Most banks in Ireland have special Student Bank Accounts – and they sometimes offer cashback or other incentives to entice new students to open an account with them. The Banks are hoping that once they get a new student to sign up – that they will stay with them for life. These are some of the student bank accounts offers available in 2021.
Bank Of Ireland offer 5% interest on student loans up to €5,000
Ulster Bank offers an interest-free overdraft of up €1,500 if you receive a grant. Those without a grant can get up to €750.
AIB offers an interest-free overdraft of up to €1500 euro for students. Also, they offer student loans of up to €3,000 available each year for four years at 8.45% APR.
Bank Fees: None of the banks in Ireland charge admin fees or day to day transaction fees on student accounts .
But it is worth noting that most banks will start charging you fees on a current account when you stop being a student. If you are not careful, those fees could easily come to over €100 a year. See more details of Bank Charges in Ireland here and how to avoid them.
Mainstream banks with branches are gradually becoming less popular as online banking grows. More and more students are moving to fully online banking such as N26.
N26 was launched in Germany in January 2015 and has been available to Irish residents since December 2015. N26 have over 1 million customers across the EU. (Soon available in the UK too.)
N26 has had a full European banking licence since 2016 – so any funds you have with it are covered by the German Bank guarantee (up to €100,000). With N26 you get a bank account number (IBAN) – in the same way as any mainstream bank – so you can get your grant etc paid in. You can also set up Direct Debits. Being branchless, N26 does not deal with cash or cheques.
See also – N26 compared to Revolut