Yuh Review 2023: A new mobile banking service

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)

PostFinance and Swissquote just started a joint venture: The Yuh banking application. With Yuh, you can save money on your account, pay in Switzerland and abroad and invest in the stock market and cryptocurrencies.

Yuh is an entirely digital offer. They have no offices. You can manage all your money directly from your phone. So, you will pay your bills and invest your money in your smartphone.

So, should you use Yuh? What features does it have? And how much does Yuh cost? Let’s find out!

In this article, I will review Yuh in detail, its features, fees, advantages, and disadvantages!

Yuh

A simple broker

Yuh

3.5

No account management fees

Yuh is an easy and affordable way to invest in the stock market and spend money abroad.

Use my code YUHTHEPOORSWISS to get 25 CHF in trading credits!

Use the YUHTHEPOORSWISS code

Code only for Swiss residents.

In May 2021, PostFinance and Swissquote launched the Yuh service. They are trying to unify banking and trading services together. In addition, they want to unify paying, saving and investing (both in the stock market and in cryptocurrencies).

An interesting fact about Yuh is that they will share some of their profits with their cryptocurrency: the Swissqoins.

It is important to note that Yuh is not a bank itself. However, for the customers, it does not make much difference. Indeed, your money will be held by Swissquote, which is a bank. It means your money will be insured for up to 100’000 CHF, the basic deposit protection as other Swiss banks.

It is very subjective, but I have a hard time with the name of the service. It is supposed to be pronounced like You in English. But I keep wanting it to pronounce like Yew. But that is a detail!

So, overall, Yuh is trying to bring many new things! But does that make them any good? Let’s see about that!

Features

As mentioned before, Yuh acts as both a bank and an investment platform. So, we need to look at both banking and trading features.

Banking Features

For banking features, Yuh has all the basic features you can expect: you can pay your bills with the app and transfer money to and from your account. Currently, you can do wire transfers in many currencies.

You will get a Debit Mastercard to make payments and withdraw money in Switzerland and abroad. You can also pay online with a card with CHF, USD, and EUR (and a long list of other currencies).

The interesting thing about Yuh is that you have a multi-currency account. It means you can receive and keep other currencies in your account. So, for instance, you could receive EUR and keep them in your account. So, when you have to pay in EUR, it will directly use that balance instead of converting from CHF to EUR.

You can also do peer-to-peer transfers to other users of the application. This feature is good if you know other users of the app. They also have the usual features like savings goals that I do not see any use for. These things are present in most digital banks.

But that’s about it as features go. For instance, you cannot currently use eBill or get a virtual card with Yuh. But these features are planned. You can consult their roadmap to follow their progress.

Yuh supports Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay if you want to pay with your phone. On the other hand, they do not support TWINT, which may be an issue in Switzerland for many users.

Trading Features

Yuh is quite limited in terms of investment features. You can invest in about 200 different stocks. As for ETFs, you can currently invest in 37 ETFs. Again, this is a limited choice that I hope they will increase in the future.

Unfortunately, Yuh does not offer any US ETFs. Since US ETFs are currently the best ETFs available to Swiss investors, not having them is a big disadvantage for Yuh.

Looking at the list of available ETFs, they are weirdly naming them. For instance, VWRD is called Global Blue Chips. And many other ETFs get the name blue chips.

I cannot understand why they would call them blue chips. VWRD contains all the stocks from the World stock market, not only blue chips. And even for the U.S., VUSD contains all the stocks from the U.S. stock market, not only blue chips.

It is poor miscommunication to imply that the stocks are blue chips which means safety for many people. If they wanted blue chips, they should have taken the Dow Jones Industrial Average, an actual index of so-called blue chips.

Finally, Yuh also gives you access to some cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Ethereum. You can access 34 cryptocurrencies, which should be enough for most people. It is unclear whether you can have proper wallet security, but I expect not. And generally, if you cannot have your cryptos in your own wallet, you should not use a platform.

Yuh Fees

After looking at the features, we need to look at the fees offered by Yuh. Since yuh is both a banking and investment package, we will need to cover both.

Banking fees

Let’s start with the banking fees of Yuh.

The basic operations are all free:

• Paying for your bills
• Transfer money to and from your account in CHF
• Paying in Switzerland with the Debit Mastercard
  • Paying abroad is fee-free, but you will pay high currency exchange fees
• Free transfers in EUR in the EEA zone
• Peer-to-peer payment in the application

For withdrawals, you will get one free withdrawal per week in Switzerland. Subsequent withdrawals will cost 1.90 CHF. If you withdraw money abroad, you will pay 4.90 CHF.

However, you will only be able to withdraw 1000 CHF per day and at most 10’000 CHF per month. This limit should be good per month, but this could be an issue daily.

There is no limit to wire transfers. But there is a limit for paying with the card that you can configure between 500 CHF and 25’000 CHF.

Yuh has positive interest rates, which is extremely rare. Indeed, you can get 0.50% on CHF, EUR, and USD. And this is paid for up to 100’00 CHF balances. It is still a great feature if you often hold cash. Some people would like to use this for their emergency fund.

Now comes the expensive part: currency exchange! Yuh is charging 0.95% per currency exchange. All your operations in a foreign currency will cost you 0.95%. This fee is funny because they claim transaction fees are free in 12 currencies, but you have to pay the currency exchange, so it is not free. It is all about marketing… And if you work with currencies not included in the app, you will have to pay 1.50%!

For me, the currency exchange fee makes Yuh highly unattractive. Currently, there are several interesting alternatives with free payments in foreign currencies and comparable features for the banking side.

Trading fees

Let’s look at the trading fees of Yuh now.

First, there are no custody fees. So, you will not pay anything to keep your account open without doing anything. This is a good advantage!

Then, the transaction fees are straightforward:

• 0.5% fee for the stock market with a minimum fee of 1 CHF
• 1.0% fee for cryptocurrencies without a minimum

Compared with other Swiss brokers, these fees are relatively cheap for small operations on the stock market. But they are expensive for large operations. For instance:

• A 1000 CHF investment will cost you 5 CHF, which is cheap
• A 10’000 CHF investment will cost you 50 CHF, which is expensive

On top of that, you will also pay currency exchange fees of 0.95% for your operations with currencies you do not have. For instance, if you have only CHF and want to buy something in USD, you will pay a 0.95% fee. This fee is quite expensive.

Fortunately, the dividends will stay in their original currency. So you will not lose 0.95% of all your dividends in USD, for instance.

Of course, you will have to pay the management fees of the ETFs. This is logical, and it is the same for each broker.

Overall, Yuh’s fees are not great. But if we compare Yuh to other Swiss brokers, they are not terrible. For small operations, they will be reasonable, but for large operations, they are quite bad.

Swissqoins

A unique feature of Yuh is its Swissqoin (SWQ). Swissqoin is a new cryptocurrency token that only exists within Yuh.

There are several ways of earning SWQ:

• By depositing 500 CHF in your account when you open it, you will get 500 SWQ
• By referring another user, you will get 500 SWQ
• By making a trade on Yuh, you will get 10 SWQ
• By paying with your Mastercard, you will get 2 SWQ

You can either redeem them for cash, send them to other Yuh users or keep them in your account.

Currently, one SWQ is worth 0.01 CHF (1 cent). There are 200 million Swissqoins, backed by a 2 million CHF reserve account. But this reserve account is expected to grow with time. Indeed, Yuh will reinvest 10% of its revenues into Swissqoin every month. Now, they say it is only 10% of the subscription revenues. However, there are currently no subscriptions, and there will not be any until 2022. So, I am reading that they will not reinvest anything before 2022, at least.

I do not see any value in that cryptocurrency thing. I would rather have a hard cashback or fee reduction on the operations than this gimmick.

Alternatives

In both banking and investment services, there are many alternatives available. So, let’s compare these services a little.

One of the selling points of Yuh is to be a multi-currency account that you should be able to use in many countries. If you are interested in paying abroad for free, we can compare it with Neon (my review).

Yuh has a 0.95% currency conversion fee against 0% for Neon (but about 0.4% for the MasterCard rate). So, Neon is already better than Yuh on this selling point. And if you want to hold multiple currencies, both Revolut and Wise will be cheaper.

We can also compare with Swissquote (my review of Swissquote), the company behind Yuh, and a broker. For small operations, Yuh would be significantly cheaper. On the other hand, it would become more expensive for large operations.

And Yuh has a very limited set of investments compared to the extensive set of instruments available with Swissquote. So, I would rather use Swissquote directly.

Finally, if we compare it with an international broker like Interactive Brokers, Yuh falls behind very quickly. Most transactions (except tiny transactions on SIX) are cheaper (and sometimes very significantly) at IB. And IB has many more features than Yuh. You can read my review of Interactive Brokers for more information.

FAQ

Yuh Summary

Yuh is an easy and affordable way to invest in the stock market and spend money abroad.

Product Brand: Yuh

Editor's Rating:
3.5

Yuh Pros

Let's summarize the main advantages of Yuh:

• Free EUR bank account
• Multi-currency account
• No custody fees
• Cheap fees for small trading operations
• The money is kept safe by Swissquote
• Backed by two large institutions
• Pay online for free in multiple currencies if you have the money already

Yuh Cons

Let's summarize the main disadvantages of Yuh:

• Expensive currency exchange fees
• No access to U.S. ETFs
• Only market orders
• Limited choice of ETFs
• Limite choice of stocks
• Expensive trading fees for large trading operations
• Support for e-bills is planned but not yet available
• Unclear marketing
• Confusing pricing

Conclusion

A simple broker

Yuh

3.5

No account management fees

Yuh is an easy and affordable way to invest in the stock market and spend money abroad.

Use my code YUHTHEPOORSWISS to get 25 CHF in trading credits!

Use the YUHTHEPOORSWISS code

Code only for Swiss residents.

Yuh is an interesting idea, but I do not currently see this offer’s usefulness. One interesting point is that they offer both banking features and trading features. This point is good if you want to use a single account. But they are the best at neither. So, having a single account with them greatly compromises features and fees.

For me, the main issue is the currency conversion fee. Their currency exchange rates are very high compared to other actors in the market.

And they only offer 37 ETFs and no US ETFs. Also, they claim to be modern and digital, but they have no support for eBills or virtual cards. At least, they have announced that these two futures will come in the future.

So, overall, Yuh feels like an unfinished product at this stage. It may change in the future, but I do not see a use for it.

• If you want an excellent digital bank, you can use Neon and save on fees abroad.
• If you want a good Swiss broker, you can use Swissquote with many more features.
• And if you want a multi-currency account with a lot of support and better fees, you can use Wise or Revolut and have better fees.

What about you? What do you think of Yuh?

The best financial services for your money!

Download this e-book and optimize your finances and save money by using the best financial services available in Switzerland!

Download The FREE e-book