Why I left N26 - PART III - How did this all end ?
Why I left N26 - PART III - How did this all end ?
After I understood that customer service wouldn’t help me, I decided to try something by myself. I connected an old account (which country was set to France) to try and download the app. It didn’t work. I then tried searching for the app in the playstore on some Japanese friend of mine’s phone. It worked. That’s how I realised the problem wasn’t about the country, but about my Android version. I was wrong the whole time. And the most amazing thing is that the customer service was never able to tell me that the app had been recently restricted to Android 6.0 and later, not even the one who asked me about my phone version and to whom I clearly stated that my Android version was 5.0.
The customer service of N26 is awful. Their staff are not trained at all. They don’t know the very basics of how to use the app, which is a crucial part of online banking. N26 doesn’t give a crap about it’s customers.
Anyway, a few days later I received a nice email from them telling me I had violated their terms of use and my account would be closed a month later.

I contacted the customer service to explain to them I was in Japan for only a year and I had just come back to France. I showed them my Japanese resident card, with the expiry date, but they replied it wasn’t an acceptable document; only an electricity bill (or something similar) with my name on it would be accepted. But I am now staying at my parents place and have no bill with my name on it.
I found it amazing that they didn’t need a proof of me living outside of the EU to close my account, but they needed one to prove I’m living in the EU in order to cancel the account closure. Basically they need no proof to accuse a customer of violating their rules; but the customer has to provide proofs to prove he didn’t. Super nice.
I could have fought and argued about it with the customer client, but I decided that if it was all the respect they give their clients I didn’t need them anymore. So I let them close my account.
Now, in 2019 most people living abroad need to have a bank account in both the country they come from and the country they’re living in now. As a bank that boasts being modern and innovative, you would expect N26 to understand that. But apparently, they don’t. 
I would understand it if I needed a loan, since they would have trouble recovering it if I wasn’t paying and living outside of the EU. But that wasn’t the case; I had a regular bank account, which was blocked (meaning any payment that would put my balance below 0€ would be refused). So I really don’t see any valid reason for them forbidding their clients from living abroad.

After this problem, I started looking for another online bank. So I tried looking for “best online banks for European expats”. What made me cringe is that N26 appeared in almost all of them, even though they are literally forbidden to expats. And it’s actually the case for most online banks, so I realised people who write these kinds of tops have most of the time no idea what they’re taking about, and haven’t tried any of the banks they recommend.
SO IF YOU’RE A EUROPEAN EXPAT LOOKING FOR AN ONLINE BANK ACCOUNT, WATCH OUT. MOST OF THEM (INCLUDING N26) ARE HOSTILE TO PEOPLE LIVING OUTSITE OF THE EU. Now you can trick them into believing you still live in the EU by using your old phone number and giving them the address of your parents, but be aware that if anything happens and they discover it your bank account will be closed.

So what’s my online bank recommendation for EU expats ? 
After doing some very long and frustrating researches, I am now using Transferwise. It’s one of the only bank that will let you use a phone number from outside the EU and not require a proof of residence to open an account. I checked with them and living in Japan appears to be tolerated.
Other than that, the perks is that the card is totally free, and that it has a very useful that let’s you transfer money in many countries for the price of a local transfer, which is super convenient if you need to regularly transfer money from a country to another.
The downside is that all the currency conversions are subject to a 1% fee. It is pretty low, but still above the 0% that some other online banks might offer (usually for a paid card). So depending on how much money you want to transfer, TransferWise might be a good option.