The Provider Index
The stack · Method
Method · how this index is built

Three stages down, four fields back up.

The scene on the front page reads a provider top down, because that is how a customer meets it. A profile is written the other way round, from the entity up, because that is the order in which the answers stop changing.

Stages
Interface, licence, protection
Profile fields
Entity, licence, protection, detail
Registers
FCA, BaFin, DNB, ACPR
Rule
Every figure carries a source and a date
01 · The stages

One account, three stages, three different questions.

The stack in the scene above is how this index reads every provider. Each stage has its own question, its own register and its own way of going wrong. Read them in this order and a business account stops being a matter of taste.

Stage 1

Interface

The app, the dashboard, the API. The layer you actually touch and the one that carries no legal weight.

Question: how does it behave on a bad day? Stage 2

Licence

Bank, electronic money institution or payment institution. Three different sets of obligations behind similar looking apps.

Question: whose licence is it, and what is its number? Stage 3

Protection

Deposit guarantee, safeguarding, or money segregated at a partner bank. Three promises that pay out very differently.

Question: who pays you back, and up to how much?
02 · Stage one · Interface

Judge the app on its worst day, not its best screen.

Every provider in this index ships changes weekly, so the interface you are comparing today is not the one you will use next quarter. What survives a release is the way the company behaves when something breaks. That is measurable, and you can measure it before you open an account.

  1. Open the provider's status page and scroll back twelve months, not twelve days. A page that only shows the current week is a decision, not an accident.
  2. Count how many incidents got a written post mortem. Providers that publish causes tend to publish the next one too.
  3. Read the incident wording. Payments delayed and service degraded can describe the same morning, and the difference tells you who the page is written for.
  4. If you will use the API, test idempotency and retries in the sandbox before migration. A payment sent twice is an interface problem that becomes an accounting problem.
  5. Ask support one question you already know the answer to, and time the reply. This is the only number in this stage you can gather in an afternoon.

What we record at this stage

Incident history
How far back the public status page goes, and whether post mortems are published.
API behaviour
Whether the documentation defines an idempotency key and what it promises on retry.
Channel of record
Where the provider tells you about an outage: status page, email, or nowhere.

This stage is observation, not a licence question. We publish what a provider makes public and say so when a provider publishes nothing.

03 · Stage two · Licence

The licence is public. Read it there, not on the pricing page.

Marketing pages say bank. Registers say what kind of firm it is, who supervises it and since when. The check takes about four minutes per provider and it is the single most useful thing a finance team can learn from this site.

  1. Find the legal entity name in the terms or the imprint, not the brand. Wise Business is Wise Payments Limited. Qonto is QONTO SA.
  2. Open the register of the country that entity sits in, and search the name.
  3. Read the permission, not the logo. Authorised electronic money institution and credit institution are different animals wearing the same coat.
  4. Write down the reference number and the date you checked. Monzo Bank Limited is 730427 and was authorised in August 2016. Numbers age better than screenshots.
  5. If one brand runs several entities, repeat the check for each. Revolut runs a UK bank and a Lithuanian bank inside one app.

Registers we open, and the field we read

United Kingdom · FCA
register.fca.org.uk · field Firm reference number. Example: Monzo Bank Limited, 730427.
Germany · BaFin
BaFin company database · field Register number. Example: N26 Bank AG, 145827.
Netherlands · DNB
dnb.nl public register, updated every business day at 06:00 and available as an API. Example: bunq B.V., trade register 54992060.
France · ACPR
ACPR authorisation check · field Licence number. Example: QONTO SA, 16958, issued 21 June 2018.

All four registers checked 1 Sep 2026. A licence can be granted, restricted or withdrawn between our check and yours, which is exactly why we print dates.

04 · Stage three · Protection

Three promises, and only one of them is a guarantee.

At stage three a provider does one of three things with your balance. A bank holds it and a deposit guarantee scheme stands behind it. An e-money firm safeguards it, which protects the money in insolvency but pays out no compensation. A payment institution can place it at partner banks, where the guarantee follows the partner and not the provider you signed with.

The UK number moved on 1 December 2025, and firms had until 31 May 2026 to update their own disclosure materials, which is why the old figure still sits in so many comparison tables.

FSCS limit, per depositor
85,000

Raised from 85,000 to 120,000 pounds by the Prudential Regulation Authority in policy statement PS24/25, published 18 November 2025. The temporary high balance limit went from 1 million to 1.4 million pounds on the same date. Business deposits count as a single depositor, so a company does not get a separate allowance per account.

Source: Bank of England, PS24/25 · checked 1 Sep 2026

05 · Profile fields

How a profile is built, from the bottom up.

The scene reads the stack top down, because that is how a customer meets it. A profile is written the other way round, from the entity up, because that is the order in which the answers stop changing. Four fields, the same four in every profile in this index.

Read last

Interface

The app, the dashboard, the API. Fastest to change, easiest to like, worth the least when things go wrong.

We record API behaviour under retry and how quickly the status page moves during an incident. Screenshots are dated.

Read third

Protection

What happens to your balance when the entity fails. Deposit guarantee, safeguarding, or nothing named at all.

Banks in the UK sit under the FSCS. Banks in the euro area sit under a national deposit guarantee scheme. E-money firms safeguard instead, which is a different promise.

Read second

Licence

Bank, electronic money institution, or payment institution. Three different sets of obligations behind similar looking apps.

We take the licence number from the regulator, not from the marketing page, and we write down the date we checked it.

Read first

Entity

The legal person your contract is actually with. One brand often runs several, and they do not protect you equally.

Revolut is the clearest case in this index: a UK bank, a Lithuanian bank and a UK e-money firm live inside one app.

06 · What we refuse to publish

Three rules that cost us rows.

No invented entities. A row that reads Provider A is not a row, it is a placeholder. If we cannot name the company and its source, the line does not exist.

No undated figures. A protection limit without a date is a rumour with formatting. The UK limit moved on 1 December 2025 and many comparison tables still print the old one.

No commission. We take nothing from the providers listed here, and no row can be bought. That is also why the index is small.

How to challenge a row

  • Open the register we link and read the same field.
  • If the register disagrees with us, the register wins.
  • Send the entity name, the field and the date you checked.

Corrections are published with the date of the change, not folded quietly into the page.