PSD2
Payment Services Directive 2 (Directive 2015/2366)EU directive governing payment services and PSPs; introduced Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), open banking APIs, and consumer protections. Being superseded by PSD3/PSR.
№05 · METHODOLOGY · Edition №08 · Published 04 May 2026
How we score 86 banks. Out loud.
Every bank in our ranking gets a single number out of 100 — the weighted average of six scored pillars. No editorial overrides, no affiliate weighting, no "we couldn't decide so we made it up." Here's exactly how each cell is calculated, what we won't score, and how we update.
The six pillars
Sum: 100% · weights frozen each edition 30 %
Regulation 30 / 30 points
Licence class, regulator quality, sanctions history, capital ratios. Highest weight because it sets the floor on every other dimension.
20 %
Fees 20 / 20 points
Free-tier coverage, monthly cost on the cheapest paid plan, FX markup, ATM cost abroad, hidden add-ons. Lower is better.
20 %
UX 20 / 20 points
Onboarding friction, app-store ratings (iOS + Android), Trustpilot signal, support response. Cross-checked with hands-on notes.
15 %
Protection 15 / 15 points
Deposit-guarantee ceiling under the bank's primary regulator, segregation arrangement for EMIs, FDIC pass-through quality for partner-banks.
10 %
Reach 10 / 10 points
Countries served, multi-currency capability, cross-border transfer routes. Drives whether a bank works for travellers and expats.
5 %
Support 5 / 5 points
Channels offered (in-app chat, phone, email), 24/7 availability, premium-tier human-support carve-outs.
Section 01
What we actually measure.
Every pillar breaks down into named sub-cells with a defined point ceiling. The score is the sum. There is no "editorial bonus." If you tell us which cell is wrong, we can argue about that single cell — not vibes.
The two largest pillars — Regulation and Fees — together account for half of the score, because in our reader research these are the two dimensions readers most commonly get burned on. Below is the full Regulation pillar at the cell level.
| Sub-cell | Source | Pts |
|---|---|---|
| Licence class | regulatory_tier + licence_strength_score | 12 |
| Regulator quality | regulatory.primary_regulator | 8 |
| Sanctions history (last 36 months) | editorial / news collection | 6 |
| Capital ratios (when published) | annual report disclosures | 4 |
| Pillar total | Regulation | 30 |
Each pillar has a similar table — readers can audit any score by adding sub-cells and confirming they match the headline number. We publish per-bank scorecards alongside every long-form review.
Section 02
What we refuse to score.
Some criteria are plausible-sounding but unmeasurable, gameable, or actively distortionary. We've explicitly excluded them. Listing what's out is more honest than pretending the inputs are exhaustive.
Brand sentiment. A Twitter scrape of "people complaining about bank X" is not data. Customer complaints reach us via two channels we trust: app- store ratings (anonymised, aggregated, weighted by recency) and our own quarterly support-ticket tests.
Affiliate-weighted "deals." When we link to a bank we earn a commission — disclosed, ledgered, audited. That commission has zero input into the score. A €0-commission bank can rank #1; a €120-commission bank can rank #40.
Marketing claims. "10 million users" is a press-release input, not a score input. Reach in our methodology means licensed-to-operate jurisdictions, not press releases.
"Innovation." A vague catch-all that mostly means "we like the founder." Out.
Section 03
A worked example: Revolut, Edition №08.
Below is the per-pillar breakdown for the highest-scoring bank in the current edition. The math is reproducible — every number derives from the rubric tables, not editorial judgement.
Pillar inputs
Revolut · per-pillar
Regulation (30%)
30 / 30
Fees (20%)
15 / 20
UX (20%)
19 / 20
Protection (15%)
12 / 15
Reach (10%)
10 / 10
Support (5%)
5 / 5
Final score
Edition №08 result
Each pillar's contribution = (subscore × weight) / 100. Sum across all six pillars produces the headline number — same formula applied to every bank in the index, no exceptions.
Composite 91/100
30 + 15 + 19 + 12 + 10 + 5 = 91.
"We score banks the way we'd want our own deposits scored — by what's documented in the licence file, not what's in the launch deck."
Editorial board · Edition №08 Section 04
When the numbers move.
Scores are updated quarterly at edition cutoff. Between editions only two things change a published score: a regulator action (fine, licence change, growth cap) or a verified product change that touches a measured cell (e.g. monthly fee changes). Both are logged in the news timeline first; the score follows in the next edition.
The methodology itself — the weights and sub-cell definitions — gets reopened once a year, in the Q1 edition. Below is the changelog.
May 2026 Edition '08 Reweighted pillars to Regulation 30 / Fees 20 / UX 20 / Protection 15 / Reach 10 / Support 5. Subscores now derive at runtime from a single rubric.
Mar 2026 Edition '07 Worldwide hub launched (60 banks across 6 regions). Europe demoted to a sub-pillar. Cannibalization fix: only one self-canonical home.
Jan 2026 Edition '06 Added 28 deepened reviews (US/LATAM/APAC/GCC/AFRICA cohort). Trustpilot + app-store composite kept as the dominant UX input.
Section 05
Sources, corrections, conflicts.
Primary sources only for regulator data: BaFin / ECB / FCA / Finanstilsynet / ACPR / SARB / MAS public registers, plus banks' own legal-entity disclosure files. Secondary sources (Reuters, FT, Bloomberg) get cited but never carry a score impact alone.
Corrections. When we get a cell wrong, we publish a dated correction note on the bank's review page and in the next edition's changelog. The point we deducted (or added) in error is restored within 24 hours of verification — even if the next edition is two months out.
Conflicts of interest. Contributors who hold a personal-investment equity stake in a bank we score are recused from that bank's score. The recusal note appears in every edition that bank participates in.
The EU regulations we score against.
The "regulatory protection" pillar weights every bank against EU banking regulation. Each card below links to the source-of-truth EUR-Lex / Commission text. Other jurisdictions (US FDIC / OCC, LATAM BACEN / CNBV, APAC MAS / HKMA, GCC CBUAE / SAMA, AFRICA SARB / CBN) are scored against their own regulators — see the per-region hubs.
PSD3
Third Payment Services Directive (provisional agreement)Successor framework to PSD2. EU Parliament and Council reached provisional political agreement 27 November 2025. Extends Verification of Payee (VoP) to all credit transfers; mandates fraud-data sharing between PSPs.
DORA
Digital Operational Resilience Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2554)ICT risk-management and incident-reporting framework for EU financial entities. In force since 17 January 2025.
AMLR / AMLD6
EU Anti-Money-Laundering Package: AML Regulation + 6th AML Directive + AMLASingle AML rulebook + EU AML Authority (AMLA, HQ Frankfurt, operational 2025). 6th AML Directive transposed 2025–2027; AMLR directly applicable from July 2027.
MiCAR
Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (EU) 2023/1114EU framework for crypto-asset issuers + CASPs. Transitional period through end-2025; full effect from Jan 2026. Required for any neobank offering crypto trading (Revolut, Vivid Money, Lunar, Bitpanda).
Section 06
How we get paid (and why it doesn't move the score).
We earn affiliate commission when a reader opens an account through a link on this site. Commission ranges €0 to €120 depending on the bank. Three things keep this from corrupting the ranking:
One. The score is calculated before the affiliate ledger is loaded into the layout. There's a literal git boundary — the editorial branch produces the scorecard; the commerce branch wires up the buttons.
Two. The full disclosure ledger — every commission rate, every quarterly payout, every contributor whose salary it funds — lives at /disclosure/. That's how we publish "Total Q1 affiliate revenue: €18,420 · funds 2.4 of our 6 contributors" on the homepage without flinching.
Three. Banks that don't pay us are scored anyway. A meaningful share of the index has no affiliate relationship at all; some sit in the top 10 regardless.
Spotted a cell you think is wrong? Tell us.
Corrections are read by an actual human editor, usually within a week. We re-score and credit you in the changelog.