N26, the digital-only banking brand based out of Berlin, began a staged rollout of its app in the U.S. earlier this summer before becoming widely available to American consumers in August. The brand launched in Europe in 2015 and has since gained 3.5 million customers in 25 countries, according to a company statement. Earlier this month, N26 announced a partnership with the Allpoint ATM network to give customers access to more than 55,000 fee-free ATMs.

Bank Innovation sat down with Nicolas Kopp, U.S. CEO of N26, to talk about the brand’s U.S. launch and overall strategy. Below is an edited version of that conversation.

How has the U.S. launch of N26 been going so far?

We just launched two months ago in the U.S. When we first released that beta program, we had 100,000 people on the waitlist. We rolled that beta program out to them and, after the successful completion of the beta, we released another version of the N26 app, which was the better and bigger version, on August 22.

We have a full team in New York that works cross-functionally with our global team, and we just announced our first surcharge-free ATM network, where customers can get unlimited free withdrawals at any Allpoint ATM. We also offer two free out-of-network ATM withdrawals per month to our customers. 

N26 launched an ad campaign in New York City recently. How else are you spreading the word to American consumers? 

In general, we acquire a lot of our customers through word of mouth. We supplement that with some brand spend, so you will see us all around the city in New York, as well as San Francisco and Chicago. Seattle is one of those cities where we are debating about whether we should start a campaign.

For a feature release like the ATM network, we’re not going to revamp fundamentally and do another ad campaign. We spend marketing money on the overarching N26 brand, but a lot of the features that will be released will just be mentioned on our social channels and blogs for people that follow us.

N26 customers can withdraw money for free from retailers like Target, CVS, Walgreens and Kroger. How else are you working with retailers to grow the N26 brand in the U.S.?

We don’t partner with those chains beyond offering access to surcharge-free ATMs, but we do have a program called Perks. That’s our attempt at bringing lifestyle and larger consumer ecosystem into the N26 app. As a starting point, you basically get a discount on subscriptions. We have a few of these that you can connect with in the app, like Tidal, Aaptiv and Luminary — some of the newer and hipper brands that are growing and which a lot of our customers use . That’s our first chance of working with other brands to empower our customers. 

Is it important to supplement the digital-only banking brand with any kind of physical presence?

I have a personal view that the use of cash will dwindle drastically over the coming years, but the reality for now is people still use cash on an everyday basis. There are individuals out there who use N26 and still use ATMs on a regular basis. For these people, it’s important to have access to that cash.

If you look at the long-term trend, N26 in terms of innovation is definitely focused on features that help people go cashless. We’re focusing our time on mobile and cards, which is where we think the future is.

What is your overall plan to grow the N26 brand?

How I think about building products and giving the best offerings to our customers is very much in increments. While it is exciting for our team to announce the in-network ATMs withdrawals that are free, this is just one building block. There are other features that will be coming out that I can’t talk about quite yet, but they will facilitate payments, getting money into accounts and savings. There’s a lot of areas for improvement in the general population’s financial lives, so we’re trying to release a new feature every couple of weeks.