New visual identity, new formulas, new positioning: BforBank today unveiled its new online banking offer. It is making a 180 turn, abandoning the heritage clientele for a very general public target. Here’s what we know about the new offer.
My private online bank. By launching its 100% online bank in 2009, Crdit Agricole chose to build a high-end image, clearly targeting senior executives and entrepreneurs. Without much success: 15 years later, barely more than 200,000 customers have joined BforBank, despite more recent attempts to broaden the target. At the same time, Boursorama Banque, for example, has convinced more than 5 million customers…
Should this be seen as recognition of a positioning error? Still, the new identity of BforBankunveiled today following the update of its website and which should be made official in the coming days, takes the almost opposite option, clearly targeting young people and, more generally, all those who have limited banking needs .
This desire for democratization is expressed in the new logo (a stylized frog’s head) and in the colors chosen for this new graphic universe, which abandons the usual brown for pastel shades.
But we also find, and above all, traces of it in the new catalog.
Until now, BforBank required its new customers to provide proof of 1,600 euros of income to obtain a Visa Premier card. This is no longer the case. Its entire offering is now accessible without 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 house cardsincluded in the two new formulas BforBASICfree, and BforZENcharges 4 euros per month.
The end of overdrafts and checkbooks
Let’s start with the common points between the two offers. The cards first: if they are distinguished by the 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.
This authorization, including 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 its new customers. And, therefore, no more checkbooks either. A choice that brings it closer to the offers of payment institutions, such as Lydia or Nickel, and nobanks (Ma French Bank, Revolut, N26).
The best of mobile banking
Other points in common: both packages integrate a virtual cardallowing in particular to pay online without revealing the plastic card number, as well as the free issue of instant transfers and mobile payment Apple Pay and Google Pay.
The BforZEN offer in brief
For their 4 euros monthly, customers opting for the BforZEN offer will logically have a little more than in the basic offer:
- higher withdrawal limits (1000 euros compared to 500 euros) and payments (3000 euros compared to 1500 euros);
- free payments outside the euro zone, up to 1000 euros per month (1.95% of the amount paid beyond);
- 5 free cash withdrawals per month in the euro zone, compared to only 1 for the BforBASIC offer (1 euro per withdrawal beyond that);
- travel, snow and mountain insurance and assistance;
- a personalized annual report, without further details at this stage.
A catalog reduced to what is strictly necessary
The drastic changes made by BforBank also concern the rest of the catalog. On the savings and investment side, one of the brand’s historic strong points, the offer is reduced to the bare minimum: an account in a Bfor+ savings account, exceptionally remunerated at 5% gross until the end of the year, but 0.60% gross at a steady rate. Exit, therefore, 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 which has already been no longer marketed since April 2022. BforBank, however, retains a personal loan offer, offered in partnership with Sofinco, another brand of the Crdit Agricole group.
Online banking: comparison of offers