Neon vs radicant – Which is the best digital bank in 2026?
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(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)
Update November 2025: radicant is closing down. New accounts cannot be created anymore.
Neon and radicant are two digital bank accounts available in Switzerland. Neon started with only banking features but now has some broker-like features. Radicant started directly with both investment and banking features.
Both digital bank accounts have a similar set of banking features. However, their investment features are different, so we will only compare the banking features and fees.
In this article, I compare Neon vs radicant, their fees, features, advantages, and disadvantages. By the end of the article, you should know which one you should use for your banking.
Neon
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Neon is one of the first Swiss digital bank accounts. They have started a new trend of digital mobile bank accounts, and many banks have followed them.
Neon itself is not a bank but rather a bank account (as an application) on top of their custody bank, the Hypothekarbank Lenzburg (HBL), which is a Swiss digital bank account.
Neon is a popular bank account, with more than 200’000 customers. They have been growing really quickly since their inception. And as of 2023, we can even invest with them, with broker-like features.
Neon is available in French, German, Italian, and English.
radicant
radicant is a newer player in the digital banking space. They got their banking license in 2022, and the app was launched to the public in 2023.
radicant can only be used as a mobile app. They have banking features and investing features. Their investing portfolios are focused on sustainable investing and are actively managed.
radicant is a relatively small bank account but has been growing since its inception. They currently have about 18’000 customers. radicant is only available in German and English.
As of November 2025, radicant is closing down and does not accept new customers.
Banking features
We can start by comparing the banking features of Neon vs radicant.
Both banks have all the same standard features that each bank should now have:
- Receive and send money.
- Pay bills (mostly through QR bills)
- View the balance of your account.
- View the transactions from your account.
- Use electronic bills
Both banks also let you use the card with Google Pay and Apple Pay.
One difference is that radicant has a specific TWINT app. Neon, on the other hand, can only use the prepaid TWINT app. This makes radicant much easier to use for people that use TWINT a lot.
With Neon, you cannot hold additional currencies. But Neon lets you transfer many currencies from your bank account. On the other hand, radicant lets you hold EUR and CHF but does not let you transfer money in other currencies.
Neon lets you hold multiple sub-accounts (called Spaces), whereas radicant currently lacks this feature. Neon also lets you transfer money instantly between two neon accounts.
Inside radicant’s app, you will find a carbon tracker that can estimate your carbon usage based on your expenses. This can be useful for people who are particularly focused on sustainability.
Another advantage of Neon is that they are available in English and the three national languages. radicant is only available in English and German.
Finally, for many people, Neon may have an advantage for tracking your expenses because it lets you export your expenses to a CSV file, which is great for tracking.
Overall, both banks have features that the other bank does not have. So, it really depends on which features you need for your use case.
Banking fees
We must also compare the banking fees of Neon vs radicant.
Opening and maintaining an account is free for both digital bank accounts. All basic features are free as well.
To get the physical card delivered, you need to pay with both accounts. This costs 15 CHF with radicant and 20 CHF with neon.
With radicant, you get twelve free withdrawals in Switzerland, at any ATMs. Any withdrawal after that will cost 2 CHF. With Neon, you do not get any free withdrawals. You will have to pay 2 CHF per withdrawal (or opt for a premium plan).
If you pay abroad or in foreign currencies with the card, the conditions are quite different with both cards:
- With Neon, you will pay a 0.35% fee on top of the Mastercard exchange rate (0.40% surcharge). This results in a total surcharge of 0.75% over the interbank exchange rate.
- With radicant, you get access to the interbank exchange rate without any surcharge.
Therefore, the radicant card is better to use abroad or in foreign currencies.
If you do a currency conversion within the account, you will pay a 0.90% fee. With Neon, you will pay a 0.40% fee on top of Wise fees. So, this may be cheaper than radicant, but also sometimes pricier.
Overall, radicant is more affordable than Neon, especially for using the card abroad (and in foreign currencies) and for withdrawals. Neon is not expensive, but radicant is very cheap.
Safety
Whenever you put money in a bank account, you should be careful about the safety of this bank account. Therefore, we must compare the safety of Neon vs radicant.
Neon is not a bank, so they use a custody bank. In this case, they Hypothekarbank Lenzburg (HBL) for custody of assets. Since HBL is a licensed Swiss bank, assets will be protected up to 100’000 CHF in case of bankruptcy.
Radicant has a banking license, so they can hold your assets directly. Again, this gives us the same protection of 100,000 CHF in case of bankruptcy. This is the standard deposit protection in Switzerland.
So, if either bank goes bankrupt, your money will be safe. So, both bank accounts appear equally safe. Neon may have a slight advantage because it was launched earlier. But currently, neither of the banks is profitable.
Limits
If you want to use a bank account as your main account, limits are essential.
For transactions from the account, radicant has no limit. Neon has a 50,000 CHF per day limit. This should not be an issue in most cases, unless you need to pay for a down payment, for instance.
On the card, you can spend 10,000 CHF per month with Neon and 20,000 CHF per month with radicant.
radicant has higher limits than Neon. But in most cases, Neon should be fine.
Reputation
Finally, we must also compare the reputation of Neon vs radicant.
I usually use Trustpilot to compare two services. Unfortunately, there is only one review of radicant on this website, so it is not enough to use.
But there are other sources of reviews:
- We can take a look at Google Reviews instead. Neon got a 3.6 score out of 5 (out of 403 reviews), and radicant gets a 3.9 score out of 76 reviews.
- On the Apple App Store, Neon has a 4.5 score and radicant a 4.0 score
- On the Google Play Store, Neon has a 4.3 score and radicant a 3.1 score
Looking at Neon, we can see a generally positive feeling by users. On the positive side, the app is really easy to use and works well. And people are happy about the fees (most reviews are before the new fees of May 2025). On the negative side, the main issue relates to the technical issues that happened mostly in 2023 and 2024.
Looking at the reviews of radicant, we can see there are a few more issues, but overall, the trend is mainly positive. On the positive side, users appreciate the low fees and the sustainability-first approach. On the negative side, the main issue is the onboarding process. Many people have failed to open an account because of technical difficulties during onboarding.
radicant has also been in the press more than neon. Recently, there has been some negative press about the potential financial troubles of the bank. Multiple key persons have left radicant, including the CEO. Also, there have been some significant losses (apparently from an acquisition that went wrong). The future of radicant is not appear that brigh financially and depends on BLKB support.
neon is not profitable either but with their new business model, it may get there eventually. Additionally, neon rarely makes the news for bad reasons these days.
Overall, Neon has a much better reputation than radicant. I would say the main advantage of neon is that they have been around for much longer, which is an advantage of stability.
Neon vs radicant Summary
We can draw a few conclusions for Neon vs radicant:
- Only radicant has a TWINT app (Neon is limited to prepaid TWINT)
- Neon is more mature
- Neon has experienced technical difficulties in the app
- radicant has some technical problems during onboarding
- Neon has a better reputation
- radicant is cheaper if you use the card abroad or in foreign currencies
- Neon is available in more languages
- radicant has more free withdrawals than neon
- radicant only lets you transfer money in EUR and CHF
- Neon has lower limits than radicant
- Neither bank is profitable
- Neon lets you export expenses to CSV
Conclusion
All the services you need to pay, save and invest, in a neat package, with extremely good prices!
Use code poorswiss to get your debit card for free!
- Invest with great fees
Update November 2025: radicant is closing down. New accounts cannot be created anymore. As a result, the conclusion is rather simple: only neon remains as an option.
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I have a Radicant account with some money left on it.
I did not know they were closing down. Should I move my money elsewhere ASAP?
Thanks
Hi Julien,
I think it makes sense to move your money first, but it’s not at risk, they are winding down operations.
I have moved my own money already.
Radicant might not be around much longer. I has been in financial trouble for quite some time: https://www.tippinpoint.ch/unternehmen/165/radicant.html.
I’d be cautious and wouldn’t keep larger sums with them.
Hi Tom
That’s a fair point; they have been in more financial trouble than most digital banks indeed. I should emphasize this point.
Currently, neither of the banks is profitable, but it looks like neon has a stronger business model.
Hello,
Thanks for the comparison! I have been using Neon for some years now, and I opened a radicant account after Neon added the fees to pay abroad or with foreign currencies.
Some comments from my side. Both apps are quite slow (at least on Android) when compared with other baking apps (Revolut, BBVA, N26…). They also do not work offline at all, which might useful in some cases when traveling abroad. The Neon Mastercard card is actually not a debit card but a prepaid card. I think they have changed this last year, so new issued cards are proper debit cards. This is important for payments abroad and also for some online subscriptions, which they do not allow prepaid cards. And sometimes the error messages are very confusing, because they happen after you receive the SMS from Neon to confirm the payment.
So personally I have kept Neon as the main bank but I use it only to pay e-bills, I do not use its card at all. I have replaced Neon with radicant for payments with foreign currencies, and I still use Revolut for payment abroad because of how reliable it is (I never got a declined payment), how fast the app is, and the possibility to split payments directly with other Revolut users.
Hi Iyán
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Indeed, Neon offers a debit card now, but only recently, and older prepaid cards have not been upgraded.
I think your setup makes a lot of sense, taking the best from all worlds. The only thing missing from Revolut in my opinion is a true personal IBAN and it wil become really good to use for Swiss investors.
Didn’t Revolut recently add personal IBAN? I remember there was a change not too long ago, where I had to re-confirm some things, but unfortunately I didn’t pay too much attention. It was around new Swiss IBANs.
Their change is a bit misleading. It’s a unique IBAN, with a different IBAN for each person. However, all the IBANs are still in Revolut’s name, so we still have to include a special message to beneficiary for a wire transfer to work. There is little advantage to their change :(
Is there any other bank with no fees and interbank exchange rate for payments abroad?
I really really like this with radicant but this may go soon…
WIR Bank Top should work in this card: WIR Bank Top Review 2025 – Pros & Cons
Have you also considered WIR top? It is similar to Radicant but allows quite some free withdrawals per year worldwide.
I’ve been a real neon fan. But it looks I am going to move. The insurance package in the radicant is very good. Thanks.
I am curious: what do you need in the insurance package?
CDW
Hello,
I personally dropped neon for wise few years ago, since I and family memebers randomly had about 10% of paiment declined abroad (too annoying).
I would be interested if anyone saw any change in Neon since then, or did not face this kind of issue with Radicant.
Thank you for for the blog :)
Hi Boris
Thanks for sharing. I have heard other people complain about that indeed. But I have never had the issues myself with either Neon or Radicant, but I don’t use my cards abroad that much.
Where does Yuh! stand in this comparison?
Good question. To use abroad, Yuh is worse than both at 0.95% currency exchange fee. One advantage of Yuh is that it’s the only profitable app of the three. Yuh is good for withdrawals as well.
Thanks for your reply.
I’m using Wise for EUR/CHF usage (both in Switzerland and in Europe).
I’m adding Yuh! just for my salary account and credit card spending, to finally get rid of UBS.
I think this combination can work and is the cheapest – or do you suggest alternative combinations?
Yes, it can work well. Do you use a credit card as well?
One slight disadvantage is that you don’t get deposit insurance on your assets at Wise, but if you don’t deposit much cash there this should be fine.
What would one do if they live between Canada and Switzerland with travel within the Euro zone?
If you don’t have a long-term residence in Switzerland, Wise or Revolut may be something to consider. Both Neon and Radicant will need a permanent residency.