The German digital bank N26 has announced it will cease operating in Brazil to concentrate on its core European markets.

While the company has been testing versions of its products in Brazil with selected customers since November 2021, these were never launched to the wider public.

N26 said it will close all accounts in Brazil over the next two months. Employees currently based in Brazil will have the opportunity to apply for roles in N26’s European offices in the future.

The company has a customer count of around eight million and conducts business in 24 countries primarily situated in Europe.

In July, Germany’s financial regulator BaFin announced plans to extend existing anti-money laundering (AML) measures to N26 after the neobank was fined €4.25 million over lax money laundering controls.

It also ordered N26 to establish adequate IT monitoring, step up quality assurance, and establish more effective outsourcing controls.

Last year, N26 partnered with Bitpanda to allow users to buy and sell around 200 cryptocurrencies in the app after passing identity verification and eligibility checks. The company said around 40 per cent of N26 customers in Austria are already trading cryptocurrency or have expressed an interest in doing so.

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