Our experience with the ABN AMRO ZZP account was not negative, but is this the best choice for a self-employed person? As a loyal customer of ABN AMRO since the 1990s, it made sense to open a bank account here. Especially if you want to keep it separate from your private account (which you should always do!), it is easy that you can simply link it properly and view it in your trusted ABN AMRO app.
What exactly does the ABN offer?
The ABN AMRO ZZP account is simply a business account. That is a shame, because the bank could have distinguished itself with this, but they did not do so by choosing to offer a standard product.
As a “starter” you will receive the “Basics for Entrepreneurship” package for free for the first 6 months. You are a starter if you apply for this within 12 months of founding your company. That's also a shame, because if you want to switch you immediately pay the full price. We will come back to the costs of the business ABN account later.
The ABN app
This one is just good. That means, for your daily payments, paying at web shops, via Apple Pay and super easy logging in with facial recognition. Everything works as you expect, even switching from the identifier to confirming with your phone when you pay for something on the website is something you quickly get used to.
It's also good to see that the app is improving and that it seems to be getting a lot of attention. Probably because this is the same app as the consumer app. There is really nothing to complain about here and it works as easily as you would like, which is certainly worth a compliment.
What is special, however, is that for some things you are sent from the app to the website. That's never really a big deal on the phone, as most of these settings pages were created about a hundred years ago. Ok, now we're exaggerating, but we wouldn't be surprised if these pages are already ten years old... Back then, less was done on the mobile phone and you were expected to do important things from your computer.
The reason we had to search the caverns of the website was because we were reminded of our monthly invoice in the app. In the app this is called messages and is below a bell, which indicates when there are notifications. If you look for messages on the website, you can search for a long time. It's called Bankmail there.
Invoice from your business account
When you register, the costs are listed somewhere at the bottom. We understand that they are hidden away, because that is not something they should rely on. The bill, after any free 6 months, is €9.75 per month. That's not cheap, but it's not a disaster either.
You also pay for your transactions. Twice, no joke. You pay to view it in your internet banking, namely 8.8 cents per transaction. You also pay for receiving payments, making payments and for periodic transfers. The reason we mention these separately is because they have different rates. The best one is the periodic transaction, for example to save. You pay 55 cents for that each time. Joost may know why it is more than 6 times as expensive as a normal transfer.
What really came as a surprise was that you had to make an effort to link your business account to your private account. You need this to see this bill in the app. You also pay €1 per month for that. You can stop that, but then you will no longer be able to log in via the app.
Besides, it's also just confusing. Periodic costs of €5.50 are included, and below that these costs are deducted again. Just like costs for access to internet banking, €5 in costs added, and then €5 in costs deducted.
It is very understandable that a bank has to make money. To check whether fraud is being committed, to build the beautiful app, to answer your questions. To enable us to transfer and receive money quickly. But couldn't this be made a little easier, like for example: Knab does with 1 fixed rate?
Just a real self-employed package, with 1 account, 1 savings account including a number of transactions? We'll see that as a free tip 🙂