bunq vs ABN AMRO vs ING for internationals

The short version

• Open bunq if you need a Dutch bank account working before your BSN arrives. Speed is its real advantage, and in your first month it is often the only one that matters.
• Open ABN AMRO or ING if you want a counter you can walk into, or you would rather your whole financial life did not sit inside a single app.
• Between ABN AMRO and ING there is no honest tiebreaker for a newcomer. Pick the one with a branch nearer to you.
• We are paid when someone opens a bunq account. ABN AMRO and ING pay us nothing. The section on where bunq is the wrong choice is the one to read first.
• The decision is reversible. The Overstapservice forwards incoming payments and direct debits to your new account for 13 months, free, and all three banks take part.

You are reading a comparison of three Dutch banks, one of which pays us. That is worth knowing before the first recommendation rather than after the last one, so it is in the second section instead of the footer.

The useful finding is that these three are more alike than their marketing suggests. They share the same cash machines, the same deposit protection, and the same regulator. What separates them is how quickly you can open one and whether you ever want to speak to a person.

Which Dutch bank should you choose

Open bunq if you are arriving without a BSN (Burgerservicenummer, the Dutch citizen service number) and need a euro account working in the next few days, and you are content doing everything from your phone. That is the one thing it does better than the other two. The timing rules behind it are a separate question, covered in how to open a Dutch bank account.

Open ABN AMRO or ING if there is any chance you will want to sit across a desk from someone. That group is wider than people expect. It covers anyone whose paperwork is unusual and anyone who has had an application refused before.

Between ABN AMRO and ING, a newcomer has no honest tiebreaker. Both are large Dutch banks, both run in English, both have branches. Choose the one with a branch nearer to where you will live, or the one whose app annoys you less in the first ten minutes.

One case sits outside all of this. On a stay of a few months, with no Dutch salary and no Dutch direct debits, you may not need a Dutch account at all. The guide linked above settles that question, and it is worth settling before you pick between three of them.

How this comparison is paid for

bunq has an affiliate agreement with us. If you open an account through the link at the end of this page, we are paid for it. ABN AMRO and ING have no such agreement and we are paid nothing when you open with either.

So here is the ordering rule, because that is the part you cannot check for yourself. bunq is listed first on this page because it is the fastest to open, which is the binding problem for someone landing in September without a BSN. It is not first because it pays. If you are arriving with a job already signed and an HR department pointing you at a bank, speed is not your problem and the ordering on this page is not written for you.

These three are also not the whole market. Rabobank and SNS are the other two a newcomer would reasonably look at. We have no relationship with either, and that is the only reason they are absent here. Read it as missing information rather than as a verdict on them.

What actually differs between the three

Three things, and all of them are about access rather than about the product.

How fast you can open one. bunq says it opens an account in minutes on your passport. ABN AMRO and ING generally want your BSN and proof of a Dutch address first, which means waiting for your appointment at the gemeente (your local municipality). In the big cities in August and September that wait runs to weeks, which is the entire reason the speed gap matters at all. None of this is fixed by law. Each bank sets its own requirements and revises them, so the application page on the day outranks this one.

Whether there is a counter. ABN AMRO and ING have branches you can visit. bunq does not. Everything goes through the app or through support inside it.

How much of your life sits in one app. With bunq the app is the bank. That is efficient when it works and it is a single point of failure when your phone goes missing in your second week. The other two give you a card, a branch, a phone line, and a website, which is redundancy you will not think about until the day you need it.

What looks like a difference and is not

Cash machines. ABN AMRO, ING and Rabobank pooled their cash machines into Geldmaat, the yellow machines you see on high streets. The Dutch Payments Association is explicit about who may use them: all customers of all Dutch banks can use their normal debit card at Geldmaat without any surcharge or fees from Geldmaat. Your bunq card and your ING card come out of the same slot. What still differs is what your own bank charges you for particular services, and that sits on your bank's fees page rather than on Geldmaat's.

Safety. Rijksoverheid states the rule in one line: every bank with a Dutch banking licence falls under the Dutch deposit guarantee scheme (depositogarantiestelsel), which protects up to €100,000 per account holder per bank. So the question about any Dutch bank is not how old it is. It is whether it holds that licence, which the bank states on its own site and which is a fact rather than a judgement. An app-first bank holding one carries no thinner protection than a big one.

Where bunq is the wrong choice

We are paid when you open a bunq account, so this is the section that costs us money. It is also the accurate one.

Choose ABN AMRO or ING instead if any of this is true of you.

You want a branch. There is no version of bunq that has one.

You are moving an existing Dutch account rather than opening your first. The Overstapservice forwards your payments either way, but the banks taking part do not all offer the same steps. On the comparison the Overstapservice publishes of its participating banks, bunq is not marked as informing the companies that collect your direct debits, or the payers behind batch payments. ABN AMRO and ING are marked for both. That is one table and it is revised without notice, so read the row for the pair you are actually switching between. With a year of direct debits attached to an old account, the gap is real work landing on you.

Your employer or your university steers you at one of the big banks during onboarding. Friction you avoid in your first week is worth more than any feature difference on this page.

You are not comfortable with a phone being the only way in. That is not a criticism of the product. It is a question about you, and for a lot of people the honest answer is that they want a second route to their own money in a country where they cannot yet argue fluently.

If you choose wrong, switching is cheap

The Overstapservice is the free Dutch bank switching service. It exists so that this decision does not have to be right the first time. You open the new account, ask for the switch, and for 13 months your incoming payments and the direct debits taken from the old account are routed to the new one automatically. Dutch payers and collectors are told your new IBAN. All three banks on this page take part.

So the practical cost of picking the wrong bank is an afternoon of admin, not a mistake you live with. The anxiety around this choice is usually larger than the choice.

Do you need more than one account?

Plenty of internationals end up with two: something fast in the first month, something conventional once the BSN and the address are settled. It is a reasonable pattern, and it is not free.

The cost of two accounts is not only the fees. It is two apps, two sets of terms, and the risk that your salary lands in one while a direct debit fails in the other. If you do keep two, decide which is the real account and put your salary, your rent, and your insurance in that one only.

Most people do not need two. Pick the account that matches how you actually want to bank, get it open, and spend the attention you saved on getting your BSN instead, which is the step everything else is genuinely waiting on.

Where to open one, fastest to open first

b

bunq

Dutch mobile-only bank with English support. Open an IBAN in minutes with just your passport. No BSN required to open the account.

A

ABN AMRO

One of the three big Dutch banks. Full English service, physical branches, broad ATM coverage.

I

ING

Largest Dutch retail bank. Solid English app, dense ATM network.