technology behind C24 banking is solid, so customers usually have no problems.

However, if they do face a problem, customer service is not satisfactory. In the worst case scenarios, customers received no answer for several days.

Additionally, C24 doesn’t offer 24/7 customer service. Like most German banks, customer care is available Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM.

What did we consider?

• Customer reviews: We examined C24 customer reviews on Trustpilot and Finanzfluss. We filtered the reviews by the term “customer service.”
• Issue resolution: How quickly an issue was resolved, as well as customer support expertise.
• 24×7 availability: Problems can arise any day or time. Thus, another important factor is the 24×7 availability of customer service. 
• 20% overall weightage: We gave customer service 20% weightage. The reason for high weightage is that many people have only one or two bank accounts. If C24 is your main account, you need it to work seamlessly. And if you face any problems, it’s vital that they are resolved promptly.

What did we find?

C24 customer reviews

• Trustpilot: 4.9 out of 5 (10,177 reviews)
• Finanzfluss: 3.8 out of 5 (112 reviews)

Positive reviews summarized

• Opening a new account: Customers highly rated C24’s account opening service. They could open a new account online within a few minutes without hassle.
• Moving an account is quick and easy
• Mobile app: Customers are impressed by the ease of use of the app and the features it offers.
• Pockets: Pockets are a special feature of C24. You can create pockets to organize your money. Each pocket has a different IBAN number, so it’s like having multiple accounts instead of one. Almost every customer liked this feature.

Negative reviews summarized

• Account blocked: Many customers complain that their accounts were suddenly inaccessible or blocked. They have contacted customer service several times without resolution.
• Transactions were either blocked or took longer than expected: A few customers also experienced problems with their transactions not going through and staying in “reserved” status for more than four days. Again, customer service didn’t resolve the issue after multiple emails and calls.
• Standard reply: Many customers received standard replies from customer service on chat and email. These replies were not useful in solving their problems.
• Didn’t receive the 75 € bonus: C24 offers new customers a 75 € joining bonus. Most customers receive it within a few days, but a few don’t. They have to contact customer service for a resolution.
• Long waiting times: Depending on the day and time you contact C24’s customer care, you can expect to wait 5 to 30 minutes before you talk to a customer representative.

Ease to open an account with C24 bank

We gave C24 10 out of 10 for ease of opening an account. You can open an account online in just a few minutes.

C24 offers three different ways to verify yourself. 

• Video Ident
• Going to a post office
• Verifying using an existing German bank account

Does C24 bank offer English support?

As C24 currently offers no English support, it received no points for this parameter. English app and customer support are critical for expats who can’t speak German.

What fees does the C24 checking account charge?

C24 offers

• a free checking account without a minimum deposit every month.
• free payment all across the world.

This is why we gave C24 9 out of 10 points on its fee structure.

We took one point because of the following reasons

• ATM withdrawals: Only 4 ATM withdrawals are free. After that, you pay 2€ per ATM withdrawal. Most people don’t withdraw money so often from ATMs. So, we think 4 times per month should be enough. But there are German banks, like DKB, Commerz Bank, etc., that offer unlimited ATM withdrawals.
• Cash deposit: If you have to deposit cash often, C24 is not for you. You pay 1.75% of the deposited amount in fees.

NOTE: You can use C24 within and outside Europe to withdraw money. The fee conditions are the same as in Germany.

You can find the complete fee schedule of C24 here.

Does the C24 checking account offer real-time transfer?

We gave C24 a 10 out of 10 for its free real-time transfer service. With this service, you can send money to anyone and anytime in seconds.

Many German banks charge you a fee for real-time transfers. Moreover, PayPal offers free real-time transfers only to family and friends.

Does C24 Bank offer an overdraft facility?

We gave C24 a 10 out of 10 on the overdraft facility because it offers a low interest rate of 7.49% to 11.49%. Many fintech banks, like Revolut, don’t offer overdraft facilities.

How good are C24 Bank’s mobile app and online banking?

C24 gets 10 out of 10 on app design, usability, and intuitiveness. Here are the C24 mobile app ratings on Playstore and App Store.

• Playstore: 4.8 (30.8k people reviewed it)
• Appstore: 4.8 (33.1k people reviewed it)

Customers also rated the C24 mobile app highly in Trustpilot and Finanzfluss review comments.

In our test, the mobile app worked seamlessly. The user interface was self-explanatory and worked as expected. The app layout is practical and beautiful.

C24 checking account’s features you’ll love

C24 offers several innovative, practical features, so we gave it a 9 out of 10.

Here are the features that catch our attention

• Cashback: C24 has partnered with several companies, such as Netflix, Lieferando, Shell, etc. Under this partnership, you earn points for every transaction with the partner company, which can be converted into real cash. 
• Pockets: You can open free subaccounts with their own IBAN for free. These subaccounts are called “pockets” in C24. The benefit of creating pockets is the ease of managing and allocating money. You can create a separate subaccount for the money you are saving for a holiday, for buying a car, etc.
• Joint accounts: To take pockets to the next level, you can invite your friends who have a C24 account to share a pocket. This way, you both have access to the pocket and can use it as you wish. For example, saving for a trip together, sharing household expenses, etc.
• Spending analysis: Like many German bank apps, C24 also offers spending analysis. It’s not perfect, but it works quite well in identifying most transactions and contracts. What we find good is that C24 is actively working on this feature to identify more and more firms and transactions.
• Automatic options to save money: You can set up several ways to automatically save money in one of your pockets. For example, C24 rounds off the transactions to the closest integer and saves the rounded-up amount to a pocket. Another option is to distribute your salary among different pockets automatically. You can allocate the amount based on a percentage or a fixed sum.